Not exactly gerrymandering, but there is a systemic bias against Democrats due to the structure of our government. The most obvious example, Republicans have won the national popular vote once in the last 8 presidential elections.
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.
Roe v Wade is so devastating of a defeat largely because democrats who support it don’t care enough about state and local government.
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.
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?
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...
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.