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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

Im not amercian, but isn't one of the factors that lead to "trump", a feeling that rural was very different than urban, and that rural felt disenfrsnchised, so they went for the demagogue who wanted to burn the world down ("drain the swamp")

Seems like effectively reducing rural voting power would just inflame tensions

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What's the argument for rural votes currently having disproportionally more power than other votes?

Fears of Tyranny of the majority, with our geographic size and mutual ignorance of each others' local concerns. An extreme depiction in popular culture is the domination of rural districts in "The Hunger Games".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Tyranny of the majority is avoided by giving organized minority parties rights, so they can negotiate from positions of weakness, not arbitrarily choosing a minority to have disproportionate representation.

Our current system of democracy suffers because we can attack a much smaller % of the population with misinformation, and rural voters are more efficient to target.

Your second sentence does not serve the argument against because it can be just as arbitrarily purposed for the opposite. That dense cities with packed schools and omnipresent media make it more efficient to sway them with "misinformation".

No, you have to convince more people in dense cities to get the same voting power, because of the electoral college.

At the extreme, you have to convince 3.6 people in california to have the same electoral vote impact as convincing just one voter in Wyoming, and that’s before taking into account that being a winner take all system in most states, you have to influence up to half of California in the worst case, before getting any return on investment.

https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/how-much-voting-p...

You would have to make the argument that people in cities are cheaper per capita to convince, because of their density; cheap enough to offset these massive differences in electoral power. I don’t buy it, as dense cities have the most expensive media markets and modern internet advertising can easily target rural areas.

You don't have to influence any of California, which is essentially a 1-party state for statewide elections.

California hasn't elected a Republican to the US Senate in 32+ years.

What is your point, and how is it relevant?

That things that happen (agriculture, manufacturing, etc) in rural parts of the country are important to everyone, but will suffer if the people living there have no voting power.

I get your point, but the current result is that Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and the other swing states affect the result. The rest of our votes effectively matter far less.

I lived in one of those states in 2016, and was surprised by how both parties actually seemed to care about trying to get votes, compared to all the other years I've lived elsewhere.

"things that happen" is for sure... extremist terrorist disgruntled white dudes is apparently what happens. Agriculture, manufacturing, etc in the US needs to fend for itself on its merits and/or support by a majority, not based on an inflated influence of rural populations. A strong case could be made that could inspire urban people to be in favor of uplifting these segments also. For example, I would gladly pay more for food or goods made in the US if the case was made to me that it was helping more rural population of my country, just like how I gladly accept paying higher taxes that benefit the unemployed and poor. You don't have to give an artificial amplification of power to make sure good things happen for everyone. Sadly, that is where my argument falls apart, people are selfish.

> On the one hand, the Senate has always been unequal, long giving less populous states an outsized voice relative to their population.1 But for more than a century, this hasn’t posed much of an issue: Until the 1960s, Republicans and Democrats competed for both densely and sparsely populated states at roughly the same rate

> But over the last several decades, that’s changed. The parties have reorganized themselves along urban-rural lines, and there is now a clear and pronounced partisan small-state bias in the Senate thanks to mostly rural, less populated states voting increasingly Republican. In fact, it’s reached the point that Republicans can win a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-has-always-f...

It's less about rural votes and more about population. Electoral votes per state are based on population not population density, but with an additional 2 each. That tips the scale in favor of states with smaller populations.

E.g. Rhode Island and Idaho both have 4 electoral votes, but Rhode Island is certainly not rural.

Idaho also has a population of 1.8 million compared to 1.0 million in Rhode Island, so technically Rhode Island voters have more voting power than their rural counterparts in Idaho.

Anyways these are just cherry picked states; my point is that the Electoral College is designed to give a disproportionate vote to smaller states, not rural states.

Voting by land area vs voting by population is one of the oldest debates ever. There's pros and cons to either side, but the general idea is that in a representative democracy you want the different groups to have their interests represented (i.e. if you have 30% of the vote, you should have 30% of the "power"). Pure population might be more likely to lead to policy for population centeres at the expense of rural centers, since you just need 51% of the vote to do what you want, as the majority takes all the power. E.g. if 75% of population is urban and 25% rural, and assuming that they are unified voting blocs (big if), rural effectively has 0% of the power, as 25% of the vote is going to win a majority vote 0% of the time. Ideally they would win 25% of the votes (or have 25% of the "power" somehow), but failing that, having half the power seems more fair than having none of it.

I remember i heard once the idea that if the percent of the representitives was porportional to the sqrt of the population, that that tracks the amount of effective power much more closely to the population distribution than linearly assigning representitives, but i dont know how true that is.

I'm sure many rural voters will strongly feel that way, but when you look into it, this will give equal voice to rural voters of CA central valley (who have basically zero voices now), while reducing the voice of overwhelmingly liberal Philadelphia, PA and Milwaukee, WI as much as anyone else.

> Seems like effectively reducing rural voting power would just inflame tensions

I don’t know why that means we should be stuck with continuing to give small and predominantly rural states disproportionately higher representation.

This feels like the mindset of someone stuck in an abusive relationship.

I'm pretty sure in the next ten years that will be fixed.

Why do you think that having 15% of the population controlling the most powerful house of Congress, and something like 35% of the population being able to control the executive branch will lead to less tension?

Barely 1/3 of eligible California voters voters for Clinton in 2016, yet she got 100% of the electoral votes.

So if we're throwing "fairness" and "parity" around, let's make it so across the board and avoid partisan cherry-picking.

The numbers I'm quoting assume a 50.1% majority of the voters in the small states, not some cherry-picked fantasy.

I don't think your response is anything but trying to change the subject. If you think the union can survive the imbalance of 2030, much less 2040, you don't have much evidence to support such a claim.

Inflame them to do what? Rural people are overrepresented in our nation’s politics. What’s the worst they can do? Start an armed rebellion? We’re already there.

Inflame tensions. Make people feel even more so that they are not practically represented.

If you think its bad now, imagine if they had an actual legitament grievence :P

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