The founding fathers didn’t want the masses to be given proper voting. There were 2 million land owners. 7-9 million non land owners. So founding fathers like John Adams did not want a real democracy. They wanted their power. Their 2 senator decision was done without info about the future and well, they aren’t amazing people anyway.
But what was "less-populous" when this was initially configured? What was the disparity between the lowest- and highest-population states/colonies back then?
Los Angeles county has a higher population than 40 states:
* https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-05-12/los...
It has a population of 9.8M:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California
That's more than New Jersey:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
It's not like the vote for President is something where people from cities are going to have an opportunity to vote to harvest the blood and organs from people from rural areas or something (as if that's something they even would vote for if that were on the table). It's literally only about electing the President. That's all the electoral college affects.
It's become somewhat of a meme that there's this big divide between rural dwellers and city dwellers, and that somehow if city dwellers were allowed to have genuine proportional representation, somehow they would screw over the rural dwellers, but I have never heard anyone articulate any specific thing they think would go toward that. Let alone how they think getting proportional representation purely for Presidential elections would let them do so.
It is unfortunate how many people did not pay attention in civics class when they went over every compromise made in the formation of the Constitution, especially the ones about population proportionality as it relates to the legislative and executive branches. If you want the particular arguments for how large states would screw over small ones, the records of the Constitutional Convention are a good place to start.
It’s unfortunate how much people pay attention to civics classes and never learn what the status quo has no interest in teaching them.
There are many, many other divides than high population vs low population territories that we conveniently ignore in this debate. If you want to argue in favor of the population of smaller states deserving greater representation, can I get you on board for giving black people, Muslims, LGBTQ members, and communists vote multipliers as well?
You see, there’s actual historical precedent for population majorities screwing over these groups.
In comparison, those small population states you fight so valiantly to protect historically receive more tax dollars than they pay in. Seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Before you say hey that’s all thanks to disproportionate representation, Canada and other countries with more proportionate representation see the same thing. You see, small population states are in general beneficiaries of putting their lot in with bigger states. Giving them more vote power on top of that is… silly.
I could be wrong, but I genuinely believe the problem with your line of reasoning is you're rationalizing for a system that benefits you. Your ideology benefits from how things are, and so you find reasons to justify why the way things are is good, actually.
If say states had been divided up differently, would your entire belief system crumble? Assume city-states were the norm and the Senate was overwhelmingly controlled by whichever party controlled urban populations. Like say North Carolina got divided into Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, the Triangle, Wilmington, and the rest of the state as just one big territory. And every state was like this.
Would you suddenly say hey this is a bad system, not because it benefits people I don't agree with, but because of some other silly reason?
What is so magical about lines put on maps by our great-great-great grandfathers?
If there was a magical US with three states, two with only 1 citizen and one with 1,000,000, would you still hold by your principle that they have their own governments that federate with those of states so this is good?
Where in your system do you draw the line and make a distinction between fair and unfair? How do you determine if one arrangement is more fair than another? Why would you not push for the most fair arrangement?
My principle is embarrassingly simple. Political power should be equal to the number of people represented. That's it. Easy to explain, easy to grasp, easy to measure whether something is fair or unfair. It's imperfect--Lord knows population majorities can still be bastards--but it's the best, most egalitarian system created. And, importantly, it's a principle that doesn't change just because it doesn't benefit me. You're right, it's not very nuanced. Simple often works best.
What if 60% of the population wanted to slaughter the other 40%? That's right, I too can come up with wacky hypotheticals that won't happen and presuppose a lot of other important variables don't change.
> What is so magical about lines put on maps by our great-great-great grandfathers?
The governments whose jurisdiction extends to them.
> Where in your system do you draw the line and make a distinction between fair and unfair? How do you determine if one arrangement is more fair than another? Why would you not push for the most fair arrangement?
Why do you presuppose I'm not pushing for the most fair arrangement? Why do you assume that an arrangement where states just as important to the union have two orders of magnitude less representation would be more fair? Probably because, as you keep asserting about me, it benefits you. If a state thinks that the union is a negative for it, and in a way that the union would never agree to change, and it would get a better deal outside of the union, maybe it should just secede. But it's not a net negative, you're just not thinking any further than the culture war; say what you want about the difference between North Dakota and New York, but I'll bet New York really appreciates North Dakota being its breadbasket.
Because, by their (and my) definition of "fair", "Political power should be equal to the number of people represented," and you're pushing for something that is not that. It doesn't take any "presupposing".
This was my point about how the majority can be bastards. There are countless examples where the majority wanted something that punished the minority throughout history and throughout the world. Having said that, humankind hasn't come up with a better system--at least to my knowledge. Yours certainly only introduces the potential to make problems like this worse.
> Why do you presuppose I'm not pushing for the most fair arrangement? Why do you assume that an arrangement where states just as important to the union have two orders of magnitude less representation would be more fair? Probably because, as you keep asserting about me, it benefits you. If a state thinks that the union is a negative for it, and in a way that the union would never agree to change, and it would get a better deal outside of the union, maybe it should just secede. But it's not a net negative, you're just not thinking any further than the culture war; say what you want about the difference between North Dakota and New York, but I'll bet New York really appreciates North Dakota being its breadbasket.
First, the "culture war" is not a real thing. It's just right-wing propaganda to frame any expression or change they disagree with as an attack on them. Framing wanting fair representation as not thinking beyond an imaginary attack on conservatives is sorta funny.
I don't think you're pushing towards a more fair arrangement because you can't even outline what makes a system fair to you. You don't think North Dakota with 0.8m population should have 1/10th the representation of New York with 8m. OK what is fair to you then? What makes it fair or unfair? What knobs could I change in theoretical compositions of the US that would make you say this federation is fair and this federation unfair? Surely you can admit that not all federations are fair, right?
Again, my principle shared before is super simple and easy to represent and I would argue intuitively feels fair to most people. It's not rocket science. Does it benefit my beliefs? Yes. But that doesn't invalidate it as wrong when I think it's also the solution most uninvolved third parties would agree with (also weird, it's what the article in this post states). And I think even _you_ agree with it if the system weren't stacked in your favor or if we were talking about another country.
You magically think that each state is "just as important to the union" when that's impossible. The US without CA is significantly worse off than it is without CT. Just not a matter of opinion or feelings.
North Dakota really appreciates New York buying its produce, too. And producing its science, technology, and art (no matter how much they complain about it now, I mean come on, Fox News is in NYC!). Also, their agricultural output is 20th (ND) and 24th (NY) in the US, so it's not as if NY is entirely reliant on others. Food output is important for sure, but ND gains more benefit from being in a country with NY than NY does from being in a country with ND.
On a Federal level, California has to share power with the other 49 states. California should not be able to dictate federal policy for everyone else.
Even with fully proportional representation, there is no state that would be able to do anything close to "dictat[ing] federal policy".
California has, according to other people in this discussion, about 40 million people.
The US as a whole has about 340 million people. You'd need 5 Californias, all voting in perfect unison, to "dictate federal policy" in a fully proportional system. And guess what? California does not, in fact, vote in perfect unison, and no one's proposing a system wherein the people of the state vote, and then assign their state's proportional votes entirely to whichever result in that statewide vote gets 50% + 1 votes.
Oh, wait. There is a system that does that. The Electoral College. The one we're talking about getting rid of.
In 2020's Presidential election, California cast more votes for Trump than Texas did. (And Texas cast more votes for Biden than New York did, for that matter.)
In a fully proportional system, something like a third of California's representatives (based on those 2020 Presidential election results) would be voting for policies that the GOP favors.
Once you stop looking at the Electoral College maps and thinking that they accurately depict the political leanings of the country, you start to realize that no state is homogeneous, and the idea that we need to treat them as such is, at best, a hopeless anachronism, and at worst active propaganda.
(2) bringing up a silly system that ends up being electoral college. But bringing up some “silly” alternative is an issue because doing away with 2 senators per state doesn’t automatically mean we just duplicate the house in the senate. Why is that the assumption.
DC should be a state and PR should be a state if they majority vote for it too. These should be beyond obvious and agreeable if people really believe in the reasons America exists and democracy etc.
When my initial comment went against the current senate set up, I didn’t say disband the senate. I’d be fine with a scaling system of Senators like 12 for California, 10 for Texas, 8 for Florida, New York, 6 for next eight states, and so on. This will lead to an amount of around 200 senators. Giving California 5-6% of the Senate instead of 2% isn’t going to suddenly destroy the farmer in Kansas from having any power.
I tracked a discussion on exactly this topic on Tumblr quite recently; here's a fairly representative post: https://fandomsandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/69134673708595609...
It includes two very helpful county-level maps from the 2016 election that drive home how politically non-homogenous our states are.
So much value for the US and it should be disfavored over those that provide so much less? Sure it has its problems, but just looking at results it’s clear California is the most successful state we have.
So you want to overrepresent the unsuccessful states?
But to answer your question, yes. The people of Kansas, on a federal level, should have meaningful power. Federal laws affect all states, so each state should have a seat at the table.
Let me turn the questions around: how would it be fair for Kansas to have no power federally at all?
New York can pass laws about what happens in New York. But if New York wants to pass laws about what happens in Kansas, the people of Kansas deserve a voice.
States are independent political entities representing very different groups of people. The EU does the exact same thing as the US federal government. If you don't give smaller states some amount of power and respect, there is not reason for them to participate on your federation.
You know who actually has close to no power? Many, many other types of minorities across America. Yet these minorities are not cared about with retorts by you or the other person. It’s only about those farmers in Kansas
How would it be fair for Kansas to have power proportional to its population federally?
Well. That sounds like a very silly question, doesn’t it?
I live in rural NYS. I know farmers, to be sure (there's a community-supported agriculture farm just about 5 minutes' drive away). But despite the fact that a lot of the land around here is farmland, the vast, vast majority of people here are not farmers. They are teachers, shop owners/workers, factory workers, computer programmers, doctors, lawyers....basically everything you get in most places in the country. The only types of people we don't have are the types you only get in the very biggest cities, like hedge fund managers, and the types that only make sense in certain areas, like sailors.
The question isn't and shouldn't be about "should farmers have as much political weight as not-farmers;" it's "should people who live in a mostly-rural state have as much political weight as people who live in a state with big cities"?
Quickly checking Wikipedia, the Californian governor had a ~62% share of the vote, and the NY governor ~67%. That roughly translates to at least 30% of each of those States populations dissenting from the majority view. Shouldn’t their voices be heard, same as the Kansas voters?
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to “Regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”. If farmers in Kansas feel they’re being unfairly treated by any company that trades across state lines their only point of recourse is their congressional representatives.
As a historical example, railroad companies were once notorious for business practices that unduly favored high-volume users. They'd provide discounts to large corporations while excluding small businesses, and they'd charge more for short hauls than they did for long hauls[0]. It was incredibly unpopular for years, and it disincentivized trade and development in perfectly suitable states like Kansas.
Yet it still took congress years to take action for the same reason it does today (they don't want to anger corporate interests). It finally took a politician from a populous state (Illinois) to bring the issue to bear and incentivize congress to act. It's not a perfect example of what you were asking for, but it's an interesting case study. Kansas would've been much less equally represented in congress than it is today. If anything, it's closer to being over-represented now due to the caps.
At any rate, and to your point, the result was the creation of the first independent federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission. Now there are at least 32[1]. This is often cited as an example of federal overreach. It's worth considering that without these agencies, however, that congress may simply be gridlocked on more and more issues the way they were on railroads for years even with more equal representation.
Despite any personal political views I may hold or knowledge I may have acquired, I get extremely nervous when people are quickly and passionately in favor of something like eliminating the electoral college. It's a challenge to find pure functions in our system. Ultimately, I have no grand conclusions to offer up here. I just hope you find it interesting or helpful.
[0] https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Intersta...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_Un...
To prevent a response of “things were different then”. Even putting aside things that would be different if they were around today, namely women’s and non white’s rights, the core crux of being power hungry and considering themselves above poorer people is something that fits in perfectly with their writing and how the status quo is today. There’s no reason to think they’d think differently about who should wield power today. Elitism and greed hasn’t changed like sexism and racism has.
Traditionally, the government spends more per capita on infrastructure in less populated territories. This holds true for most developed countries. Within states this also holds true. More state budget is spent per capita to build up rural roads than city ones. They ensure water, sewage, electricity, television, and internet to provide service to remote populations instead of allowing them to only operate in cities (and they charge the same price despite a higher cost to serve rural populations). Again, this tends to be the case despite whether a developed country has a body like the US Senate or not.
When it comes to government decisions, rural territories whether at the state level or the national level receive disproportionately more benefit from their association with more urban counties or states.
It’s ok to get nervous about change. That’s what conservative beliefs are: change is bad. But if I could offer any advice about a better way to think about this specific issue: dozens of countries don’t have a body like the US Senate and don’t decide their elections based on an electoral college. They’re doing fine and in many ways better than the US. The suggestions to abolish these institutions aren’t some untried theoretical far-fetched idea. They’ve been used for hundreds of years in some places. Not so scary, huh?
I was under the impression that it was a compromise between slave holding and free states. Smaller free states we worried about larger slave states overrunning things with their large enslaved populations. There was a lot of back and forth on this in the convention.
Also this fear of tyranny of the majority is widely ignorant of US history. It has happened countless times in different contexts, what value is there in treating the urban/rural divide special?
The white majority supported enslavement of black people.
And destroying or expelling Native Americans.
And the banning of immigration from China.
And Jim Crow.
Then Japanese internment.
Christian majority pushed for criminalizing homosexuality.
And banning gay marriage.
And criminalizing drug use.
Or the capitalist majority sought to destroy communists in the McCarthy era.
All throughout US history we have examples of a majority exerting their power over a minority. It’s just really weird that the urban/rural divide is where you and others draw the line. Should black people’s votes be counted twice? Should communists get 40 votes? Should gay people get 10? Then why is it rural Kansas farmer gets 2?
Why would a different senate set up equal zero effective representation for those farmers? I didn’t even say what my alternative would be.
How come we only care about farmers in Kansas anyway? How come we don’t care about the many other minorities less represented? I’m American, but I’m brown. Why don’t brown minorities like me get our own better representation? Same with lgbtq, and so many more. It’s always only about giving rural conservatives an absurd amount of power.
It’s true that they didn’t generally hold democracy in high esteem. They were too well aware of its past failures, and wary of repeating them. They in fact avoided using the word "democracy" for that reason.
And yes, several of them were keen on increasing the power of the federal government. The US constitution was written in a context where the federal government had been hobbled because under the Articles of Confederation it didn’t have enough power to carry out its policies.
In retrospect it looks to me like they might have been able to make the Articles work, maybe with some adjustments, but they didn’t think so, in the end, and of course they were closer to the situation than I am, so even I take my opinion with a grain of salt.
The concept of the Federalist society is primarily originalist, is it not? They attempt to ascertain exactly what the founders meant when drafting the original documents and interpret our current law based on that.
I'm saying we probably shouldn't do that.
In fact, it sounds so ludicrous that one might think I'm exaggerating, but that is the actual position of originalism.
The piece I left out, the piece that makes that crazy statement not seem so crazy to those who follow it, is God. Supporters of originalism would say they were "a special group of wise people ordained by God who set down words..."
And yet they still didn't think much of women or Black people, lived in a world in which every farmer had munitions capable of holding off the world dominant power, ands had only seen what they had seen up to that point in history.
I wouldn't want any one group of people today, in 2022, deciding the details of government for a group of people in 2257, and I don't think we should be bound quite so firmly by people from 235 years ago, either.
We can--and have--corrected the most obviously egregious errors with some early amendments, but at the same time we've left most of the structural choices based on the same attitudes in place, or even made them worse with artificial limits.
First, if you took a trip in a time machine back to then, I'm fairly sure you'd come off as a raving lunatic. Second, you're completely glazin over the fact that what we ended up with was a hard fought for and won compromise, which is half of why we venerate the people who actually locked themselves in and reached it in the first place, and also stick to some of their guiding wisdom on things. We haven't changed much but the most obvious deficits, because the action potential hasn't been able to be reached, which is exactly what you're looking for in your founding Constitution. You want law to come and go, and not to be all enshrined at the highest level.
Whenever anyone suggests direct democracy at the Federal level, it's just a low key "I want cities/population centers/large States to dictate how small states do things."
Absolutely! Which is WHY acting as if every rule and guideline from more than 200 years is holy and must not be changed is terrible.
I'm definitely not in favor of pure direct democracy, nor of changing things on a whim. However, we have had more than 200 years more of experience around the world with variations on democratic systems, and I think we can do better than we've done.
It is possible, even common, to look at a situation, see that all solutions tried so far have been bad for various reasons, and so to choose a new solution that avoids all of those pitfalls, only to run into new pitfalls that hadn't been seen before. That's no knock on the latest attempt! It's progress, it's just not the last attempt that should ever be made.
I think the founders were reacting to the world at the time, and their reaction was maybe the best possible one given the time and the need for compromise. They saw the dangers of the unchecked power of royalty, but underestimated the power that comes with concentrating wealth. They saw some of the economic dangers that had been revealed in countries around the world at that time, but completely missed the economic power unlocked by enabling women to enter the workforce. I could go on and on and on, and I don't think it's speaking overly-negatively about those men and their accomplishments to say that they should not be venerated as all-wise, all-knowing, or god-like, which is definitely how some political figures--including US Supreme Court justices--describe them.
I was implying that we should rebalance the structure away from purely wealthy land owners to make it more equal, not exclude them entirely.
The president has an outsized impact on general discourse and party direction, not to mention international crises like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.