Do note that the impetus of splitting CA is to make more GOP-dominated rural states. Turning L.A. into three separate states would do a better job of “representing the state.”
Idea: increase (or decrease) Senate seats based on population.
Idea 2: add House seats so that Wyoming’s population is the standard for one seat. That would increase the Electoral College number in more populous states.
Yeah - we’d have to do it right.
Id rather get rid of “states” And just become a united population of america. lines on maps are dumb and create dumb alignment/incentive issues.
There are valid reasons to have regional and local governments. I don’t mind the concept of states. Not sure we do it the best way, though.
There should never have been 2 Dakotas - that’s just stupid. And Wydahotana would be a bit bigger than Texas but have a population roughly the size of Utah’s. Wyoming’s regional issues aren’t really that different than Idaho and Montana’s, so it shouldn’t be a big problem to combine them.
Yep, I agree there needs to be some way to give people representation and govern at a local level. And agree I also dont have a solution. I just know that the current system doesnt make a lot of sense.
Note - This i have very little faith will change ever. States are sticking around and I dont see many (any?) of them being redrawn any time soon.
I feel like forcing the parties to compete nationwide would make both of them more palatable to the middle and this would be especially true for the Republican party. It is a party specifically built for flyover country only and is becoming more and more out of touch with the major population and economic centers of our country.
In theory, yes - but then there’s areas like my homeland where it’s 75% Republican and going to be that way for the forseeable future, and Republicans could put the village idiot up against the smartest person in town with the idiot running on a platform of everyone having to wade through 20 lbs of shit daily and eating nothing but cold gruel and they’d still waltz to victory.
I don’t know how you fix that. I once thought better education would have been the trick, but then I realized how many people openly disdain intelligence in favor of stupidity.
The Electoral College is one of the last vestiges of slavery that hasn’t been stricken from the Constitution, it needs to go.
Most of the small states that wanted the EC* were in the North. Virginia was the big proponent of proportional representation.
*Not sure about the EC in particular, but the way the Senate is set up
No. When a large percentage of people are now in urban areas, and the general needs of urbanites tend to be pretty different than those of ruralites, “popular vote” moves all power to the urban wants/needs to the neglect of most rural needs.
Bottom line, I’m supportive of reforms to bring better equity to the EC; but its abolishment isn’t a viable solution.
No it doesn’t. States still hold most of the power, so local issues are still addressed. Plus, that example isn’t even solved by the EC, unless you break up cities and rural counties into separate states. Per what I said, right now rural counties in states with big cities don’t have any say whatsoever, so how are their needs reflected? With a popular vote their voice will actually be reflected.
The president represents the people, and make decision on behalf of the people (somewhat), and thus people should have equal voice in deciding who the president is. The issue of urban want vs rural needs shouldn’t even be addressed by the president. That’s a state issue, if not even smaller than that.
A guy from Philly I think at the convention wanted direct election of the President 1 (white land owning male ) 1 vote. But Madison hold on a minute the North has a lot more “eligible voters” our darkies should count for something so the EC and 3/5th compromise was created to give slave states some more power in picking the president and lo and behold Virginia got the Presidency for 28 of the first 32 years of the US Presidency.
Of course it does. If you can lock in the urban vote (or the CA/NY/TX/FL vote) with platform XYZ (say, federally subidized mass transit, free abortions or whatever), then the fact that XYZ doesn’t benefit or isn’t wanted by the rest of America is irrelevant. And just because that platform then gets forced on all Americans, that doesn’t mean it’s not still a matter of Urban (or CA/NY/TX/FL) dictating it’s wants on the other group.
With an electoral system, no matter how many votes they get in specific areas, they still have to at least consider the opinions in the other parts of the country.
And such an issue would never rise up to a federal decision. At least, it shouldn’t. Since it is a local issue.
This is what I dont understand. You are making certain people more important than other people because ??? Why shouldn’t the urban people get more say? Why is the rural people that are always being complained about? Is there something special about rural people that I’m not understanding?
Except that’s what you just said nobody should be worrying about. And now, that worry is just “democracy”.
“I’m all for democracy!”
“Great, so you mean one person, one vote?”
“Absolutely!”
“The majority says they’d like to [undesirable position].”
“Wh-what? Who the hell gave them the power to force that on me?”
When it comes to federal decisions, yeah, democracy is supposed to decide what happens. Everyone has an equal voice, so no one should complain.
That said, I’m not oblivious to the Kantian notion that small states should have some “rights”, and not be victim to some sort of federal “utilitarianism”.
In your specific Mass Transit example, I do believe the large state will need to get approval from the small state before this thing can be built.
In the legality of drugs or abortion case, less so.
The reason rural is often brought up is that their situation in a lot of different ways just isn’t the same as people in urban areas. Most people in cities are a 15 minute ambulance ride from a hospital. They are a mile from a grocery store that stocks pretty much everything. Maybe a lot more of them hunt and fish than city people. As a result, the things that worry them the most may not even be on the radar for someone from the city. And if the big city voters say “we need a hospital for every 100,000 people”, well that works great for LA, but not so much for Kimball, SD, population 666.
So you can’t just give everyone an equal voice and say “that’s fair, it’s democarcy”.
And that’s why state representatives are elected from different geographic regions across a state. So they have someone to be their voice. And that’s partly what the electoral college does, except on a geographic basis instead of urban/rural.
I messed up my quoted response…I’ll do it again…
And such an issue should never rise up to a federal decision in theory. Since it is a local issue.