I feel it’s more than just a “personal preference”. I feel equal representation is a major issue; for me, it ranks right up there with principles like freedom of speech.
We could very easily make a substantial step forward on this issue by repealing a single law. So I don’t accept the argument that it’s not a big problem so why bother?
You may feel we are very close to being on the same page. But I read your post and feel there is a vast chasm between us on this issue.
OK, so how large a house would you want?
I put forward the Wyoming rule as a suggestion. That would give us a House with 573 members (based on the 2020 census).
I am open to other suggestions however. I have no problem with the cube root idea.
But as I said above, that won’t solve the problem. You are still going to have some states with constituencies that are under represented and some with constituencies that are over represented at around the same ratios as we have now.
So maybe I should reword the question into how large an under/over representation ratio are you willing to accept?
Nothing will solve the problem absolutely other than a direct democracy where every citizen represents themselves on a 1:1 basis. And such a direct democracy has plenty of other problems. But the fact we can’t reach the ideal doesn’t mean we should refuse to make improvements.
What is the ideal number? I don’t know. There is some point where the organizational problems that arise from an increasingly large number of representatives outweigh the benefits of a greater equalization in representation.
Or we could devise a system that is based on population in some ways and based on geography in some ways and make those two ways coequal so that neither could override the other. Then we could break that system down so that at every level there were coequal populous and geographic representation so that the minority can’t always run over the majority or vise versa.
That’s pretty much a guarantee for a future breakdown. If Principle A can’t override Principle B and Principle B can’t override Principle A, what are you going to do when the two principles are in conflict? Any system that’s going to work needs some kind of tie-breaker that says which one is more important when there is an otherwise irresolvable conflict.
I believe you’ve just summed up the house and senate.
I don’t feel so. The situation there is the House and Senate have to agree on an idea for it to occur. If the two halves of Congress can’t agree on whether to do A or B, then neither gets done.
I think better comparisons would be Congress and the Supreme Court, or Congress and the President, or the states and the federal government. If Congress and the Supreme Court disagree on the validity of a law, the Supreme Court’s view prevails. If Congress and the President disagree on how the country should be run, Congress has the power to remove the President from office. If there is a legal dispute between a state and the federal government, the Constitution says federal law is superior to state law.
Ummm . . . There is no tie breaker between the senate (represents geography) and the house (represents population, kind of) if they don’t agree nothing gets done. How is that different than:
In their case when there is a irrevocable conflict nothing gets done.
There are situations in which doing nothing is not an option. For example, if Congress and the Supreme Court disagreed about the constitutionality of a law, not deciding is not an option. The law is either constitutional or it isn’t. It can’t be both or neither.
I feel the same is true in any representation plan. If we have two systems for determining whether or not a group of people are entitled to a representative, we will have situations when they give us two answers; yes, they are and no, they are not. There is no option to choose both answers or neither answer. So we need to decide which system is the one we accept as providing the valid answer.
I have got to be honest. Even going back over the thread I have no idea what we’re talking about here. I was proposing a system that mixed Geography and popular vote to chose the members of the house so that all parts of the state receive representation rather than focus on most people getting representation. I implied that the system we use in congress of blending Geography and populism works well and we can blend them all of the way down, like our current and my proposed system to chose representatives for congress.
Somehow you’re trying to say that’s unworkable even though it’s currently working both in electing member on congress and between the two houses of congress. Sure it’s not a fit for everything but even in the court systems we’ve seen fit to break the lower courts down by geographic area. But I am not sure how to argue for or against you here (I also caught a cold from my kids so I’m in bed with a stuff head and not thinking clearly)
I see your point, but would it be better to have a representative that takes your phone call but has only about 1/21 of the power of a current representative? And wouldn’t it be easier to buy off (assuming that is true) 30k people versus 750k?
IMHO, yes. I’d rather have a small voice than no voice at all.
And it’s not just that they have power in congress, they are supposed to be your liaison to the federal govt. If you have questions about the going ons or operations or something, you should be able to ask them.
You mean voters? Eh, probably not. You mean actually paying for their vote? You would get exactly the same bang for your buck if you paid enough voters to elect one representative with the current size.
OTOH, it is easier to buy off 435 representatives than it is to buy off 10,000.
I don’t think we have a system that works in Congress. We have two systems that work separately in the two separate halves of Congress. The House is based on population and the Senate is based on geography. No conflict arises between these two systems because they are kept separate.
If I’m understanding your proposal, what you’re suggesting is we should base the House on a system that combines population and geography. That is where I see the conflict arising from.
I’ll be honest; I’m not sure what exactly it is you’re proposing. In an earlier post you talked about basing House representation on 30,000 person districts. That’s a population based system.
But in a later post, you talked about a system where population and geography were co-equal considerations in forming districts. If you explained the details of this proposed system I missed it.
Then you just find someone who is somewhat politically connected. I probably have 1/20 the power of a Congressman in my community.
Not really. Out of 10k, there will probably be a huge number of “safe” districts. The moneyed interests can concentrate on the swing seats and more easily convince 30k people—nothing illegal, no vote buying, no bribes—you just flood the market with hit pieces that the opponent sexually harassed his secretary, kicked his dog, or whatever other scandalous and untrue things you want to say that the opponent doesn’t have the money to combat.
It’s probably just me being unclear. Our current system is geographic districts that have roughly equal population. I would like to see more districts of a lower population level. This allows people who live together to pick a representative that is actually reachable and can better represent those people.
I was arguing against a system where the concept of congressional districts was eliminated and rather all congressmen were elected state wide in a single election. The theory was that it would allow people with minority interests to elect a representative that reflects them but my complaint was that it would not reflect local interests (Geography) unless we got down to the 30k rep level.
I think that the problem with the house is that it is not granular enough but I would like to keep its geographic districts. While the senate which represents geography but is elected state wide also makes sense.
Okay, I think we were using the same term in two different ways. When I think of a system described as being based on geography, I feel it’s a system like where a specific region gets a set level of representation regardless of what its population is. The obvious example would be the system we use for the Senate, where every state gets two Senators, regardless of what the population of the state is.
So when you wrote about having a system for House representation that would be based in part on geography, this is what I thought you were suggesting. I thought perhaps you meant a system like each county in a state having a representative in the House or something like that.
If office and floor space isn’t an issue, why don’t we do this:
Any candidate that gets at least 5% of the vote in their district becomes a representative. Each representative will have voting power roughly proportional to the number of people who voted for them (can’t be exactly proportionate because there’s always a grey area in the number of votes for each candidate that only becomes an issue when it’s really close).
I’ve brought this up before, but it seemed like no one cared enough. It seems trivial to implement with today’s technology. Yes, it would have been a problem at times in the past to tabulate votes, but it shouldn’t be now.