There is often something lost in this argument, which I think is a strength of the system, not a weakness. That is: the US Senate, which was the compromise, is a rejection of utilitarianism as the pinnacle of governing.
You don’t want tyranny of the minority, and I don’t want tyranny of the majority, so let’s have a system of checks and balances that ensures (within limits) that we address both groups.
Having city dwellers decide what happens in rural areas is the tyranny of imperialism.
You also are performing a convenient geographic sidestep where suddenly "where you live" isn't the country or even the state but is really only concerned with the local. So the rest of the people who live in the nation are diminished.
Localism has led to lots of problems in American history, now we can add a shitshow of a Coronavirus response on top of the others.
The party of localism tends to be gung-ho about that huge federal military operation... yet refuses a necessarily-similar intervention in a pandemic.
But you are literally advocating for subjugation without representation. The opposite of localism you describe is imperialism/colonialism.
That's without skewing the strength of the vote, even!
So, no, I'm far from convinced that we have to protect the poor rural folks from their fellow citizens.
Your argument is equally valid in reverse -- there's no reason why rural dwellers should decide what happens in cities. Why should your vote count for more because I have more neighbors than you do?
The idea is not "the rules should be set up so people like me get a bigger voice". It's _one person, one vote._
You don't get an extra vote because you're "unique". What?
It strikes me that you basically want the voting system to be be biased to your advantage against a group of people you probably don't like very much.
If this is true, it speaks extremely poorly of your sense of moral fairness.
The difference is you are arguing that rural citizens should get no say whatsoever. I care about everyone instead of only those living in a small geographic circle and understand that the needs of those living outside of that circle are unique from city dwellers themselves.
your experience of the american political system is vastly different from mine. You have a whole house in congress devoted to making sure low-population states get disproportionate representation, the other congressional house and the state legislatures have boundary lines that are gerrymandered to disproportionately benefit and empower you, a rural farming state has the first say in primaries and an incredible amount of pandering from legislators, the electoral college gives you disproportionate power over selecting the president in the general, you get incredibly disproportionate amounts of federal spending (military bases, road funding, etc) - far more than they contribute, I can go on.
Hell, in some cases the states themselves have been explicitly drawn to increase the amount of rural power - the only reason the Dakotas aren't a single state is so they'd get extra senators and representatives.
Again, you are coming off as a member of a rural minority who is crying that they don't have total and utter political power over the urban majority. You already have a hugely disproportionate amount of power, influence, and funding in the American system.
A vote in Wyoming is already 3.2x more potent than a vote in California based on electoral weighting, and the same is effectively true for most other areas of the government that involve voting in any form. How much higher, exactly, do you think that should be?
And having "similar needs/wants" doesn't have a logical connection to justifying taking away their voting voices.
And if these people don't get extra votes, it's "the tyranny of imperialism"?
Let's pick a state - Kansas, nice and rectangle. Let's say it was empty, and 10 farmers moved in and divided it 10 ways. They are happy to themselves on their huge plots of land, doing their own thing.
One farmer needs extra cash, so sells off a dozen acres. That dozen acres puts in a neighborhood of 20 houses. Now that 20 houses controls the entire state, effectively. They decide people shouldn't be able to own so much land, and owning more than 10 acres is illegal.
Sure it's contrived, but you start to notice how it's not as simple as 'majority rules is best.'
Why should that single farmer be allowed to control the entire state over the rest of the 1000 people?
Cut the urban areas into their own states (eg take the metro NYC or Chicago area and make them their own states) and then merge a lot of the "empty land" in between to try and equalize the population somewhat. End up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 urban states and 15 rural states.
I would slice it into something like:
* Appalachia Region
* Gulf Region
* Great Lakes Region
* Heartland region
* Rockies Region
* Cascadia Region
* Desert Region (Southwest US - need a better name but I'm coming up with a blank.)
* Maybe a Northern Shield region? Could just be part of the rockies region.
Those areas all have common environmental concerns and life experiences, and would bring a sufficient number of residents to be worth bothering over. Then you have the metro areas as their own states, enclaves within the larger regions. If metro areas grow out you would probably would have to have some mechanism to vote to transfer counties/districts between states.
Never going to happen of course, the number of political barriers is insane. And Republicans would never ratify any such plan that rearranged states as any sensible arrangement would unwind the disproportionate power they wield based on the current arrangement.
The only mechanism that could conceivably be achieved is splitting blue states up, and it's not really a good one since populations are so concentrated - imagine trying to split New York City into like 5 independent states, it would just be completely impossible to administer in practice.
In reality we will just keep bumbling along with our current system that immensely, disproportionately advantages the rural states and rural populations. Unless the country goes into an actual civil war, of course, which is not as unthinkable as it was 4 years ago.
The ultimate problem is that "the rest of the state" (for virtually all states) is empty, hardly anybody lives there, and letting a minority override the will of everybody else is tyranny of the minority.
Taken to the extreme, this is ultimately what killed South Africa and Rhodesia and other countries - a relatively small minority imposing their will on the majority, things getting worse and worse with no recourse for the people whose lives were actually affected until things boiled over.
At its core, this is ultimately an argument for anti-democratic principles.