I think the newsletter Tangle had a good article on both the results of the census and how the left/right are viewing it. The census results are in. - Tangle
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Yeah their R legislature and R governor will most certainly make sure that happens. As an actuary I would say the expected value of seats gained in Texas for Republicans is something like 1.85-1.9 right now knowing nothing else.
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I agree to a point about the ātoo many cooks in the kitchenā in the house (probably more loonies like MTG). But on the other side adding reps makes the presidential vote more equitable between states.
Sounds good. Ditch the electoral college.
I think weāve hit on a reason why this an academic thought experiment.
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My point is that the House of Commons (yes, in the UK, the place we unceremoniously booted from our governance) chambers is deliberately too small for the number of MPs. To be sure, all the MPs rarely show up for debate, etc., but thatās true in the House as well.
I think the physical chambers of the House should be uncomfortably small.
And I really think the SOTU should go back to being a letter/report to Congress, and not an interminable speech. KEEP THE PRESIDENT OUT OF THE CAPITOL BUILDING!
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At least your and i donāt have to watch it. I feel bad for all those people who feel duty-bound to do so.
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Thatās true. Now, do the same histogram with 650 reps. Keep the scale. Is it different enough to change anything?
I agree with that. Every now and then, someone tries to get an initiative on the CA ballot. They keep failing.
I donāt understand. If I lived in CA, I would want to split the state into smaller pieces.
Iām in favor of 330 million (or, more likely, 150 million) people voting on some laws.
Iāve got a proposal for a national referendum amendment.
Unless you allow fractional representatives then this will always be an issue no matter how big the House is.
I mainly prefer to have one Senator from each state up in every Senate election and if weāre going to increase the size of the Senate, then to keep the EC from changing radically we should bump up the House too. Maybe even by more that 165, but 650/800 are nice round numbers.
More representatives should mean less variance in district size. And each Representative having a smaller district should mean theyāre a little closer to their constituents.
It certainly doesnāt erase the problem of one state just barely losing a Representative and another just barely gaining one. Just dampens it a little. I apologize if my post sloppily implied that I thought I was doing away with that issue.
Sure. But a lot of states do have both Senators from the same party.
Thereās always going to be the phenomenon of ā6 years ago was a good year for the XYZ Party because of [insert 6 year old political issue here] so XYZ is defending more seats than ABC nowā. Thereās really no getting around that if you keep 6 year Senate terms (which I see no reason to get rid of).
But it does get rid of the red state / blue state issue.
Huh? You mean at the state level?
Iām basically proposing the exact same thing we have now, except replace ā2ā with ā3ā and ā435ā with ā650ā.
Everything else stays the same. Reapportionment every 10 years based on the census, just like now.
Nobody made them run for Congress.
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BTW, my parents live in Ohio-1, which is a pretty heavily gerrymandered district.
Cincinnati is Democratic, but they are represented by two Republicans in the House.
My Dad thinks that Ohio will be losing a Republican Rep. The state is like 52-48 Republican or something like that and 12-4 Republican in the House. He thinks that will drop to 11-4 rather than 12-3.
But heās sure hopeful the state legislature will figure out a way to make it 12-3, and heās happy to be in his gerrymandered district.
Okay, the 650 was mostly about maintaining the House/Senate ratio for the electoral college.
I get that if weāre electing 50 senators each time the red/blue incumbent ratio should move a little toward 1:1 due to the law of bigger numbers. I donāt see how it eliminates the red/blue state thing.
In some elections, one party will have more ācompetitiveā seats to defend, in other elections the other party will.
(In theory, we could estimate this by looking at current senators and adding a third who is from the same party as the state governor. Fit that third senator into the open slot, and see how āclassesā vary by red/blue in ācompetitiveā states. Appealing idea, but Iām not up to it this morning.)
650 specifically (as opposed to 600 or 750 or some other number) because of maintaining the ratio. But I do think smaller House districts have other benefits.
PA set to lose 1 seat.
R controlled legislate should ensure that is a D seat lost.
Might see a lot of iterations of redrawn lines as Wolfe is gonna veto power over their shenanigans. Relations between Wolfe and PA congress are already in the gutter. Congress just got a ballot measure added to the next election to end the emergency powers of the gov.
The people-to-representative ratio (on average) is too damn high!
I would think that the PA court ruling that struck down past gerrymandering would constrain efforts to impose partisan bias in the district-drawing.