https://thefederalist.com/2016/03/14/want-to-fix-congress-ad...
Do you have some reason that Wyoming should actually have an equal say with New York or Texas or Florida or California?
Why should a man in wyoming's opinion on what federal laws I should live under count 70x as much as mine?
Why should a minority of the country make a decision that impacts the majority of people?
I think, though, that they would realize they need the big states to pay for shit, protect them, etc...
Also, I think you're greatly mis-judging how a deal to the tune of "be 5% poorer but do 100% listening to what the people on the coasts have to say" sounds to e.g. the midwest. You say that like it's an obvious bad deal. I don't think all of them would agree with you on that though. They might just take you up on it given the option.
Fundamentally, you're making an argument against democracy, and in favor of giving people who live in small states greater influence than people who live in large states. A person who moves a few miles across the border from Colorado to Wyoming suddenly sees their vote count for 3 times as much in the Electoral College. It gets even crazier once you start considering how swing states play into this. Your vote makes no difference in most states. But there are a few states where your vote might count, for the sole reason that those states happen to be evenly balanced. It's a ridiculous, irrational system. It was the best that could be negotiated in 1787, but it doesn't make sense in 2020.
And if not, then maybe all the small states need to do is band together into their own country, away from large state bullies
I'm hopeful the popular vote interstate compact[0] will get adopted by enough states to make it so each person's vote counts equally.
What you suggested above is a way to weight citizen's vote's even less equally than they do now, which is what I was responding to. The situation we have now is bad too, imo, but better than each state having an equal vote, irrespective of population.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
The states have sovereignty through federalism and the US constitution. The EC and the Senate are not necessary to their sovereignty.
A union can't really be "equal" between all states unless all states contribute and benefit equally, and you can't really expect millions of people who live in a prosperous and populous state to be willing to discount their own voices so that the voices of those who may contribute less count far more than theirs. I'm not sure a perfect system exists -- it's all a series of tradeoffs, and a popular vote system would have its own -- but saying that the 700k people living in Alaska should have the exact same influence as the 40 million people living in California doesn't make things any better.
Ultimately, a country is made up of people, not political entities.
Popular vote will only remove state sovereignty if the majority of people are aligned with that, at which point yeah, it should be done away with.
However, the reality is that people generally do agree that quite a few laws are state-level, not federal, and so even with a popular vote for federal laws, states would retain the sovereignty they have now.
Your reply there seems like a drastic overreaction. If we voted on our president via popular vote, we would have had a few different presidents in recent times, but I doubt any of them would have reduced state sovereignty significantly.
States are still free to set their own taxes, run their own police as they see fit, etc etc.
Basically, I don't think the popular vote would vote to repeal the 10th amendment, so it seems silly to say it would "destroy any shred of sovereignty". Especially since in this election, the outcome would have been identical.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't even remove unequal, state-based voting power, which is greatest in the Senate, not the Electoral College.
But direct popular election of the President doesn't impact state sovereignty, which is a matter of Constitutional limits on the federal government and guarantees to the states, which the states control changes to via the amendment process.
> Why would states remain in the union if California and New York forever dictate the direction of the country?
Why would states remain in the union if their citizens had only an equal voice?
Why do California and New York remain in the union when their citizens are denied an equal voice, and the states whose citizens are given a greater voice consistently drain their resources?
Do we tax more for social security or cut benefits, do we extend medicare to 55 year olds or delay it until 70, can my daca friends get a job, can Icontinue to operate a company(Obamacare), not to mention war. It's far more influential than my city( or state government.(I live in Houston, this would probably be less true in states like New York or California which has have a larger government)
Another proxy for influence is money, and I contribute far more to the federal government than I pay in state and local taxes, which reflects the very large impact it has on our lives.
But in the 21st century the u.s. federal government has a much larger influence on people's lives.
When a government is closer to a defense pact like Nato it makes sense to have voting apportioned by regional power. But as that government starts to have a larger impact on your day to day life than it makes less sense.
If we started sending nato several trillion dollars a year it makes less sense for Bulgaria to have the same say in how that money is spent as we do.
And there isn't really any political appetite to roll back the federal government to a size where that type of representation made sense. Moving social security and Medicare from the federal to the state or city level would be a political non starter.
1. The scale of population difference between the most and least populous full cantons (that have equal representation in the Ständerat) is somewhat lower than CA versus WY, and they're geographically much (!) closer which I suspect at least allows for a bit more "intercantonal" exposure.
2. Even more importantly, in my opinion: the two houses in the bicameral system have essentially identical powers. There isn't a system of important executive or judicial appointments requiring only a Senate appointment (although the analogs here are blurry), so a majority of the national population's representatives must also sign off as well as a majority of cantons. Providing the Senate unique powers protect the tyranny of less-populous states without limiting the dependence on the federal government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assembly_(Switzerland)
Because ideally, that distribution will give you pause when considering vesting power into the federal government.
As it is you've defined a circle. "It's a republic so it should be run based just on the borders of the constituents".
How is electing a president different than votes for a constitutional amendment? Each state gets one vote there.
You aren't arguing that part of it, the part where people (likely) wouldn't put up with the system you propose.
Why should an individual state get more say in who the president should be if we already have congress critters to argue budget?
That's irrelevant. If it were, Bill Gates' vote would be worth 1M times mine.
If you replace the euphemism "population centers" with the word "people" you get "the problem of people directing the country"... which doesn't sound like a problem to me compared to the minority direction we have today.
Say LA and New York decide that a communist leader would be best for the country. How the hell do residents outside the cities stand up against that in any way but force.
Also, wouldn't rural areas have the same problem? And probably even worse due to less diversity?
Say Louisiana and the mid-west would decide that a fascist leader would be best for the country. How the hell do residents in the cities stand up against that in any way but force.
Works just as well, and is what is actually happening.
Split California into 6 states and they could still each have more population than many other ones. In your system, they not have 6 times as much total power.
How does THAT make sense?
The compromise of quantity of electoral votes was in response to your argument. I am saying that it was a poor compromise that has resulted in eroding the protections of the electoral college as populations have grown.
What we have is like saying the fat guy in the group counts a 3 people.
You literally used people in your example!
By having a Constitution that protects a basic model of government and requires a supermajority of states to consent to changes.
People having unequal representation in the national legislature or Presidential elections doesn't help that and isn't useful too it (well, the general problem. It might help specifically against unwelcome government supported by large-population states, but only by magnifying the risk of such when supported by small population states.)
Urban/rural isn't really the divide the Senate/EC works on. California’s rural population, whose voting power is deweighted by the Senate and EC just as much as that of the urban population, is bigger than that of the six smallest states combined.
How do the majority stand up against that?
What you are also saying is that you are ignoring up to half of the people of Alaska as the elections are winner-takes-all. If instead it was one person one vote, and representational per state, everyone would have a say. Everyone in Alaska with your views would be heard, as well as everyone in NYC with your views.
What you are calling "tyrannical national government" would be majority rule (ie what more people wants, as opposed to now), and is just as true on a state level, just on another scale.
Also how the presidential election is structured isn't actually related to the question of federal control. Federal control over state control has been a hot topic in the last 4 years either way.
Your charge could be leveled in reverse and better wielded.
>People in rural areas tend to think similarly due to a similar environment. What a rural area desires in the nation's leader does not necessarily align with city voters. You must see the danger in a few, smallgroups having the majority of the power.
>Say 10 states comprising less than 3% of the population decide that a communist leader would be best for the country. How the hell do residents outside the cities stand up against that in any way but force.
Note the 10 lowest population states really do comprise less than 3% of the US population.
Can you name another functional democracy of any variety who gives arbitrarily constructed territories of wildly disparate population sizes "equal" say in the running of things?
The United States is not a union of separate republics. The method of electing the president is supposed to reflect the sovereignty of the people, with most of the electoral votes being apportioned according to population. The Great Compromise did give the small states disproportionate representation (an extra two electors, independent of population), but most electors are still tied to population.
The Electoral College is an anachronism. The US is far more unified now than it was in the 1780s. People move between states, and believe much more strongly in democracy than they did 240 years ago (e.g., state legislatures appointing Senators would be unthinkable now, as would denying the vote to any adult citizen). If anything, arbitrary state boundaries should play no role in how much of an impact a person's vote has.
Where did I argue for that? I'm arguing for the state one lives in having no impact on how much one's vote for president counts. I never said that the US should eliminate federalism and run everything directly out of DC.
> Under a popular vote we might as well disband congress.
I don't follow your logic here. Based on my reasoning, it would make sense to either make Senate representation proportional to population, or to disband the Senate altogether, but some representative legislative body obviously has to remain. The House of Representatives is just such a body.
Lets say we have a group of families voting on what to have for a shared dinner. Each family gets one vote. Each family gets to decide how their vote is cast. One family of 10 decides they want roast beef. One family of 5 decides they want roast chicken. One newlywed couple decides they want roast chicken. Every member of each family is happy with their choice because they agreed through discussion in their family.
So, there is one vote for roast beef and 2 for roast chicken. But, every family member was happy with the way their vote was tallied even if 10 people aren't getting what they want for dinner.
A popular vote removes the ability of a family to vote in a way they all agree. The family of 10 will always be deciding what everybody has for dinner. At that point it isn't a dinner of families it is a dinner of 17 individuals with 7 never having what they want. So if you are having a dinner with 17 individuals why maintain the grouping of families? With regards to directing what is for dinner the group of a family becomes irrelevant. It also creates division within families instead of agreement on shared direction.
This is similar to popular vote vs electoral college. A popular vote makes the grouping of a state irrelevant and more easily argued that it shouldn't exist. "The populous elects the president directly. Why do we have representatives? We should make policy direct vote as well. Lets get our greater number of representatives to push that through."
Disbanding congress is not an immediate result of popular vote. It is a possible undesirable end. The structure of government should remove the possibility of undesirable outcomes of human nature as much as it can.
Of course, you could just let each family choose its own meal, while using a majority vote (either of people or families) to decide things that affect all the families. This is federalism.
But I submit that families choosing what to eat is different from government making laws. Many things have to be decided by a central authority, and there has to be a way of apportioning representation in that central authority. Giving certain citizens 3x as much power because they live on one side of a line vs. another violates the principle of "one person, one vote".
The interesting thing is what DOES not take 2/3 is a compact by an increasing number of states to give their votes to whom ever wins the popular vote if enough states to equal 270 votes enact it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
States worth 196 states have enacted it and states worth 60 are pending. If we push hard we can have this in the next 10 years whether people like you disagree or not.
Having a strong federal government is not the settled matter you seem to imply it is.
How many powers does the federal government have that are above those enumerated powers? The government we have is not what the constitution defines. It is what the constitution was designed to prevent. But, we have slowly marched towards a central government that the founders feared and warned needed to be protected against. A central government has a much higher risk of tyrannical control.
If your position weakens any further it wont even have one seat in congress. In a democracy a position that virtually nobody cares for is dead.
edit: removed "properly" as I don't think there is a proper way to control welfare.
https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-taxes-federal-servic...
It is not true in the "Should we get rid of Medicare and Social Security and reimplement them on a state by state basis?" or "Should we abolish the FCC, SEC, EPA, FDA, Postal Service?"
When you ask people if we should make the federal government smaller they'll say yes, when you ask them about a specific piece of the federal government they say no.
The job naturally predominantly attracts those who desire the power in the first place and they retain the support of the people who put and keep them there by giving these people things they desire. This is why you see tax cuts but no real meaningful reduction of the federal government.
You might as well consider it an axiom that no government willingly dis empowers itself.
You say its not settled but it has been moving the same direction for 244 years and shows no sign of reversing course. What suggests a reversal to you?
It was not there to balance state powers (that's what the senate is for). It was a compromise between the people who did not want congress to be part of the voting (due to opportunity for corruption) and the ones that did not want a popular vote, because they did not trust the uneducated masses and feared mob rule. So the electoral college was born as compromise.
The distribution of votes was actually performed based on population which even included slaves (as 3/5 people as another compromise, because the southern states wanted slaves to count for their votes, but not have them vote). It's just state populations have changed dramatically since then and the electoral college has not.
[1] https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fath...
" In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.[35] "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Coll...
"Historians such as Charles A. Beard argue that No. 10 shows an explicit rejection by the Founding Fathers of the principles of direct democracy and factionalism, and argue that Madison suggests that a representative republic is more effective against partisanship and factionalism."
"Hamilton there addressed the destructive role of a faction in breaking apart the republic. The question Madison answers, then, is how to eliminate the negative effects of faction. Madison defines a faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".[14] He identifies the most serious source of faction to be the diversity of opinion in political life which leads to dispute over fundamental issues..."
"Madison acknowledged that while a popular vote would be ideal, it would be difficult to get consensus on the proposal given the prevalence of slavery in the South:
There was one difficulty, however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.[31]"
What you are suggesting is that we weigh small state voter as equal to 20 large state voter. That isn't an "equal say" its tyranny. To put it in perspective you are suggesting that say Wyoming and Vermont whose population amounts to a million people out to be able to out vote Californias 40 million.
This is in fact such a terrible idea that were in implemented it would be in and of itself so terrible that it would sufficient reason for the dissolution of the entire union as rich populous states rebelled and left. You would do less damage to the union by picking a state with a map and a dart board and nuking it.
States are members of the union. You are a member of your state not of the union. Not being a member directly of the union you should not have equal say. If you did have equal say there is no reason to have states. If we dont have states it is time to draft a new constitution cause the old one doesnt apply.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america...
>Urban areas make up only 3 percent of the entire land area of the country but are home to more than 80 percent of the population. Conversely, 97 percent of the country’s land mass is rural but only 19.3 percent of the population lives there.
Its not tyranny for a democracy to privilege the voice of 80% over 20% its is the literal definition of the term democracy.
It is a matter of courtesy that we debate it here because back in the real world in the corridors of power it is so far from acceptable it will get no hearing now nor ever because it would literally require the 80% to support their own subjugation. You are more likely to see a cure for aging and see the shores of alien worlds with your own eyes than see this come to pass.
I understand you may feel that your views are discounted but for you and indeed everyone like you there is 4 people for each one who will not vote to be subordinated to you. Why would they? Given that they don't agree with you why would they vote to implement a scheme by which your will would be placed above them. Sooner ask for the US to be riven in 2 so that people in the "heartland" can opt to go their own way. Its not going to happen either but at least it in theory could absent the contentious challenge of slavery maybe confederacy 2.0 could work.