Comment by wutbrodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wutbrodo | Hacker News Reader

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Stating that it's the point of the Senate does not make it desirable. Not to mention the fact that it's not the _only_ point of the Senate: it was also designed to be a smaller, more deliberate body than the House, with each member trying to represent larger (and theoretically more diverse) constituencies with longer term limits (and thus less knee-jerk responsiveness to the whims of the people).

This function of the Senate is IMO far more important than arbitrarily giving group A of citizens multiple times more political power than group B. Equal representation of states was conceived of in a time when our nation was very different. The Senate's current form was an acknowledgement of the fact that each state was sovereign. The framing of our Constitution almost bears more similarity to the EU than it does to the US that we recognize today, at least with respect to the attitudes towards the relative independence of each state.

On top of that, the divisions that made a "state" anything more than an arbitrary administrative division based on an accident of history are largely gone. The urban-rural divide is far more of a dividing line in terms of demography and ideology than state lines are. Citizens of Los Angeles and Richmond, VA are far more similar to each other than they are to citizens of Shasta County, CA or Wythe County, VA. Just look at any per-county electoral map if you don't believe me.

This map, or something like it, preserves all the benefits of the Senate while going a long way to fix what's horribly broken about it: namely, granting huge amounts of political power to arbitrary blocks of citizens.

I appreciate your response. For what it's worth, I like this map and I am a rural American (a citizen of "Shiprock," apparently). I'm aware of all and agree with most of your points.

What I am saying is that in the "rural bias" link they refer to the Senate as "overrepresenting rural citizens" and the point I'm making is that the Senate is not about representing citizens, it's about representing states. And it's meant to balance the House, which is about representing citizens. So the rural bias of the one ought to be adequately met by the urban bias of the other. The ethanol subsidy may be stupid and bad, I'd hardly put it in the top 10 problems we have. I think it would take a lot of spin to recast all our problems as inherited from the Senate and wide open spaces.

The idea that you're dominated by the whims of rural voters is a little absurd when we're both so clearly dominated by the whims of large corporations and special interests. To me, this is simply whining about the wrong problem, and a much harder problem to solve. It's not going to be fixed either by an amendment or by redrawing state lines, so what exactly is being proposed here? Nothing--it's simply a fun thought experiment. I just don't approve of fun thought experiments becoming vehicles for absurdist political melodrama.

Corporations and special interests gain much of their power by paying for political advertisements, directly or indirectly. They get a lot more bang for their buck because of the inequality in voting power. Not only do they have to reach fewer people but those people happen to be the ones that watch a lot more TV.

> What I am saying is that in the "rural bias" link they refer to the Senate as "overrepresenting rural citizens" and the point I'm making is that the Senate is not about representing citizens, it's about representing states. And it's meant to balance the House, which is about representing citizens.

Why do we need a balance against representing citizens? I think the only reason for this is that money from the Federal gov't often goes to States and not directly to the people.

The U.S. national government was designed to be a federal system: The national government handled an explicit set of duties, leaving all other responsibilities to states, which were and are more proper as a government of the people.

Since the U.S. is a union of the states, it makes sense to have a legislative body representing states' (and indirectly, peoples') interests. Whether the population differences between Texas and Wyoming are too extreme is a legitimate question, but I still believe in the original intent of the Senate.

BTW, the original intent of the Senate was all but destroyed by the 17th amendment, which seriously impacted states' rights by moving the motivating factor of Senators from "How do I get reelected by my state?" to "How do I get reelected by the people?"

Finally, (and this is only a statement of fact, not of defense) it is fairly well known that most Founders, especially Federalists, were wary of democracy unchecked. IMO, fair democracy does depend on an educated populace, which makes me sad about today's government.

>"Stating that it's the point of the Senate does not make it desirable"

However, the country is "The United States," not "The United Population."

The U.S. Constitution was version 2.0, the MVP for the U.S. were the Articles of Confederation. [And to push the bad startup analogy further, the Declaration of Independence was when the founders quit their jobs and the Revolutionary War was the period when they burned through cash to develop traction.]

I don't see any population based formula ever working to re-draw the state borders, because it lacks representation by those being "re-stated". You'll inevitably get rural areas being added as population filler around the smaller cities in "urban" states, and some urban areas overflowing their urban state and forced to be in a "rural" state.

All of that ignores that states are not simply "administrative divisions". Though IMHO we have far too much federal law these days, your average person interacts mostly with state and local laws. Those can be vastly different between states. The state lines may now be arbitrary and historical, but the hundred/s of years of laws, legal rulings, and forms of government are not.

As long as we intend to be a union of states, the state lines are very important. For some states like GA, FL, TX the urban/rural divide arguably seems to be equal enough neither side has a huge advantage in state politics. For others like NY and CA, it's a far bigger issue. I sometimes wonder if perhaps New York City and Long Island wouldn't be better off joining the state of New Jersey. Leaving the remaining state of New York better balanced between rural/urban.

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