Perhaps an interest in eliminating the gerrymander.
It eliminates the gerrymander. Whaddya want, the moon?
Iowa gets only 6 EV, so use SSNs ending in 00-99, and divide them into four groups of 17 and two of 16.
I fail to see why that makes it a good idea.
While the legislature isn’t legally required to gerrymander the districts, the fact is, the do, heavily and to make sure that there is as little question as possible about who will win. Forcing the gerrymandering to keep things even as much as possible hardly seems more anti-democratic then the present system.
I’m not sure how you can say it was an attempt by the Democrats to make an unfair power grab, when you also say it would give the majority party an advantage on the commission. That would have put the Republicans in charge, same as they are now, only they would be more constrained as to how much they could screw the minority over, unlike the present system.
Yes, it eliminates the biased redrawing of representative districts and replaces it with random nonsense.
But, is random nonsense more desirable than the present system?
Why should someone who lives within 50 miles of me have more influence on whether my stance on tax rates has a representative in the House than someone with the same last digits of my SSN? Devolve power to state and local governments where possible, divorce national representatives from physical locations. It’s no longer necessary in an age with near instantaneous communication across the country.
99% of a Representative’s job is dealing with complaints, problems, and needs of constituents. That’s why they have local offices and why they spend as little time in Washington as possible. Voting is the smallest and often least important part of their job.
I would say more we are paying the price for the first black president more than an inexperienced president. As far as we have come as a nation I just think there is still a large host of folks who just can’t handle it and sadly those folks are mostly in the republican party.
And the people representing them just can’t get elected again if they are seen to be supporting the “socialist/communist/facisit Kenyan born” president.
IIRC, the proposed amendment defined “majority” in terms of the most recent Presidential election. And the gerrymandering required by it would have been worse, in that it would have resulted in all of the districts, or very close to it, to be the same party.
THIS is the question that requires answering before any decision is made to dismiss my suggestion. 
I rue the missed opportunity- you could’ve asked how if we would even know the difference between random nonsense and the present system. 
This seems kind of naive, and in any case the system is designed to represent communities, not randomized groups of people. The advantage of basing representation on communal factors instead of random ones is that it’s easier for people with a common interest to join together and actually get represented. A randomized system is going to be more prone to tyranny of the majority. For example, imagine you have groups of people who comprise a minority of the population and tend to be centralized in specific physical areas. If you randomize their representation, they may get underrepresented because they’re a demographic minority. If representation is based on location, they’ll be more likely to have some elected representatives working in favor of their interests. Does this sound like a real-world issues to you?
It sounds grammatically incorrect. Nothing else.
Do you mean gamerunknown’s idea, or my question?
Or to put it more simply -
Somebody living in Florida is going to have different issues to someone living in Idaho - many issues will be local, by having a local representative he will hopefully have the appropriate perspective
Your question.
I have about as much in common with someone living three streets over from me on national matters as with someone who happens to share the same initials (and even ungerrymandered districts don’t necessarily represent a contiguous community). There are, of course, alternatives which are not based on random factors - party-list systems, for instance (an alternative would be electing candidates with backgrounds in specific sectors of the economy).
Yes, I think under the current system such minorities would have a disproportionate influence on national policy. With a randomised sample, politicians will be elected based on the aggregate of the best interests of the majority of the population, which should not be inimical to the interests of any minority group in location. If you have specific examples where this is the case, I’d be interested in hearing them. I can think of cases where referenda have lead to repressive legislation: on gay marriage and the banning of minarets in Switzerland. I see that as a problem of education or democracy at large: people could have as easily elected homophobic or xenophobic legislators.
You may or may not have anything in common with the people who live around you. That’s irrelevant. The issue is that you have some common interests based on the fact that you live near each other: consider issues like local schools, local pollution sources and natural resources, and transportation policies. You and your neighbors might have an opinion about these things because they affect you in a pretty direct way. People who live hundreds of miles away and are only in your district because of last initial or SSN probably won’t give a shit, or they may have a very different set of opinions because they don’t have to deal with issues that affect you. This proposal limits your ability to shape these policies.
That’s pretty much what the tyranny of the majority is: minorities have little power to organize, and what’s good for 51% of the population is what’s good for everything. When you say these interest “should not be inimical to the interests of any minority group,” what you’re actually saying is “I am just going to assume the interests of the majority wouldn’t be inimical to the interests of any minority group.”
What I mean is this: in real life Republicans have started complaining a lot about the urban (usually black) vote, which is overwhelmingly Democratic and concentrated in specific areas, and they have been looking for ways to limit the power of that vote. It just so happens that this proposal would do the same thing in a different way. If you recognize the problems with what the Republicans are proposing on these issues, you should be able to recognize how this is similar.
I think the last thing we want to do is put everybody’s SSN out there in thousands of precincts with varying levels of security just to avoid gerrymandering. This is a problem that the states could solve if they wanted to.
I’ve been doing some thinking, and it occurs to me that the method I proposed is reminiscent of the extended family program instituted by President Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain in the novel Slapstick.
If each state instituted their own version of such a program, there would be no need to compromise SSNs.
Article 1 Section 4 Clause 1
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
It looks to me like your Congress already has the ability to do impose a common national election process similar to most other First World countries, but lacks the political will.