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Comment by tremon | Hacker News Reader

The council is composed of representatives of each state. That means you did not vote for 26 out of the 27 members, and most states don't have special elections for European Council members* -- which means that most of them have not been elected into their Council position.

* the Council of composed of ministers and heads of government. Ministerial posts are distributed among the winning party members in pretty much every country, and only presidential systems have a direct election for their head of government. In constitutional monarchies, the head of government is commonly assigned to the largest party leader, but it's not a directly electable position.

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The parliament seats are also apportioned by state. I don't find that a bad idea, living in a small country, and I don't see why the council seats being divided by country is a worse idea than the system in the parliament.

I didn't vote for 649 of my MPs either. These aren't good arguments.

I mean sure. But that's how most democratic systems work?

A Californian did not vote for the Senator from North Carolina.

A Londoner did not vote for the MP from Edinburgh.

A Berliner did not vote for the Bavarian Bundesrat member.

At least the Berliner gets an additional vote for the party so they can get both local and representative national representation.

The Londoner is completely out of luck if their seat is a safe seat but not their party.

Not that German politics isn't pretty hosed too.

The USA senate is another example of something that is not democratic. 2 people per state regardless of population is kinda questionable.

It's federalistic. It's a bit drastic - but I guess no one could imagine one state having 66 times the population as another in 1789. Other federal states compensate for that - for example, in the German Bundesrat, each state gets 3 to 6 seats according to population.

A problem for the US is that /both/ chambers of parliament are skewed that way.

That's why it's balanced with the house of representatives, which is proportional.

The House is neither proportional (structurally represents parties roughly in proportion to their vote share) nor, what I expect you mean, divided into districts of equal population. The size difference between the smallest and largest districts—RI district 2 and Montana’s at large district—is 1:2 in population. It’s less unequal than the Senate, but its still not equal representation.

And, despite certain bills having to originate in the House, the Senate is more powerful since all Congressional powers either require both houses in concert or the Senate alone (except for electing the President when there is an electoral tie, which the House does but with a voting rule of one-vote-per-state-delegation which gives it the same undemocratic weighting as the Senate has normally.)

> The size difference between the smallest and largest districts—RI district 2 and Montana’s at large district—is 1:2 in population.

Come again? MT and RI have the same approximate population (1.1M) and the same number of representatives (2). I’m talking about the state level here.

> all Congressional powers either require both houses in concert

Right, they act as checks and balances upon one another. Equal-sized representation to give smaller states a way to avoid being steamrolled by the will of the largest states — why would states want to stay in a union where they have no hope of representation? Methinks if Alabama and Mississippi kept everything about themselves politically the same yet were both the size of California and New York you’d probably be of a different mind about the importance of the senate.

The House of Representatives has not been proportional since the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.

The entire nation is held hostage by very few people basically.

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