The Federalist papers explain why it’s necessary. It’s irrelevant to this discussion. There wasn’t an option on the table for “having a United States where we don’t have this.”
That’s a portion of why there is a Senate, but the biggest reason is as a representation of the sovereign states in the Federal government. Rhode Island, Connecticut and the other small states feared that they would suffer at the hands of the larger states and the Senate representation was a way to protect their interests. I’m not sure why people don’t understand Federalism, it’s a hallmark of our system, and the system of other countries (like Germany or Canada.)
This is a system that Europeans found made some degree of sense, when they set up the Council of the EU to be one member one vote (thus Luxembourg has the same vote as Germany), while the other legislative body of the EU is based on representation proportional to population. The EU describes the Council quite similarly to how the Senate is described in the Federalist papers: the Council represents the governments of the member states, which ultimately those governments are democratic so they represent the will of their constituents, but the Council members (made up or ministers of the executive governments of each member state) do not directly represent the people of their country. Similarly the Senators are intended to represent the State itself, not its people, directly. To be honest the amendment allowing for direct election of Senators considerably muddied the waters on what the Senate was, and in my opinion to worse effect.
Yes, that’s the Senate. There’s a legitimate comparison. The Senate leads to disproportionate representation.
Yeah, but at that point they’re just nine unemployed old geezers in funny robes. Who cares what they think? 
I solved the gerrymandering problem almost three years ago, but nobody cared.
“And furthermore, Mr. Chairman, I would like to remind the committee that Project Dark Knight will–in addition to keeping America strong and protected from terrorist threats well into the 21st century–will also employ thousands of people, with Social Security numbers which end in every conceivable combination of digits. Thank you.”
In your proposal [districting by arbitrary SocSecNo digits], if Democrats outnumber Republicans 55-45 in the state, then they will outnumber Republicans by about 55-45 in every district; they will win 100% of the seats.
Perhaps some would argue that that is desireable. That’s why the goal of districting needs to be agreed on first. Many would prefer that if Democrats dominate among the electorate 55-45, they should dominate by a similar proportion in the legislature.
The old-fashioned goals of communities and compactness seem defunct in the age of Internet and long-distance commuting, when town meetings and local newspapers get little emphasis. I think it’s time for proportional representation (and preferably more than two parties). The need for local omsbudsmen might be handled, as some countries already do, with omsbudsmen separate from legislators.
The Senate made more sense in the days before we figured out that a greater degree of centralization was required for the nation to be able to tackle certain important issues, back when it was politically necessary to respect the wishes of the slave-trading entrepreneurial elite of Rhode Island, but much of the sovereign dignitude of the individual states is an anachronism now, or a menace. I mean, we all know why southerners are such staunch defenders of states’ rights.
As for gerrymandering, I said in that other thread that double or triple the number of representatives in the House would clear up a lot of that nonsense. I still feel the same, especially now that 40 reps can contrive to grind the whole government to a halt, which is ridiculous.
But then you might just have 80 or 120 reps grinding the government to a halt.
The problem is that we have no effective majority party. We have the minority Dems, the minority mainstream Rs, and a small minority of radical Rs who have a corner on the market of power because the mainstreams Rs would rather govern with them than with the Ds. But, of course, those 40 radical Rs can screw themselves over when the mainstream Rs just throw up their hands and work with the Ds instead of them, such as when its finally time to end a government shutdown. That’s the risk the radicals take.
But I don’t know what structural reform would fix this, other than perhaps rule changes allowing more bills and amendments to reach the floor, negating the Hastert Rule.
Doubtful, unless urban populations start sending their own Teahadists to Washington.
Nope. The same voters would be voting. They’d just be divided into smaller districts. Each state would get three times the seats they have now, but those seats would still come from the same states in the same proportion. New York now has 27; with three times as many House members, it would get 81. But Alabama, with 7 seats now, would get 21.
So for every urban district that was divided into three, a Tea Party district would be divided into three. Hence three times the number of Tea Partiers along with three times the number of everyone else. Putting aside the details of how those new districts would be drawn, basically you’d have the same proportions of ideology, just in a larger group.
I think in a Federal system it always makes sense to guarantee some form of representation of the Federal divisions in the national government. I’ve spoken at length about reforms I’d like to see in the Senate in general, but just making it proportional isn’t one of them. I think every State needs a minimum of representation in the Senate, the way the Germans allocate Bundesrat votes isn’t a bad one. There are basically three tiers of states, those with > 2m residents get 2 votes, > 4m residents get 4 votes, and > 7m get 6. But my general views on wanting the Senate reform focus more on its role in legislation in general, not so much its method for assigning membership numbers to the states.
The whole point of gerrymandering is that it neutralizes constituencies by tacking them onto abnormally shaped districts where they can’t win. More districts means smaller districts, which are less amenable to tacking. That would favor urban populations, which it should, because that’s where the people are.
I’m not sure I agree that smaller districts can’t be gerrymandered just as easily as larger one.
After all, districts for state legislatures are usually much smaller than congressional districts, but they are frequently gerrymandered or manipulated.
And no, there would not be an more favorability to urban populations whatsoever. All districts must have equal populations, so urban populations cannot be favored and don’t need to be favored anyway. Urban areas get exactly as many districts as they deserve based on population and would continue to get the same proportion as they do now.
Population density is irrelevant – a properly designed unit-independent mathematical criterion such as “ratio of the square of the perimeter length to the district area” works the same at any scale.
One angle I’d use is that, once the mathematical criterion of gerrymander-metering is set, the legislature gets to draw the map as usual – but if anybody else presents a map with a lower gerrymander-metric (while meeting the other requirements such as district populations equal to within a preset margin of error), they have to throw out their map and use the new one. This works rather like the “one kid cuts the cake, the other selects which piece he gets” method.
Again, or we could just throw out districts altogether and use proportional representation. Every vote would count.
This isn’t that difficult to envision. Say you have a state with around 900k people, 1 urban area with 2/3 of the population, divided into 3 districts. Say the urban area is likely to vote around 70% Democratic, and everywhere else in the state 90% Republican, so about 50/50 statewide. You gerrymander that by conceding one district in the city to the Democrats (such that Republicans never bother to run there), and you draw the other two by tacking parts of the urban area onto larger mainly rural districts that will generally favor the Republican candidate by 5-10%.
Increase that state to 9 districts, and you’ve mitigated the ability to tack those urban pops onto mainly rural districts. You’ll have more districts centered around the urban area, say 5 or 6 districts. Candidates won’t be able to just ignore whole chunks of a district they’re running in, they’ll actually have to campaign to the people they seek to represent. It wouldn’t be perfect. Because there are an odd number of districts, you won’t get the 50/50 party split that would be ideal, given our hypothetical affiliations. But if you’re an urban Democrat, 5-4 is a lot more fair and representative than 1-2. Hell, if you’re an old-school suburban conservative, do you really want some Tea Partier from the sticks representing you?
Nah, you just create a bunch of districts on the edge of the city, dividing it into parts you can tack onto suburban/rural ones. It’s no different. In fact, smaller districts might even make that easier.
Lets not forget that in some cases gerrymandering has sometimes been used benevolently, affirmative action basically, creating an odd shaped district so some minority can elect at least one representative. I think they were recently trying in AZ to give the NA population some representation, but Gov. Brewer was able to squash it…knowing well what party “those people” would elect.
Perhaps gerrymandering isn’t the best tool, but if it exists, it might as well be used for good as for evil.
You know population density isn’t the same throughout a state, right?