This is a technically right but un-sellable idea. People aren’t going to want to see news headlines like “Climate legislation passes House by vote of 375.8972 to 141.5332”.
This doesn’t solve the access and representation issue. Having one rep for ~700k people makes it very difficult to express your opinions to your rep so they can represent you on an issue. Without googling I don’t even know where my reps office is and I do know that it is virtually impossible to actually book time to sit down and talk with him without writing a 6 figure check. That is a problem in a representative democracy. While the Wyoming rule won’t solve that issue it will make it better and going to smaller constituencies would be better yet. Also as mentioned your fix doesn’t do anything to help with gerrymandering while smaller population districts help with that as well.
With a double Wyoming Rule districts will average a little under 300,000 and the standard deviation should decrease as well (stand back lest you get trampled by the math nerd herd).
A rich nation of 330 million shouldn’t be deterred by finding office space for 700 new employees. Yes, yes, staff, too (hand waves).
So why only two senators?
Senators are for the state or the land if you will and are theoretically answerable to the state house more than the people. They serve a different purpose than representatives that are meant to be there for their people.
A better question: Why not just one?
Two at least allows a state to have different parts of the state represented and thus different points of view.
I would say it’s too keep continuity through an election so unlike a presidency or the house they won’t have all of the priorities of the delegation flip 180 at an election.
Ask and þee shall receive
In 1980, Michael Balinski (State University of New York at Stony Brook) and H. Peyton Young (Johns Hopkins University) proved that all apportionment methods either violate the quota rule or suffer from one of the paradoxes. This means that it is impossible to find the “perfect” apportionment method
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Minnesota keeps 8 seats by the skin of 89 Minnesotans’ teeth.
Governor Cuomo responds:
And there’s this explanation from a Minnesotan:
I’ve always thought Minnesotans have a cultural affinity for the Great White North, as demonstrated by this thread from six years ago:
I’d imagine there are going to be several lawsuits over the Census numbers. Here in Texas there’s already noise about suing over the state not picking up a third additional Congressional seat.
Any lawsuits would put Biden in a weird position, defending a census count by the Trump Administration that by all accounts made a hash of it. But I don’t know how you can fix it as this point.
26 in Minnesota, 89 in New York.
Cuomo saying anything about this is just…ugh…imagine the count if, say, he’d responded to nursing home deaths faster.
It’s ridiculous to blame this on Cuomo, it could also be high net worth people who fled NY during Covid and didn’t respond to the census.
Better to blame the politicians who were actively sabotaging the census.
And that’s not going to be the headline, so why worry about it? I think you’re right that any such system is a hard sell, but if you inform people about what is involved and don’t just ask them “How do you feel about a vote in Wyoming only counting for 0.634?” what they are going to be upset about is losing influence.
Guess I will post this here:
https://wxow.com/2021/04/29/judge-rules-against-wisconsin-gop-in-redistricting-case-2/
Headline is a good summary.
Brian
Politico has an article up about the profusion of lawsuits that have or will be filed over the Census data. There’s a real chance that many states will still be in litigation and unable to complete their redistricting in time for the 2022 elections, and will have to use provisional maps that are approved or created by the courts. Just throws another element of uncertainty into midterms, and illustrates how the fuck ups of the Trump Administration will continue to impact us for years to come.
Given the net outcome of the 2020 elections on the redistricting process I’m not so sure I mind that Trump fucked this one up.
Even states that had no change in the number of its representatives will redraw its districts. It generally gives the party in power the ability to dig itself in deeper, like a tick.
Oh, sweet summer child.
I think the most unexpected event I ever saw in my lifetime, would be California losing a congressional seat.