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On November 18 2019 22:54 semantics wrote:
You can simply prevent the "tyranny of the majority" by increasing the vote requirements. If a simple majority is too terrible for the minority then make super majority the vote requirements.
There is little reason to have disproportional representation be so pervasive outside of making a minority feel like they're not a minority because they're now over represented. With how committees and chairs work along with perceptions, over representation just distorts perception of value to the public while increasing power of the minority, thus we get tyranny of the minority. It doesn't do anything to make compromise any more appealing vs just actually reflecting the electorate and having stricter requirements. It does increase influence of the minority at least with how Congress has set up their own internal rules.
I think people forget the draftings had to contend with worries over the less populated southern states. Thus we get 3/5th compromise. We get the electoral college because they don't believe the common man could be informed in making political decisions, because information traveled at the speed of a horse and because it allows them to give more power to the slave states in picking a President to help claim their tits.
Senate rules are easy to change. Your solution really isn't a viable solution. It's much more difficult to amend the Constitution to change the number of Senators each state has. This makes protection of the minority much stronger and viable. Senate rule for voting requirements? That's a joke.
As for your other post. I'm not opposed to increasing the House of Reps #'s. In fact, I agree it needs to be raised, but because it isn't at the adequate number it should be (it should float based on 20 year census population imho) doesn't mean you dissolve a huge part of the Government fabric of this country. That's a ludicrous leap. Thankfully, your solution is non-viable to start with. There is no way you are going to get 3/4ths of the states to strip power from themselves (as you know smaller pop states are more numerous than large pop states). Also, you say it benefits me politically...it really doesn't (I'm not GOP or Democrat), but principally I'm opposed to being dictated to by snob inculcated urbanites (and socialists / commies tend to fester in large cities so...I suppose there is some practicality there too from me).
PS: What's the purpose of the Senate if it's going to be an exact copy of the House of Reps. Might as well just dissolve it with what you're proposing.
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I think we are concluding that tyranny cannot be avoided and we must dissolve the State. There is only freedom when all are free. If even one is not free, then all that exists is privilege.
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California should just break itself up into smaller states.
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Northern Ireland26758 Posts
On November 18 2019 18:40 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2019 18:28 Falling wrote:
(I don't see why you (Nebuchad) are bringing identities into this- unless these identity groups joined the United States as a political unit, in a geographical place... as a State, making them the 51st State to join, I fail to see the relevance.) They're minorities. We're making silly tyranny arguments against the idea that having the majority of people decide stuff is pretty decent. I find it interesting that we're extremely concerned about this only in a single specific dynamic of majority vs minority, and absolutely not in others. It's almost like it isn't a serious principle.
The majority of what people though? Aside from various facets of cultural identity there’s also vast differences in regional industries the larger your state becomes, and the USA is one hell of a large state.
You ideally don’t want x group trampled by the majority, nor minority groups blocking progress for the greater good.
Be it in the US, the UK or elsewhere (I’m more familiar with them) I don’t really understand why the commentariat incessantly bemoan and search for reasons why politics is so fractured that don’t even touch on the more fundamental question of ‘is the state too large and encompasses too many differing groups of the population to be cohesive?’
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United States43966 Posts
On November 18 2019 17:03 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2019 16:20 KwarK wrote:On November 18 2019 15:16 Falling wrote:On November 18 2019 08:36 KwarK wrote:On November 18 2019 08:32 Wombat_NI wrote:
I don’t really think the States being disproportionately represented vs population in the Senate is a particularly terrible thing anyway, or at least has some benefits to it.
Any purely majoritarian system just wholly revolves around centralised hubs of population, which tend to also house a lot of cultural power and industry and politics can largely just ignore big chunks of a country. Which then sees x city or region grow even more dominant over the landscape and rams that home even further.
Chunks of countryside don’t deserve representation, people do. It’s a zero sum game, you can only give representation to land by taking it from people. I’ve yet to see a good argument for why the cornfields of Iowa deserve representation over the citizens of Los Angeles. It actually makes a lot of sense, and coming from a country that has very strong regional differences, I wish our Senate was actually representative of regions. The American system is built as a series of counterbalances. They can directly vote for both the legislative branch and the leader of the executive (whereas in our Westminster systems, one only indirectly votes for the leader of the executive). But while the House covers representation by population, the Senate recognizes that there are serious regional differences that simply cannot be overridden. So then the Senate is the check and balance to make sure there is not the tyranny of the majority and that regional interests can be properly argued. Regardless, it is simply wrong to describe states as gerrymandering. It's wrong to think of states as analogous to electoral districts as they are distinct polities. This makes sense within the framework of US's founding. It wasn't New York invading and conquering the rest of the territories and then dividing up the territories into imperial provinces. Rather it was thirteen distinct political entities agreeing to join together to form a common union. As more were added, it was understood that they are also distinct political bodies (states rights). These aren't just borders that can switched around arbitrarily. It would be quite a big deal to start uniting certain states together- I can't imagine it would be terribly popular either. But you must have the ability to change the borders with some regularity so that you can actually game the system. Borders that have lasted centuries through various iterations of political parties cannot be described as 'gerrymandering' in any meaningful sense. Category error, I'd say. Tyranny of the majority is such a weird attack on democracy as if the will of the majority wasn’t the entire point and undue power given to a minority wasn’t the thing we created democracy to deal with. Why should we be empower minorities disproportionately in order to prevent the majority from getting their way? It’s like there’s a missing step in your argument where you go 1. Democracy is very important 2. ????? 3. And that’s why minority interests need to be empowered so that the popular will of the people cannot decide policy and I’m just not seeing 2. Are you willing to follow your argument? Do you complain about say....the majority of people in Georgia sanctioning voter suppression? Also, is it only me, but how weird is it to justify a system just because 51% (or worse, just a plurality) of the people decide a thing? Surely, you're not also for vigilante justice in small towns, either, right? It's like Democracy is supported so uncritically with asinine assumptions....but, I digress. Carry on. I'm sure you'll talk about fairness or something, but isn't giving each state 2 Senators not the most fair thing to do, equality and all?
This is a really stupid argument. There is no connection between giving people in smaller states more representation than people in bigger states and vigilante justice. Individual rights can be and are protected by the constitution. The take that Iowans need extra Senators to protect them from fucking Batman is a really weird take and leads to the inverse that Californians need fewer Senators per person because we want them to be vulnerable to Batman. I think it’s more likely that there isn’t a connection between Senators and vigilantism. The same applies to voter repression. Giving some people extra power in selecting the legislative and executive doesn’t give people extra protection from voter suppression (especially given that right now those very people are using their minority power to enact policies of voter suppression). You’re confusing the role of the judiciary with the executive and legislative.
Your examples are all of mob rule somehow stripping constitutional rights from individuals but you’ve made no effort to show how that would happen or how it’s prevented by giving Californians a reduced vote in the Senate or when selecting the President. What is the mechanic by which you expect this to work.
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On November 18 2019 23:28 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2019 22:54 semantics wrote:
You can simply prevent the "tyranny of the majority" by increasing the vote requirements. If a simple majority is too terrible for the minority then make super majority the vote requirements.
There is little reason to have disproportional representation be so pervasive outside of making a minority feel like they're not a minority because they're now over represented. With how committees and chairs work along with perceptions, over representation just distorts perception of value to the public while increasing power of the minority, thus we get tyranny of the minority. It doesn't do anything to make compromise any more appealing vs just actually reflecting the electorate and having stricter requirements. It does increase influence of the minority at least with how Congress has set up their own internal rules.
I think people forget the draftings had to contend with worries over the less populated southern states. Thus we get 3/5th compromise. We get the electoral college because they don't believe the common man could be informed in making political decisions, because information traveled at the speed of a horse and because it allows them to give more power to the slave states in picking a President to help claim their tits. Senate rules are easy to change. Your solution really isn't a viable solution. It's much more difficult to amend the Constitution to change the number of Senators each state has. This makes protection of the minority much stronger and viable. Senate rule for voting requirements? That's a joke. As for your other post. I'm not opposed to increasing the House of Reps #'s. In fact, I agree it needs to be raised, but because it isn't at the adequate number it should be (it should float based on 20 year census population imho) doesn't mean you dissolve a huge part of the Government fabric of this country. That's a ludicrous leap. Thankfully, your solution is non-viable to start with. There is no way you are going to get 3/4ths of the states to strip power from themselves (as you know smaller pop states are more numerous than large pop states). Also, you say it benefits me politically...it really doesn't (I'm not GOP or Democrat), but principally I'm opposed to being dictated to by snob inculcated urbanites (and socialists / commies tend to fester in large cities so...I suppose there is some practicality there too from me). PS: What's the purpose of the Senate if it's going to be an exact copy of the House of Reps. Might as well just dissolve it with what you're proposing.
I never said change the number of Senators that is not my stance, mainly because I don't believe that people let go of power willingly.
I want the house expanded so a house member is actually somewhat equal in representation. All the states to award electoral college electors based proportionally so that the rest of the government is proportional representation.
I would like to break up the power of the two parties in general and changing how we vote to reflect the electorate better, get rid of winner take all everywhere. In part changing the winner take all does that, I would like to regulate and restrain money in politics more.
None of that requires a constitutional amendment.
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I think it is very important here to highlight the difference in what people are talking about.
People who use terms like "tyranny of the majority" usually interpret this as meaning "the majority can do whatever it wants to the minority".
The protection against this, however, is not to give more than proportional power to the minority. It is to limit the things the majority can do. For example, through constitutional protections and an independent judiciary.
Otherwise, you can (and indeed do get) into the absurdity where instead of the tyranny of the majority, you have a tyranny of the minority.
For some reason, the US has decided that some people are worth more than others. If you live in California, as opposed to for example Wyoming, you are worth less than 1/60th of the amount of senators, 2/3th of the amounts of house members, and about 1/3th of the amounts of electoral college votes.
And for some reason republicans think that this makes sense. Just imagine giving gay people 60 votes in senatorial elections, and how that would make you feel. This is how a californian should feel about people from wyoming. The only reason people like Wegandi are fine with this is because it gives republicans control of the government with a minority of the voters.
It is absurd. The whole point of a democracy is "One person, one vote". But in the US, you don't have one vote. You might have 60, if you live at the right place.
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The point Nebuchad raised earlier relative to the general electoral power of minorities is an important one; imagine the hand wringing that would result from bestowing per se representative power to presumed minorities apart from geographic ones!
The fact that geography is the only accepted basis for enlarging the electoral influence of a particular group can be related to a fundamental problem underlying both US government and the US economy, namely that neither has been appropriately updated to address the undue influence exercised by the owners of a certain threshold of real property and assets. Such is the key oversight in Citizens United, to name one arena where this dynamic does real harm.
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I'd just like to point out some of the reasoning in why we have the house of representatives setup the way it is. Congress goes by population, originally it was 1 rep to every 50k citizens (iirc). This had to be changed at some point, if we continued it this way there would be 1000's of members. So they capped it at 535 members. You take the total national population and divide it by 535 and that's how many each member represents (this is an oversimplification, but that's the basics of it).
One big issue here is that those districts have to be constantly redrawn according to census info. This is where gerrymandering comes into play. They often redraw the districts to ensure a certain party gets reps. This link explains pretty well how drastically it can alter representation en.wikipedia.org
Both parties do it as much as they can, and the supreme court ruled against it years ago, but we can't seem to get impartial people to do it (no surprise there).
My point is, the reason behind splitting the house into senate and congress is so smaller population states wouldn't simply be ruled by the bigger states. That's where the senate comes in, to give each state equal representation. If you took this away there would be 20+ states that wouldn't matter. They would have almost no voice in the federal government. Smaller population states already have little say in electing president and in congress. Why would they stay in the union if they had no voice? They might as well be ruled by England at that point.
This balance of power was the concern when the nation and government were originally formed and it still holds true today. Originally, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania would have dominated the federal government because of their much larger populations compared to most of the other colonies. The smaller population colonies never would have joined the Union if this compromise wasn't reached. It still holds true today, without the senate most of the Midwest, rocky mountain states, alaska, hawaii ect. Would have almost no representation in the federal government without the senate. Calafornia, Texas, Florida, and New York could basically impose their will on the rest of the nation. The interests and priorities for people in places like L.A. or N.Y.C can be drastically different from those in Idaho, or Wyoming. Hopefully, you can see how problematic that would be in preserving a Union of 50 states.
Even with this system in place we can see the drastic difference within states themselves. In the last presidential election, we had almost every major city (1mil+) vote democrat, and everywhere else voted republican. This holds true in states like NY,CA,FL, TX (the big 4) and even smaller states like colorado. This drastic divide is very concerning, especially with the huge divide in policy we currently see Left to Right. Compromise is what makes this system work and we seem to be lacking it. A good compromise is one where no party is entirely happy.
I'm honestly worried for the future. I think either way the next election goes there will be a lot of very pissed off people. Unfortunately, we can't even seem to agree on the definition of words anymore. What does Left and Right mean in terms of policy? The right is being call Right wing extreme and Fascist, and the Left are being called communists. Where are the center voices? Where is the compromise. It's more like a tug of war, with whatever side gets ahead imposing it's will. This can't keep going this way.
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So we're gonna have to move towards Mega Cities at some point. Chicago takes the midwest, California takes the west, Texas the southwest, FL the south east, and New York the northeast. They all report their desires to the federal branch but effectively it'll be a small collection of states that govern over other states that the region itself is better benefited.
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On November 19 2019 00:44 reborn8u2 wrote:
I'm honestly worried for the future. I think either way the next election goes there will be a lot of very pissed off people. Unfortunately, we can't even seem to agree on the definition of words anymore. What does Left and Right mean in terms of policy? The right is being call Right wing extreme and Fascist, and the Left are being called communists. Where are the center voices? Where is the compromise. It's more like a tug of war, with whatever side gets ahead imposing it's will. This can't keep going this way.
You have no left. Democrats is a centre-right party. That is the problem in US politics from my point of view. You have two right wing parties, thus the one branding itself as right has to keep creeping to the right. When it breaks apart the other party will as well to get closer to centre.
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On November 19 2019 00:44 reborn8u2 wrote:I'd just like to point out some of the reasoning in why we have the house of representatives setup the way it is. Congress goes by population, originally it was 1 rep to every 50k citizens (iirc). This had to be changed at some point, if we continued it this way there would be 1000's of members. So they capped it at 535 members. You take the total national population and divide it by 535 and that's how many each member represents (this is an oversimplification, but that's the basics of it). One big issue here is that those districts have to be constantly redrawn according to census info. This is where gerrymandering comes into play. They often redraw the districts to ensure a certain party gets reps. This link explains pretty well how drastically it can alter representation en.wikipedia.orgBoth parties do it as much as they can, and the supreme court ruled against it years ago, but we can't seem to get impartial people to do it (no surprise there). My point is, the reason behind splitting the house into senate and congress is so smaller population states wouldn't simply be ruled by the bigger states. That's where the senate comes in, to give each state equal representation. If you took this away there would be 20+ states that wouldn't matter. They would have almost no voice in the federal government. Smaller population states already have little say in electing president and in congress. Why would they stay in the union if they had no voice? They might as well be ruled by England at that point. This balance of power was the concern when the nation and government were originally formed and it still holds true today. Originally, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania would have dominated the federal government because of their much larger populations compared to most of the other colonies. The smaller population colonies never would have joined the Union if this compromise wasn't reached. It still holds true today, without the senate most of the Midwest, rocky mountain states, alaska, hawaii ect. Would have almost no representation in the federal government without the senate. Calafornia, Texas, Florida, and New York could basically impose their will on the rest of the nation. The interests and priorities for people in places like L.A. or N.Y.C can be drastically different from those in Idaho, or Wyoming. Hopefully, you can see how problematic that would be in preserving a Union of 50 states. Even with this system in place we can see the drastic difference within states themselves. In the last presidential election, we had almost every major city (1mil+) vote democrat, and everywhere else voted republican. This holds true in states like NY,CA,FL, TX (the big 4) and even smaller states like colorado. This drastic divide is very concerning, especially with the huge divide in policy we currently see Left to Right. Compromise is what makes this system work and we seem to be lacking it. A good compromise is one where no party is entirely happy. I'm honestly worried for the future. I think either way the next election goes there will be a lot of very pissed off people. Unfortunately, we can't even seem to agree on the definition of words anymore. What does Left and Right mean in terms of policy? The right is being call Right wing extreme and Fascist, and the Left are being called communists. Where are the center voices? Where is the compromise. It's more like a tug of war, with whatever side gets ahead imposing it's will. This can't keep going this way.
All the countries I am know the voting systems of favour voters in scarsely populated areas. In Norway, there is around half the voters per representative in the northenmost territory, but people do not complain much as it covers a large area, and they do not have that many representatives anyway.
1/60 of the vote in the sentate is rediculous, though, and is incredibly undemocratic. You can say whatever you want about "wantig to join the union" but realistically, no state will leave at this point anyway, and it just show how hopelessly outdated the US democracy is.
The system was even designed with a no-party system in mind, where each state would vote for the person they would believe took best care of their interrests. With a 2-party system, it makes no sense whatsoever, and there both parties should be split into 3, or maybe even more.
The system actually enhances differences an punishes unification, but I can not see how this could ever change, unless it all collapses.
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/Hdhkm8t.png)
This is map of the last presidential election by county on the left, on the right is a map of major U.S. cities. The divide between them in voting is obvious. This is just to illustrate my post above. Cities voted Dem, rural voted Rep. Honestly, the 2 party system sucks, we need more parties, and more middle-ground so all of our voices are better represented in the U.S.
But we can't just have one group imposing it's will on the rest. That won't work long term.
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United States43966 Posts
On November 19 2019 00:44 reborn8u2 wrote:
If you took this away there would be 20+ states that wouldn't matter. They would have almost no voice in the federal government. Smaller population states already have little say in electing president and in congress. Why would they stay in the union if they had no voice? They might as well be ruled by England at that point.
Imagine that I were to complain that my vote doesn’t matter and that I have almost no voice in Federal government. Perhaps I hyperbolically state that I might as well be ruled by England. Would you humour my complaints or would you point out that I am one man in a nation of 330 million and that my voice should not be louder than the combined voice of the others? Would you give me my own senator? Would you let me secede?
The reason the states with less population have less voting power is not a bug or a flaw, it’s that they have less population to represent. It’s absurd to say that the problem is that one man has fewer votes than a group of a hundred men and therefore he should be compensated for it else he would want to leave. It’s a nonsense argument that can only logically be resolved by making every voter, for that is the lowest level at which this can be applied, more powerful than every voter.
One man, one vote. That’s the only way it can work. You don’t get to argue that your vote gets overridden by a larger group of voters so really you deserve bonus votes.
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United States43966 Posts
On November 19 2019 01:02 reborn8u2 wrote:This is map of the last presidential election by county on the left, on the right is a map of major U.S. cities. The divide between them in voting is obvious. This is just to illustrate my post above. Cities voted Dem, rural voted Rep. Honestly, the 2 party system sucks, we need more parties, and more middle-ground so all of our voices are better represented in the U.S. But we can't just have one group imposing it's will on the rest. That won't work long term.
Map sucks because it’s not weighted by number of voters which, when you’re trying to show number of voters, is pretty important. It’s also not weighted by size which is like the most basic thing you expect on a map (bigger things drawn bigger). It includes mini Alaska because regular Alaska is too big to fit on maps so mini Alaska is the standard. But if you want to show geographic area of red and blue blocks then give us mega Alaska (2.5x the size of Texas).
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On November 19 2019 00:23 Simberto wrote:
For some reason, the US has decided that some people are worth more than others. If you live in California, as opposed to for example Wyoming, you are worth less than 1/60th of the amount of senators, 2/3th of the amounts of house members, and about 1/3th of the amounts of electoral college votes.
If we follow your logic we should say the EU has decided that some people are worth more than others too. If you live in France, as opposed to for example Finland, you're worth only 47% of what a Finn is worth in the European elections. And if I'm not mistaken, your Bundesrat has even bigger disproportions. Nobody finds that absurd and I don't understand why you think that argument is supposed to work in regards to the American Senate.
Electoral college is another story and I agree that it's very dysfunctional.
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On November 19 2019 01:11 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2019 00:44 reborn8u2 wrote:
If you took this away there would be 20+ states that wouldn't matter. They would have almost no voice in the federal government. Smaller population states already have little say in electing president and in congress. Why would they stay in the union if they had no voice? They might as well be ruled by England at that point.
Imagine that I were to complain that my vote doesn’t matter and that I have almost no voice in Federal government. Perhaps I hyperbolically state that I might as well be ruled by England. Would you humour my complaints or would you point out that I am one man in a nation of 330 million and that my voice should not be louder than the combined voice of the others? Would you give me my own senator? Would you let me secede? The reason the states with less population have less voting power is not a bug or a flaw, it’s that they have less population to represent. It’s absurd to say that the problem is that one man has fewer votes than a group of a hundred men and therefore he should be compensated for it else he would want to leave. It’s a nonsense argument that can only logically be resolved by making every voter, for that is the lowest level at which this can be applied, more powerful than every voter. One man, one vote. That’s the only way it can work. You don’t get to argue that your vote gets overridden by a larger group of voters so really you deserve bonus votes.
I agree with most of your statement. It isn't a bug or flaw. The system is designed so that population carries weight. This holds true in the electoral college and in the congress. I take no issue with it. I'm simply saying the reason we also have a senate is to give lower population states more voice, because without it many states would have almost no voice in the federal government. It wouldn't make sense for those staes to be a part of nation where people with far different opinions and interests impose their will on them. They would be better off forming their own nation, and that's why we have the compromise of splitting the house into a congress and sentate. More population carries much more weight in our system but large areas of low population are still able to have some voice. I like our system and I think the reasoning behind it is sound and practical.
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United States43966 Posts
I’ve seen a bunch of maps showing how all the empty land votes Republican and therefore the Democrats should shut up and not one of them has shown mega Alaska. It’s weird to me. Either Americans don’t know Alaska is big (due to mini Alaska on maps) or they don’t want to admit their desire to be ruled by the vast open spaces of Alaska. But if you want to make an argument for giving land representation (or an implicit argument for land representation by showing maps with populated land and empty land treated the same as if it means something) then we need to accept the supremacy of our Alaskan overlords.
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United States43966 Posts
On November 19 2019 01:22 reborn8u2 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2019 01:11 KwarK wrote:On November 19 2019 00:44 reborn8u2 wrote:
If you took this away there would be 20+ states that wouldn't matter. They would have almost no voice in the federal government. Smaller population states already have little say in electing president and in congress. Why would they stay in the union if they had no voice? They might as well be ruled by England at that point.
Imagine that I were to complain that my vote doesn’t matter and that I have almost no voice in Federal government. Perhaps I hyperbolically state that I might as well be ruled by England. Would you humour my complaints or would you point out that I am one man in a nation of 330 million and that my voice should not be louder than the combined voice of the others? Would you give me my own senator? Would you let me secede? The reason the states with less population have less voting power is not a bug or a flaw, it’s that they have less population to represent. It’s absurd to say that the problem is that one man has fewer votes than a group of a hundred men and therefore he should be compensated for it else he would want to leave. It’s a nonsense argument that can only logically be resolved by making every voter, for that is the lowest level at which this can be applied, more powerful than every voter. One man, one vote. That’s the only way it can work. You don’t get to argue that your vote gets overridden by a larger group of voters so really you deserve bonus votes. I agree with most of your statement. It isn't a bug or flaw. The system is designed so that population carries weight. This holds true in the electoral college and in the congress. I take no issue with it. I'm simply saying the reason we also have a senate is to give lower population states more voice, because without it many states would have almost no voice in the federal government. It wouldn't make sense for those staes to be a part of nation where people with far different opinions and interests impose their will on them. They would be better off forming their own nation, and that's why we have the compromise of splitting the house into a congress and sentate. More population carries much more weight in our system but large areas of low population are still able to have some voice. I like our system and I think the reasoning behind it is sound and practical.
Why would it not make sense for 1% of the population to have 1% of the representation? You’re saying it wouldn’t make sense but that makes sense to me. Please feel free to elaborate on why 1% of population having 1% of representation makes no sense but 1% of population having 5% of representation makes perfect sense. Because you keep saying that one man one vote doesn’t make sense but you’re not arguing why. Feel free to also explain why 30% of the population having 4% of the senators makes perfect sense because you can’t give extra representation to minorities without taking it from majorities.
If you were on a 5 person group project would you be arguing that it doesn’t make sense to be in the group unless you received a disproportionate amount of credit? Or would you acknowledge that 20% of the credit was fair for only having to do 20% of the work? And that the benefits of being in a larger group justified the minority share in credit. States get value from being in the United States. The argument that there is no benefit for a small state in being in the United States unless given a grossly disproportionate amount of political power is absurd. Citizens of Rhode Island get the protection of the US state department. Alaska, despite being an empty wasteland full of oil, gets to be protected by a navy it couldn’t possibly afford. The benefits of being a small part of a larger nation are plain for all to see.
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Any system trying to balance power between the majority and minorities to stop either side from feeling disenfranchised relies upon those with power to be working together for the betterment of all.
Since that is impossible in the current state of American politics your not going to find a solution to the balance of power without first figuring out how to stop the tribalisation of politics.
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EPT
