They came up with the best thing they could agree on at the time. They did not intend on it to become sacred, untouchable, and without the ability to change with the times, and sometimes we have changed it. Just not quite enough times.
It may be one of those myths, but I remember that one of the founders initially were proposing the constitution to be rewritten every 10 years.
19 years, in a letter from Jefferson to Madison.
To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 6 September 1789
He thought that firstly no document or law could be forever relevant, so it needed revisioning occasionally, and the 19 years seems to tie into the idea of each generation taking a new look and either accepting existing laws as still good or making changes.
The French Revolution created an easier method for reforming The Republic and rewriting their constitution.
They enshrined the revolutionary aspects of revolution instead of its leaders.
That said the Federalists got part of the idea from ancient Lycia on having proportional representation and then added in keeping it in check by another chamber with equal footing.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230906-the-ancient-civilisation-that-inspired-us-democracy
It is a good idea. But we need more Congresspersons to lower the people each congressperson represents. It was ~95,000 in 1940 … in 2020 it is closer to 750,000 per congresscritter.
I may be misremembering, but I believe the way things were originally designed was that the Senate was supposed to represent the states, not the people. The house represented the people. That’s why the Senate has equal representation (because the states were meant to have equal say), and the house proportionate to population.
That is correct. The state legislatures generally (if not always) picked the senators, but due to huge state corruption, it was almost always political qui pro quo, and some states even going full terms without selecting sla sentaor. This led to the 17th amendment (which you’ll here rednecks and/or white supremacists asposing, because states’ rights.)
Edit to add: Wikipedia knows it better than I do.
Appreciate the extra details and the link!
This is correct, and this part of the system works fine. What should have happened though is a population break point where a state has to break up if they exceed a certain population. CA should be at least 3 states. New York needs a split as well, probably a few others. There is no way a state can serve its population well when the population is measured in the tens of millions.
I agree in theory, but big cities are where things get muddy.
When a single city (e.g. New York City, population ~8 million just to use the biggest example) has a population larger than entire states, how do you “split” the state of New York? If the city itself, excluding any of the surrounding “metro area”, was its own state, it would be the 13th most populous in the US and also the smallest by area.
Do we carve up each of the boroughs as a separate state, and give New York City 10 senators? It would be more proportional representation for the people of NYC, but also their close proximity and interdependence would very much align their priorities and make them a formidable voting bloc. And even then, you could still fit 4 Vermonts worth of people into Brooklyn alone. How much would we need to cut to make it equitable? Or do we work the other way as well and tell Vermont it no longer gets to be its own state because there aren’t enough people?
For states like California, which still have large cities but not quite to the extreme of New York, how do we divide things fairly? Do we take a ruler and cut it into neat thirds, trying to leave some cities as the nucleus of each new state? Or do we end up with the state of California (area mostly unchanged), the state of Los Angeles, and the state of The Bay Area?
Are we bringing back city-states? We already have city-counties.
I like city-states, they’re my favorite part of fantasy novels.
Recipe for outright disaster as duplication of shit gets way out of control. We have too much already.
Exactly. Eliminate the Senate, and you have Panem: An urban Capitol district unilaterally controlling the rural satellite districts.
I’ll add, it’s incredibly dumb that the house is capped at 435 seats. There just is no way 435 people can represent the entirety of the nations population. Given advances in communication technology, there’s also no reason to keep it there. They really should be increasing the size of the house dramatically and no longer have a cap. The size of the house should grow, or shrink, with the size of the population.
We pay more in taxes than the welfare states, have less representation… Seems like there was something in US History about taxation without representation.
Secede. That’ll teach 'em.
Honestly of all the states, California probably has the best chance at seceding successfully.
At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if California’s GDP has surpassed that of the UK, which would make it the fifth largest economy in the world if it were to secede.
A quick Google search says you are correct
Dare I say… defederate? *smugface*
Of course, the US has had tons of taxation without representation, I have no idea what else you could be referring too.
It’s a government by rich owners for rich owners and it’s working as designed
And none of you poors can do anything about it.
I mean, that’s most governments
Don’t forget, those senators translate to electoral college votes.
Them plus the house reps, which are artificially capped at a low number, again benefitting the low population states
Diddnt they cap the amount of house of representatives?
This is an example of why the House of Representatives also exists.
Except CA isn’t fairly represented in the House either. CA would need 68 representatives just to have the same representation as Wyoming.
And say, shouldn’t the states that have a huge economy and bring in more tax dollars have more of a say than the red welfare states that suck up those tax dollars? Just sayin…
I disagree with the economy part. Fuck that. Your value isn’t described by how much wealth you generate.
Republicans are (or were) hypocritical with their talk of fiscal responsibility while representing states that take in more money than they give back. This should be pointed out if they ever return to that argument. This isn’t to say poor people from republican states (or anywhere else) are less valuable though. It’s only hypocrisy that’s wrong, not trying to help lower income people that’s wrong.
It’s pointed out every time. Their base is completely blind to any kind of irony or hypocrisy.
Im not even sure theyre blind to it, they just only care about winning ethics be dammed
And say, shouldn’t the states that have a huge economy and bring in more tax dollars have more of a say than the red welfare states that suck up those tax dollars?
By that logic, a rich person should have more say in government?
It’s not a question of should. They do.
No, they don’t generate the tax dollars
States are not people and should not be given any extra power simply for being a state.
The rich economy actually contributes
shouldn’t the states that have a huge economy and bring in more tax dollars have more of a say
Wtf, dude? Can you make something even more american-sounding?
CA would need 68 representatives just to have the same representation as Wyoming.
Every state is guaranteed one representative, and then otherwise by population. Wyoming has one representative.
Exactly and then based on that number what we SHOULD do is do proportionality based on that in the most even way possible. But then the issue is states like delaware with almost double Wyoming population would still be unequal since they would still get 1 representative but would be more fair for California. Congress shouldn’t have a capped number. Every population of Wyoming size should have one representative in Congress this would give California 68
The number should have been capped smaller. As it is, there are too many representatives; it’s already impossibly hard to get anything through congress. If you want to make gridlock even worse, then sure, add more people.
No more representation the better. It is easier to vote someone out and be more engaged when there is a representative for every 250k to 500k people. I don’t agree one person should be able to gridlock congress though. Key thing is there is laws in the books to unlock more there would have to be a changing of a law to reduce then less people for billionaires to buy off
It’s not that any one person can gridlock Congress, but that the more people you have, the more difficult it is to get enough of them pointing in the same direction to get anything accomplished.
More people you have in Congress the higher chance their view will reflect America causing less grid lock on issues 60-70% believe in. It’s not like they wouldn’t be in the same party. Also you are more likely to replace bad actors since you will be more engaged and any lone wolf wouldn’t matter as much
How about selecting reps independently from home state in a national election. Every million people get to send someone from anywhere. The dakotas can share one
More representation the better I am cool with 250k or 500k. Easier to hold accountable
The house were any given rep represents between 550k and close to a million constituents?
There’s no need for a bicameral system. It was a system designed to capitulate to wealthy interests and nothing more.
Except the House of Representatives had its numbers capped in the early 1900s, breaking its proportionality. Wyoming has 1 rep with a population 584k. California had 52 reps with a population of 38.97M. This makes the ration approximately 1 rep per 750k people. Working people count as nearly 1.5 Californians, for representation in the House, and similarly in the Electoral college.
One person, one vote.
In Germany we have two votes, one for a local representative and one for a party. In itself it’s a pretty decent system
Yet, the local representatives in the pairlaments (Bundestag, Landtag) represent districts of approximately the same population number. Thus, in our first chamber, no vote has more value than another.
But in the Bundesrat, which comes closest to the US senate, states with higher population number do have more representatives than small states, which weakens the inequality of votes, yet still one vote from Bremen (population 700k, 3 representatives) has 13 times as much value as one from NRW (p. 18 mio, 6 rep.).
I’m not really happy with our democracy. It always feels like our say stops at the ballot box, we need more direct democracy.
Eight years ago I would have agreed. But, I think we’ve demonstrated the short comings of putting authority for our most important policies in the hands of your average citizen.
I don’t have a better answer, mind you. Hopefully someone way further right on the “average citizen” bell curve has better ideas.
Where did we put authority for our most important policies in the hands of average citizens?
If we required an IQ test and general knowledge test equally of all parties and eliminated all those who don’t know anything about what’s going on and those 10% or more below average we would have a better run country save for the Republicans revolting and committing acts of terrorism.
If we divided the country all the rurals would have the option of moving to Trumpistan
The German system is what the US would have been if they would have regularly updated their constitution.
It was largely modelled after the US, with bugfixes applied. It definitely has issues but isn’t remotely as fucked as a partisan 2-party system.
One bugfix, if you want so, is that in Germany, on federal level, we only have one chamber of pairlament, the Bundestag, that is directly elected by the people. The other chamber of pairlament, the Bundesrat, is a pairlament constituted of representatives of the governments of the federal states, i.e. a pairlament of the executive.
But then the poor would run the country instead of a handful of unimaginably rich individuals! What kind of democracy would THAT be?
We don’t know but it was guaranteed to be different.
But look at the US popular vote. Even with different representation of the populace, this election would still have been fucked. We do need massive reform of the US voting structure, but this is not the biggest thing. Getting rid of first past the post in favor of at least ranked choice would make a much bigger difference.
That would open the door for a true left wing party to actually have a voice.
Ranked voting is a very good thing all countries should implement.
It is as it needed to be to get the states to sign on. But times have changed, and it needs to as well
I’m assuming it’s working as intended.
The Senate is. The House is not. The artificial limit of 435 set in 1911 has turned it into a pseudo-Senate and done a lot of harm to this country. With the same population representation as then, we should have around 1600 Representatives now.
A lot of the issues we currently have in Congress simply wouldn’t exist with the House operating as it was designed.
I end up having this conversation often because I believe the Congress Apportionment Act is where we really went off the rails. With our technology, I believe we could handle 1600 representatives and they wouldn’t need to be full-time careers. Would congress ever agree to repeal the act?
To benefit Southern slave states and sparsely populated rural states? Check.
Exactly. It’s capitalism. The land is more valuable than the people on it.
(This is my observation, not my personal opinion)
Can we get 25 million volunteers to move proportionally to red states for the next few years?
I moved to a red state. Absolutely awful. Don’t do it. Texas is an irremediable shit hole.
West Virginia checking in
Half a million movers per month would both wreck California and rural states real quick.
Also Cali would turn red quickly. I don’t think our voter numbers show the true story. There are a lot of MAGA crazies in CA. I just doubt they bother voting atm because they know it’s pointless.
That’s a bit incomplete.
Those who stay back would find cities, economy, infrastructure and culture crumbling and uprooted. Ghost town culture doesn’t exactly inspire hope and confidence.
On the other hand, there would be somewhat of a plague syndrome benefitting those.
California can take 2 for the team.
Lol if enough democrats moved to texas and flipped it blue, we would never have a republican president again.
They want to pass a law that says you have to get the majority of the majority of counties and they have 256 mostly small rural counties some with less than 100 people in them.
I did the math and you could hold the majority of the majority with as little as 4% of the vote.
If you try to be cute and take over a bunch of small counties the law could just be further amended or you know they could just not find your bodies.
I’m staying in blueland
Blame Connecticut. It’s their fault. It would up benefiting the South, but it was Delaware and CT mad about larger states having more a say.
The South actually wanted proportional representation. They were growing faster and had more land.
It would be somewhat OK if the House was much more powerful relative to the Senate, similar to how the (unelected) Canadian Senate rarely if ever opposes the will of the House.
Representative democracy is unstable and corruptible by design and it can’t be anything else.
To be fair, it is the united ´states´, not the united ´people living on the continent´. It wouldn’t be any more fair if California was making the decisions for 20 other states, just because they happen to have a crap load of people. The federal government is kind of supposed to be making decisions and maintaining things between states, not all these decisions affecting the people so directly.
to be fair? fuck that. the states represent people, just arguing ‘states rights’ is disingenuous at this point.
land shouldn’t vote, but the way our government currently is functioning, regardless of what our slaveholding ‘founding fathers’ intended, is an absolute mess.
and I don’t accept your argument in good faith.
edit. a word
It wouldn’t be any more fair if California was making the decisions for 20 other states
U wot
Electorates per capita work better because they give the population of a country an equal amount of electable government. Positioning them as just Californians makes them a lower class citizen of the United States with lesser representation.
It also means that criminals will recognise the power of the Republican states and side with them for effect.
From one perspective, per capita is fair, but from another perspective it isn’t. The Constitution actually did a reasonable job of trying to address both cases, it just didn’t adequately account for such a huge swing in population and technology. One could argue that that is a failing of the people that came afterwards, since the Constitution also provided mechanisms for modification.
For an example of where it is not fair, consider an agreement between three groups and we all agree to vote on decisions that affect all three of us, say ‘how things are taxed’ or how often elections are held. Each group gets a vote, and 2 out of 3 wins. If that’s the agreement we entered into, my group would expect to get a vote now or a hundred years in the future even if your group grows it shrinks, it’s an agreement at the group level. Especially if we made considerations for a different type of vote that does take group membership size into account. It would be pretty shitty for your group to get big and insist that it should make all the decisions for me.
No, it would be fair if California and the 20 other states had the same say. Laws should be by people, for people. Every person should have the same voting power and political representation. In a democracy, people vote, not land, or “states”, or anything else. People.
I don’t even care so much about the Bicameral Compromise; but I do care that the electoral votes apply toward electing the President.
The reapportionment act of 1929 is screwing us over in the electoral college. The House should have a LOT more representatives, which would make the it more fair.
But more representatives would make it more difficult for big businesses to bribe them, and nobody is going to vote to dilute their personal power, so changing that is a nonstarter.
