The system as it stands makes voting pointless for people who are in districts that reliably go for the "other team". If they could at least influence the Presidential election, more of those voters might show up at the polls. GOTV and other campaign efforts take this into account, which magnifies the effect.
Why is bad intent less bad than bad accident.
> My issue is with the house, where we are supposed to have equal representation, but don’t.
House representation was supposed to be approximately equal limited by granularity and it remains approximately equal limited by granularity.
But the "limited by granularity" part is growing more and more limited. The size of the House originally grew as the size of the population grew. Once we capped the size of the House, we lost relative granularity allowing this problem worsen as the gap between the smallest and largest congressional districts increased.
DC has a larger population than Wyoming or Vermont, and will probably overtake Alaska by the next Census based on its current trajectory.
States are not fixed entities. It's people that should be represented, not an arbitrary geographic boundary.
That intentional design makes it so depending on where you physically live, your vote is worth many times less or more than someone else's. That makes no sense.
Note that pretty much every country has something similar - some body that acts on a check of pure democratic representation.
Much better.
Isn't that the other way around? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden... (i.e. Democrats have won the popular vote in the last 8 presidential elections, but have only won the office in 5 of those).
Also, I had forgotten this (and it was huge at the time, and I voted in those elections, so I should remember), but Bill Clinton didn't win the majority popular vote either. The democrats had a larger popular vote that the republicans, for sure, but not over 50% due to third party / independent candidates.
Contrast that with the last 6 elections where the democratic party has had more than 50% of the popular vote each time.
Ah... And W's second term the republicans had more than 50% of the popular vote...
Everyone knows the rules going in.
Anyone not happy with the power allotted their vote is free to up stakes and move somewhere where votes are worth more, from California to Iowa or New York to New Hampshire.
The ground shifted has shifted around the rules many times in the past, but the current rural vs urban divide of the two parties combined with the majority of Americans living in urban and suburban areas has led to some really distorted and unintended outcomes of the rules.
Does knowing that a system is undemocratic make it more democratic in some way?
More importantly, there’s apparently only been 5 presidents elected where popular vote != electoral vote[0].
Based on this metric… everything seems to be working mostly fine, with no apparent bias?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presid...
It’s pretty hard to declare a trend with such small numbers.
National Popular vote should not be used for any reason for any purpose, unless you want to completely change the American system of government ending federalism completely, which I have no desire for, I like federalism
Well, yes, that is exactly what many people want, a government that is more representative of the will of the people. We don't have to throw out federalism to get there, but a system that was not intentionally designed to support minority rule would be nice.
If you remove the power of the states, leaning only on "the will of the people" you are getting rid of federalism,
In no way it makes sense that the Senate should wield the power it has when South Dakota has the same weight as California. It's ludicrous.
What planet are you living on? Seems not to be earth...
1990's democrat platform I was probally 60-70% aligned with, 2020's democrat platform I am 20% aligned with
Republicans I probably agree maybe 40% with, 50% on a good day.
In this context as an example, I do not agree with banning abortions, but I also think Roe was bad law and decided incorrectly so.....
You mean Democrats.
Roe v Wade is so devastating of a defeat largely because democrats who support it don’t care enough about state and local government.
Why cant we break representation to be based on something else. I dont know what, and the simple answer it well geography is the easiest way but easy it often not the best
Two neighboring farmers in Alamaba are going to have a lot more in common with each other than with someone living in LA. For political representation purposes, it makes sense for those two farmers to share a representative.
You're correct that this isn't necessarily optimal, but I don't think it's that bad either. It's a pretty good heuristic in making sure that:
1) everyone has a representative.
2) each representative is representing a group of people who can reasonably be represented (because they have shared interests/goals/concerns).
Sure 2 Alabama Farmers farmers are in common.
But does a farmer in near Austin has more in common with the Farmer in Alabama or the Urbanites in Austin?
Would Occupation, be a better class than geographic, or age, or something else
Physical locality was the primary social constraint when the government was architected. I honestly have a great deal of difficulty imagining any other way of doing things that would make even a lick of sense in terms of information propagation.
Also my comment does not say to forego all geographic basis but more so questioning the idea that we need continuous geographic zones.
Maybe 3 counties in Iowa and 3 counties in Texas, and 3 counties in Montana all want for form a new zone....
Until they're important for elections...
The house is screwed up largely because it's capped by a law passed a century ago. It's essentially impossible for it to be actually proportional with the current voter:representative ratio and districts being allocated along state lines.
The current ratio is over 700,000.
One could easily make an argument for geographic representation of 30,000 people. Those people should have a lot in common and have similar concerns. You could also make a good argument for 100k-200k people. However, 500k+ people cannot be properly represented by one voice in congress.
If we had even the ratio of representation when the number was fixed (1:210,000), we'd have over 1500 members of Congress.
https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Pr...
False.
>the end game is proportional representation
True. As I've said before, there are so many ways to do it that it's hard to unite people behind a single one:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31347226
And in fact, even when I tried to make a list of all the methods in the comment above, I missed at least two:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE_FAQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approv...
It went to a federal court who ruled the districts not fair but will let them stand for the 2022 elections.
The GOP ignored the rule of law, ignored the courts, and ran out the clock. They will cement their hold on the state in 2022.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2021/nov/...
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2022/01/12/republican-...
Legislation needs to pass both Senate and the House, and in the senate, someone from a state like Wyoming has 65x more voting power than someone living in California.
I think the issue is that small states and countries would not join if they would be subject to whatever large states decided.
So the option would be to have a country without Vermont and stuff or to have them in the current config. Because that’s the math that was done 250 years ago that resulted in NY and VA choosing to accept it, and also smaller states.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps...
I think any reasonable person would find it unfair that a 2% difference in the popular vote (for governor, before the major Trump controversies) leads to doubling the number of Congressional seats.
https://www.reddit.com/r/VoteBlue/comments/fwa7sa/regarding_...
(and 50% of seats are not even a majority)
Another model would require 15% more to go from 36% to 51% of seats. In this case, 69% of popular vote (54+15) would be required for a majority of seats, or in other words: 2-1. Which effectively is just as egregious as 3-1.
It's not a boxing match. The fact that it has become one means your electoral system is flawed.
In a proper system, you have different people with different goals (eg Greens who want less pollution, businesspeople who want lower taxes, socialists who want worker's rights, etc) and they have to compromise (greens cancel the carbon tax is businesspeople accept to ban a certain type of very toxic manufacturing, for example) and WORK TOGETHER.
Obviously this is the problem. But its flaws have lead us to a situation that makes it impossible to fix them. Either we work within the system we have or we're left powerless.
Then it just becomes two kids pointing at each other shouting "he started it!"
I'm just pointing that out because the parent said gerrymandering screws Democrats. It does. But it also screws Republicans, and well, all of us.
I understand it's now a tit-for-tat so I'm not blaming either side more than the other. I just want it gone.
Based off of the responses itt, it's clearly not "all the rest of the people". But you know, maybe if you keep insisting that the political coalition in favor of Roe represents "all the rest of the people" it might magically become true
> I fail to see what moderates can do in a two party system where gerrymandering is so heavily done that often Democrats have to win 3-1 to control any majority.
Ofc democrats don't gerrymander. The Illinois redistricting wasn't a gerrymander, it was a fair process. Wherever the democrats have a hard time winning it's always because there was a gerrymander, and not because the people don't want them in office. /s
[0]: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/592968-dismantling-demo...