Comment by ISL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ISL | Hacker News Reader

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I strongly disagree.

A check and balance has been on great display in recent weeks. A President has stated, "the election was a fraud, I should get another term". Congress has stated, "the election was correct. Moreover, we may choose to prevent you from holding office ever again." The judiciary agrees.

That Congress is likely to deadlock is arguably a feature, not a bug. (That voters don't demand better from their congresspeople is, perhaps, a correctable bug.).

There is only one exception to the amendability of the Constitution -- states cannot be deprived of equal suffrage in the Senate. See Article V.

The disproportionate representation is by design. Without it, the country literally would not have formed. I am pleased to see states hacking around it without an amendment, thus, should the prior function be required, the states themselves can revert.

Is adding states too easy? There are three million US citizens in Puerto Rico without representation in Congress.

I am hopeful that we will find ways forward on gerrymandering. The only true beneficiaries of the existing system are the political parties.

Impeachment is not just hypothetical. Though it was not fully realized against Nixon, it would have been had he not resigned.

Regarding the endless accretion of laws: we get the government for which we vote. Speaking up, as you have done here, is the first step toward making it better.

> Is adding states too easy? There are three million US citizens in Puerto Rico without representation in Congress.

"Statehood is too easy" is probably the wrong critique. The problem is that there is not clear enough guidelines for enforcing some criteria for what constitutes a new state. Thus we have a false positive like Wyoming, which shouldn't be a state with its minuscule population, and we a false negative in Puerto Rico, which is anachronistically governed like a colony .

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I don't think the original senate had states that had 80X the representation by population, as we have today between CA and WY.

> don't think the original senate had states that had 80X the representation by population, as we have today between CA and WY.

I would argue the "false-positive" state that in this case is California.

Imagine if the entire Eastern seaboard was divided into three States. That would be equally imbalanced.

Texas is only slightly smaller. But perhaps splitting both in 3 (or whatever) would be a good start. Or split any state that has more than 4% of the nations population (that would include FL and NY).

Practical hacks like that might mitigate the imbalance, but really - the senate needs proportional representation too. It's OK that small states are slightly over-represented, but the current state of affairs is pretty crazy. Also, the amount of people per senator is unbelievably high, making them less approachable than they once were.

If the senate were proportional, we could simply abolish the electoral college with little loss; just let congress elect the president and be done with it.

The House is supposed to represent the interests of the people. The Senate is supposed to represent the interests of the states.

Each state is supposed to be an equal member of the union, which is why they each get equal voice in the senate. Up until the early 1900s senators were appointed by state governments rather than being popularly elected.

It's sort of fallen out of fashion to identify strongly as a member of your state rather than just as a citizen of the United States, but I think this year has demonstrated that state governments still have a lot of influence and autonomy.

I for one have been very pleased with my state's handling of the situation and have been glad to live here rather than somewhere else.

The intent is all fine and good, but that doesn't excuse legislative influence that is so disproportionate to population. In general I'm a a little skeptical that "intent" matters at all; what matters is practical political power no matter how you label it - but even if we were to constrain ourselves to the notion of representing states, not people: they can represent their states just fine even if the number of senators varies by state. The idea that all states are equal should be dropped.

> the senate needs proportional representation too

No, the Seventeenth Amendment should be repealed and state legislatures should be required to appoint senators. The United States form a federal government, not a unitary state; that means the several states should be represented.

> If the senate were proportional, we could simply abolish the electoral college with little loss; just let congress elect the president and be done with it.

Alternatively, state legislatures could appoint electors. Or maybe they could appoint two electors, and the people of the state could vote for the rest.

Regardless of how senators are picked, it's deeply problematic if representation is so divorced from population size. Alternatively, if we insist on retaining a fixed number of senators per state we could strip the senate of essentially all of its powers (perhaps becoming more advisory in role, with only the capability to temporarily filibuster house legislation); but that strikes me as being even more unachievable.

But personally, I don't think appointed senators would practically help much.

The point of federalism isn't to achieve some ivory tower ideal of centuries past, but to have real value today. Some of the value we can still retain is flexibility: essentially letting states go their own way for many laws and regulations. That benefit of federalism is quite real, and imposes no requirements that the senate needs to have appointed senators vs. elected, nor that the number of senators be fixed (vs. scale with population size). I'm pretty sure we can mitigate the deadlock, lack of accountability, and undemocratic representation issues with today's congress+executive while also eating our federalist cake.

To be clear: I don't think of this is worth pursuing as political reform; it's entirely unachievable due to the US's virtually unamendable constitution (basically only populist amendments are ever achievable, never this stuff; states need to large agree, after all - and pure political power play makes that utterly impossible).

A proportionally represented Senate is just a duplicate of the House. It would have no reason to exist.

The whole point of having two separate bodies is that it requires two groups that are chosen in a different manner to both agree that a piece of legislation is acceptable.

And also the United States form a federal republic. It makes sense for the states qua states to have a voice in the federal government (just like it makes sense for the states of Europe to have a voice in the European Union government).

If anything, I would push the principle downwards further, and argue that state senators should represent counties. Indeed, this was the case until the execrably unconstitutional Reynolds v. Sims decision in 1964, which forced states to apportion state senate seats by population.

We would probably be a much happier union if our politics were mostly about those things most of us can agree on, rather that all about the things that we disagree on. Our politics is all scissor statements, now.

The senate is elected on a slower cycle, and simply by nature of its differing powers you might get different dynamics. You see that happen in some other democracies, at least.

Also: just because the senate should be proportionally scaled doesn't mean that proportionality needs to follow the same rules as the house's: e.g. one of them might use winner-takes-all per district approach, another a ranked choice, or one might use districts, and another be a proportional representation of the whole state.

Finally, while a slight variation in the representation is likely "nice to have" I don't actually think it's all that critical. The idea makes sense: you want a check on power, but in practice it fails at that goal today, because power is not wielded by senate vs. house, but instead by republicans vs. democrats (sure, in the exceptional curent case of a precisely divided senate where every vote counts there's a slight possibility that intra-party disagreements mean that some senators sometimes switch sides, but even now it's going to be rare). But it's really important to realize that the senate does not exercise any kind of legislative check on the house in the normal case that congress is either clearly divided or clearly in the same hands. When house and senate are in the same hands, it's the political party that makes the decisions and members generally stay in line; and conversely when it's divided it's the political parties that do the horse-trading. There's no protection or moderation offered by the current system; if anything it makes for even more extreme legislation - because now it's either deadlock or go!-go!-go! - and when congress is in gung-ho mode, they don't have the luxury of careful consideration, and so likely produce less moderate legislation.

The current split is a failure; not a feature.

The guidelines are pretty simple. Congress can admit a state by simple majority.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiv#section3

As to what you consider a "false positive" state, that's a political question, and apportionment is not the only political consideration. Congress is just about the best option we have for settling such complex, interstate questions.

Moreover, the US has always had lopsided state populations. The 65:1 apportionment population ratio between California and Wyoming (https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2010/data...) is definitely big, but it's still within an order of magnitude of where we started in 1789.

The first (pre-Census) apportionment, hard-coded in Article 1, Section 2, had a 10:1 Virginia:Rhode Island ratio in the House:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section2

After the first Census, the largest difference ratio of apportionment population (i.e. population after implementing the 3/5 compromise, excluding "Indians not taxed", etc.) was about 11:1, between Virginia and Rhode Island:

https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/ApportionmentInformation-...

If you were to undo that 3/5ths slavery effect, the Virginia:Delaware ratio becomes closer to 12.5:1.

FWIW I agree Puerto Rico ought to be admitted, just as the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Mariana Islanders ought to be as well. France's DOM-TOM system seems like a better model to follow than America's, and it could still happen within our lifetimes; France made major reforms here within the last few decades:

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

> The problem is that there is not clear enough guidelines for enforcing some criteria for what constitutes a new state. Thus we have a false positive like Wyoming, which shouldn't be a state with its minuscule population, and we a false negative in Puerto Rico, which is anachronistically governed like a colony .

Wyoming met the requirements when it was admitted, but its population hasn't grown as much as other states (e.g. no gold rush, etc). If you think this is somehow an incorrect result, what you're really arguing for is the abolishment of established states or periodically "redistricting" them in a way that would do more harm than good (given that states are more than just subdivisions for representative purposes).

> and we a false negative in Puerto Rico, which is anachronistically governed like a colony.

They've had many referendums on that question, and I think they voted against statehood until recently.

Apparently Puerto rico overwhelmingly voted in favor of statehood, but turnout was low.

In any case - your points against redistricting are good. But even a "temporary" solution might have centuries of value, so I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to make a pragmatic push for limited redistricting, specifically only splitting large states - fusing states is much harder (because which laws apply?), and given population growth, it's pretty reasonable to have more states. Judging by the size of the house - which is probably too small, not too large - the senate has a lot of room to grow. We could certainly afford splitting all of the large states without causing huge issues - if people actually want that.

But a more long term solution without redistricting is to give up on the notion that states are equal. Just give more senators to larger states, and fewer to small states, and the current system mostly works; certainly better than now, and without the need for as radical an imposition as state-level redistricting.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/thirteen-colonies (1770)

Virginia: 447,016

Georgia: 23,375

About 19x.

In 2012 PR voted AGAINST becoming a state, and in 2017 a vote on the issue was scotched because of anti-statehood boycotters. They just (Nov 3) narrowly voted to welcome statehood, easily lost in the recent noise, let's see what happens.

> In 2012 PR voted AGAINST becoming a state

No, it voted for becoming a state, under the terms set for the 2-question referendum.

Question 1: Should Puerto Rico continue its current territorial status?

Yes: 46%

No: 54% (Wins)

Question 2: Which non-territorial option do you prefer?

61.2% for statehood (Wins)

33.3% for free association

5.5% for independence

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Puerto_Rican_status_ref...

> and in 2017 a vote on the issue was scotched because of anti-statehood boycotters.

No, the vote was held, statehood won overwhelmingly, but the boycott by opponents was cited (by opponents!) as a reason to disregard the results.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Puerto_Rican_status_ref...

However (from same sources):

Criticism Edit Critics said that voters who favor a developed version of the current status of Puerto Rico (a commonwealth which is part of the United States with internal self-government) had no alternatives on the ballot. As a result, leaders of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) instructed such voters to leave the second portion of the ballot blank, or to invalidate the ballot.[27]

Because there were almost 500,000 blank ballots, creating confusion as to the voters' true desire, it provided Congress an opportunity to ignore the vote, which it did.[28]

History professor Luis Agrait explained the result in this manner to CNN: "If you assume those blank votes are anti-statehood votes, the true result for the statehood option would be less than 50%."[29] Considered as a percentage of the total number of votes cast in the first ballot, 44% voted in favor of statehood on the second ballot.

—-

“Scotched” was the wrong word, implying not held, I apologize. Interpreting the vote got destroyed, was what I meant.

It’s clear that the folks who run PR see their jobs in danger if the island becomes a state. Hurricanes have now made it clear what second-class status means to the average person.

> A check and balance has been on great display in recent weeks. A President has stated, "the election was a fraud, I should get another term". Congress has stated, "the election was correct. Moreover, we may choose to prevent you from holding office ever again." The judiciary agrees.

It surely worked, but with the majority of the Republicans in Congress objecting. And one can't help but wonder what would have happened if the election had been closer (you'd just need to ramp up the voter suppression a bit more). We had a taste of it in Bush v. Gore, where the judiciary decided to stop a recount with a very poor justification. Now imagine it in the much more polarized environment of today. Or with someone actually competent, who managed to solidify power over 4 years rather than doing opposition to his own government half the time.

On nixon: might well be. But it's never happened so far, and that's because congress is hyper deadlocked by design and a ridiculously high bar of non-proportionally-represented senators need to agree to convict. Just compare that to other democracies that can switch their executive with a simple majority in one house, yet remain stable.

As to congresses deadlock being a feature: it may well have been intentional; but it's pretty plausibly a long term fatal blow. Countries need to be able to evolve, and when small minorities can prevent that (and we're not their yet, but it's moving that way), you're creating really perverse incentives for horse trading, leading to really low quality law making, and thus low respect for congress. It's not out of the question that this might lead to the nation's dissolution in our lifetimes - what happens when elections are legally stolen?

On impeachment: we'll see what happens with trump who happens to be a perfect case to check whether this feature of the constitution is more than hot air; but given how stacked the deck is against conviction, I'm not holding my breath - and if it's not going to happen now, it never will - not only was he utterly shameless in undermining the election (knowing full well that democracy is worth fighting for, i.e. raising tensions dangerously) and addition literally using combative language and calling for as close to a stormin of the capitol as possible while trying to retain plausible deniability, we're also just post election that shifted the balance of the senate against him. This is pretty much the best case scenario for an impeachment, and it's far from a sure thing.

Additionally, the current election was upheld largely because of states still sticking to extra-legal solid traditions. Those however, are not constitutionally protected; i.e. what worked was american culture & tradition (sometimes backed by state law), not really the american constitution. I mean, for scale: it's easier to throw out an election than a president, which is absolutely Not Ok.

Some of your other objections relate to tradition, e.g. such as puerto rico not being a state. This has nothing to do with the constitution; this is purely a political tradition. And indeed; many traditions are fine - while I think there's no question on the specific instance of puerto rico deserving statehood, the point is that the constitutional bar is very low despite the fact that it allows senate packing. A malicious populist could easily abuse that, if convenient, were it not for the real protection: tradition&culture, not the constitution.

The US has a solid set of traditions and an extremely civic culture; and that's why it works - not because of the constitution.

> The US has a solid set of traditions and an extremely civic culture; and that's why it works

IMO this is something that I wish more citizens understood. They put way too much faith in the Constitution and don't realize that it's the tradition, the mythology of America that really holds this country together. If we lose that, we lose everything, and the Constitution won't save us.

I mean, it would help if people didn't confuse the federal-level instantiations of social norms with restrictions on the power of said government specifically, too...

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