7 ms·

Article 1 section 2 paragraph 3 of the US Constitution (2014)

94 points by fcsuper 10y ago

idm 10y ago
This is a valuable line of thinking. We could probably convince ourselves "it would never work" but instead, I'd be more interested to hear what other possibilities this would open up.
- cderwin 10y ago
  > I'd be more interested to hear what other possibilities this would open up. Not sure if this is what you meant by "possibilities," but I see a couple of major issues with this: - The cost of buying off a politician (oh sorry I meant "lobbying") dramatically decreases. It's a lot cheaper to campaign to 30,000 people than it is to campaign for several million. - The sheer number of representatives (~10600) presents a problem: it grants much much more significance to the senate, because deliberating on bill in the house would be impossible (and introduces effective filibuster since a 40% coalition could use 5 minute speaking slots to take up 2 weeks of time on the floor) - Gerrymandering would become much, much worse as the size of districts decreased and number of representatives increased, just because the number of options you have to split up your state dramatically increase. Potentially minority districts would have 90% minority support while majority districts could be much more competitive (allowing for far more of them).
oconnor663 10y ago
> There would be so many representatives, that votes would have to be made based on what the person feels is right for their 30,000 voters, rather than how much money they can collect from lobbyist for their next campaign. I feel like the author pulls this conclusion out of thin air.
- gr3yh47 10y ago
  pretty well supported by the idea that >9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials. because a ~20x increase in the number of representatives would probably mean a roughly proportional increase in lobbying resources
  - peteretep 10y ago
    When the cost of something goes up 20x, one rarely sees demand unchanged at the new price point. I don't believe influence to be so price inelastic.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    The representatives become more dependent on their party to win the election and stay incumbent, so the lobbying money shifts to the members in the party leadership who will eventually direct the other members on how they should vote. The representatives become more dependent on scheduling and organization, so lobbying shifts to those people who control the calendars and schedules. You can't have a working organization of 9400 people who all have equal power. If it isn't given an explicit hierarchy, one will form spontaneously, and lobbyists will obviously focus on the topmost layers of it. If there are 9400 targets, you don't lobby all 9400 of them. You lobby the 940 most likely to sway the vote.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    How do you figure? Each person would be one-twentieth as influential and important to sway as before (assuming, probably wrongly, that there aren't blocs you can sway by targeting one or two people).
- pc86 10y ago
  Yes and no. When a member of Congress is deciding how they feel about an issue (in the rare example where the party line hasn't already dictated it), I think it's unlikely they think about specific individual voters in their district. I know when it comes to votes on our borough council, those council members think about their neighbors, the guy down the street, etc. Now they're only representing about 2k people each, but it's not hard to imagine that if you represent 30k people, only a fraction of whom are politically active, you're much more likely to think of individual voters than if you represent over 20x as many people.
- geekamongus 10y ago
  That tends to happen on personal blogs. Still, the point is that accountability is more likely to be present, and being bought off is less likely.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  Most blog posts', comments' and even some research papers' conclusions are similarly "pulled out of thin air", as you put it, or simply conclude what seems logical to them. It would be more interesting to hear your thoughts on why you seem to think it's wrong. Merely a "citation needed" isn't helping.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Research papers usually have more than a citation or two. It is the job of the person making an argument in a field with a long line of extant research to demonstrate that they understand what's been contributed before them.
    - lucb1e 10y ago
      Many papers have been found to be non-reproducible, and from time to time I read papers where I don't see how their conclusion is logical given the data. To me that indicates that often conclusions are drawn that seem logical to the researchers, and I'm sure they make perfect sense at the time, but every once in a while they end up being wrong later.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Indeed, in practice it seems that the fewer people someone represents the cheaper they are to bribe.
Pxtl 10y ago
Here in Canada we have 100,000 constituents per mp, and things are not better. Their political footprint is so small that their party affiliation is all that matters. This means they all do exactly what their party says for fear of losing that party affiliation and becoming unelectable. Compare vs the blue dog Democrats that held up healthcare reform. That kind of party infighting is unheard-of in Canada.
- bitwize 10y ago
  It's pretty much the same in most parliamentary systems. You're basically voting for a party, not a representative. American political parties are much more like broad coalitions than their Commonwealth counterparts. If a candidate is vaguely left-ish, supports high taxes, extensive government services, and/or is sympathetic to minorities and foreigners, they will likely run as a Democrat, whereas the small government and/or traditional values and/or America fuck yeah! candidates are more likely to run as Republicans.
  - thomasfoster96 10y ago
    How many Democrats or Republicans would win election as independents? I doubt many would. While party discipline is looser in the US Congress, party affiliation is still very important.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      I think the point is that the US system encourages players to form a "coalition" before going to the polls, rather than afterward.
- pc86 10y ago
  Not familiar with Canadian elections, do you vote for a party or an individual?
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    Individual, but with zero media coverage of these local individual seats, theyre basically just placeholders for their party platform. The media only covers the party's leaders. I mean, Toronto has dozens of elections for mp seats, which should the Star cover?
apaprocki 10y ago
It would be pretty interesting to look at a map of the large cities. A new waterfront development near me was slated to add somewhere around 15k new residents so you would probably hit the 30k mark after maybe 4-5 city blocks. There's a 2 block stretch nearby with 5 ~500 unit count towers, so they'd probably hit it. That would essentially make the government representatives akin to the building HOA Boards.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
> Can you imagine a House of Representatives with 9400 members? How would business get done? Well, maybe that's the point. There would be so many representatives, that votes would have to be made based on what the person feels is right for their 30,000 voters, rather than how much money they can collect from lobbyist for their next campaign. 9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials. It would make pork barrel projects almost nonexistent because districts would be too small to gather enough support for the most silly of funding requests. It's a lot harder to buy off 9400 people than it is 435. Particularly if each of those 9400 people have to go back to talk directly to just 30,000 people several times a year. Representatives' support would really have to come from the local grassroots level. They might even vote per their constituents desires! Imagine that! This seems like common sense, but there are a number of things in the social sciences that don't work out as common sense would. Voting is, after all, largely irrational. The other possibility is that corruption would be reduced in scope as to make it difficult to detect and and root out. Do you know 10 of the 435 representatives? The average person doesn't. Have you seen a corrupt city council? Now imagine every 9400 of those people representing 30k and imagine the possibilities for corruption. > The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. If we keep to the current system of making huge bills with tons and tons of legal code, things would be unmanageable. However, that doesn't necessarily need to be a roadblock. Maybe we shouldn't keep the current system of bill introduction! Maybe our Representatives should really just submit succinct laws that apply to very specific things. We would still need a huge bill from time to time to address social and other national issues, and the national budget, but we would pretty much end riders that plague the current system. We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process. (Anyone hear of this Wonder called The Internet?) Ok, so now the author is suggesting not just reforming law but reforming voting behavior. Good luck? What the author seems to be complaining about is an individual's access to their representative. This is fair, but reducing the number of constituents in no way guarantee that. The same dynamics discussed by Mayhew would still be in play. [1] Access can be increased via modern technologies, but that's a seprate argument. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connec...
- 10y ago
em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
>> "The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. ... We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process." An "issue tracker", if you will.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Is there any project where there are 4000 "real" decisionmakers? Though I suppose elections are kind of like this.
CapitalistCartr 10y ago
This is a solution to the excessive power concentrated in Washington, D. C. Dilution to more people. I think better would be not concentrating the power there in the first place.
eternalban 10y ago
I used to think our 3 'powers' - legislative, judiciary, and executive -- were sufficient. But I no longer believe that the legislative is up to the task of oversight of the executive. If the foundational debates were happening today, I would argue for a 4th branch of government: operational. A modern system should avail itself of available technology. An 'open source' operational branch of the constitutinal state would be afforded the power of runtime oversight of the executive, and ideally be crowd sourced. The issue of 'state secrets' is somewhat legitimate, but imo a healthy system would strive to minimize such requirements, and worst case it can refer such matter to the much more compact legislative body.
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  So basically the civil service?
  - eternalban 10y ago
    Civil servants are not elected, and are part of the executive. Think civil monitors.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  So an auditory branch of government [0]? It’s not that uncommon outside the Anglosphere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_branches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_b...
  - eternalban 10y ago
    That's interesting. Civil monitors would engage in activity that includes more immediate attention beyond the post facto review and redress (which is the sense I got from your linked content). [p.s. For example, detach from the deliberative legislative body functions such as United States House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.]
    - thomasfoster96 10y ago
Pxtl 10y ago
Imho, the correct solution to corruption is to fund the election process. People work for the one who pays them. If there is no money provided for elections, then candidates will be paid by private funders, and work for them.
kmm 10y ago
The US has 1.7 representatives in parliament per citizen. Compared to countries in Europe, that's very low [1], but even in Europe there's a clear trend for larger countries to have proportionally less seats, e.g. compare Estonia (1.3 million people, 76 seats per million citizens) to Germany (80 million people, 8 seats per million). Looking at larger democratic bodies, the US doesn't seem that underrepresented compared to the European Union (1.4 per million) and India (0.6 per million!) Having nearly ten thousand MPs seems very complicated, although I think it could be a good application of modern technology. However, how could this every be implemented? Even the most ardent supporters wouldn't be able to deny that it would be quite an experiment, and can you really do experiments on a nation state with hundreds of millions of people? We could try in a smaller country first, but using actual countries as "guinea pigs" sounds totally ludicrous. 1: https://jakubmarian.com/number-of-seats-in-the-national-parliament-by-country-in-europe-total-per-capita-map/ https://jakubmarian.com/number-of-seats-in-the-national-parl...
- sparky_z 10y ago
  >The US has 1.7 representatives in parliament per citizen. Either I'm reading this wrong (what do you mean by "parliament"?), or this can't possibly be correct.
  - morinted 10y ago
    I believe the intent was "1.7 representative per million citizens" as that was the unit used in all the comparisons.
    - dsp1234 10y ago
      For reference, the actual numbers are 535 congressmen (435 representatives and 100 senators) for about 324 million people for a ratio of about 1.65/Million. This ratio is likely only going to get lower. The number of senators is equal to (2 x number of states)[0]. The number of representatives is set by law at 435, and has not changed since 1911[1]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_1:_Composition.3B_Election_of_Senators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_Stat... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911
douche 10y ago
Having a US representative for every 30k residents would, in many cases, result in congressional districts that are smaller than currently existing State legislative districts.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Having a US representative for every 30k residents would, in many cases, result in congressional districts that are smaller than currently existing State legislative districts. That's something of an understatement...Los Angeles (just the city proper, not the metro area) would have more members of the House of Representatives than there the total members of the California State Assembly and California State Senate combined. (133 vs. 120).
  - douche 10y ago
    The other extreme would be New Hampshire, where we have just over 3000 residents per representative, and thus the third-largest legislature in the English-speaking world. Possibly one of the lowest-paid legislatures, as well - $100/year, plus gas money...
hlandau 10y ago
The more I look at parliament, the more it seems like a really crummy version of Git, at least with regard to how it proposes and amends legislation. Modern technology could make very large parliaments feasible, and make them more visible and accountable to the public.
neuromancer2701 10y ago
There is this(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am...) still outstanding. It has passed the house and the senate so it just need 27 more states to be put into law. It would seem getting this through 27 states would a lower barrier than a lot of other options. Add in term limits and repeal of the 17th amendment is a better formula then amending the constitution to overturn Citizen United.
- fcsuper 10y ago
  That failed Amendment didn't seem important enough to the founders, but nowadays, it makes good sense. At the very least, it would have forced consideration of this issue throughout our history, rather than being able to forget about it since 1911. As for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, I'm not favor of that, as this is the only hedge we currently have against gerrymandering that keeps our House in the hands of the two parties. There's a reason that there is commonly a party mismatch between the House and Senate. Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely. I also agree with you regrading Citizens United, but it really shouldn't need an amendment since the idea of a corporation existing on its own is a modern day fabrication in the first place. However, since the courts went a bit sideways on this issue, it seems like an amendment will be necessary.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely. The Senate is only redundant because it is popularly-elected, just like the House. What it ought to be is the voice of the states. The state legislatures and governors should select senators (I'd like to leave the exact mechanism up to each state, but the key is that the senators should represent the state; honestly, I'd like to make them responsible to the legislature & governor as well). Our federal system was gravely damaged by the 17th Amendment; the states have become not much more than glorified local governments, rather than the sovereign states they ought to be (and, legally, still are).
SubiculumCode 10y ago
In the past one might reasonably expect to meet your representative at the local pub, tea and coffee house. You'd say, "Hey Sally, we should really do something about patent reform" and she'd say "Bob, I agree. There are two bills that are being ..." Right now, it is nothing like that. My representative lives in another town, and I have never even seen her face in person except at a rally. This should be unconstitutional.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  That sort of situation has never existed at the national level (except maybe back when only white male property owners voted). Even with almost 10k representatives in Congress, representatives would still have 30k constituents each to deal with. It would be almost impossible to meet 30k people in a year, let alone give each of them time to discuss issues and fit in actually being a legislator.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    > That sort of situation has never existed at the national level (except maybe back when only white male property owners voted). At that time (ending in 1856), travel was also arduous and slow; nobody was going back home for the weekend.
  - SubiculumCode 10y ago
    at 3ok they might not know your name but they probably shop at one of the same three grocery stores.
SubiculumCode 10y ago
The point of the Senate is to represent States, and the House, the People. We've screwed both up, and each does neither.
jdmichal 10y ago
I don't understand the conceptual leap at all from more representatives to smaller bills. Large bills are the result of political negotiation. You want X, I want Y, let's talk... That results in a bill with both X and Y. That's not going to go away with more people involved. In fact, it will probably get worse as everyone wants their own piece of pork in the barrel.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> 9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials. Rather, it would be easier; the larger a body is, the less the body actually works in a flat egalitarian manner, and the more the work of the body gets done through formal or informal power structures created within the body; this is already a substantial difference between the Senate and the House when the latter has a bit over 4 times the size of the former, at 94 times the size it would be even a bigger distinction. Lobbyists are experts at understanding and leveraging both the formal and informal power structures in governing bodies to focus efforts at influence.
tmzt 10y ago
Interesting proposal, but what is the justification for maintaining a geographical orientation in a system with a larger number of representatives? What if I'm more interested in advocating for an issue that in bringing money into my district. What if I'm ideologically disconnected from my neighbors. Can I put my vote towards a representative in Silicon Valley even if I live in Ohio? If we are looking at modernizing the system, could we stop tying ourselves to a time when communcation was by horseback?
- emodendroket 10y ago
  That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The intent of this system is to protect regional interests, many of which are still with us (natural resources, garbage disposal, and employment are three obvious examples to me).

94 points by fcsuper 10y ago

idm 10y ago

This is a valuable line of thinking. We could probably convince ourselves "it would never work" but instead, I'd be more interested to hear what other possibilities this would open up.

cderwin 10y ago
> I'd be more interested to hear what other possibilities this would open up. Not sure if this is what you meant by "possibilities," but I see a couple of major issues with this: - The cost of buying off a politician (oh sorry I meant "lobbying") dramatically decreases. It's a lot cheaper to campaign to 30,000 people than it is to campaign for several million. - The sheer number of representatives (~10600) presents a problem: it grants much much more significance to the senate, because deliberating on bill in the house would be impossible (and introduces effective filibuster since a 40% coalition could use 5 minute speaking slots to take up 2 weeks of time on the floor) - Gerrymandering would become much, much worse as the size of districts decreased and number of representatives increased, just because the number of options you have to split up your state dramatically increase. Potentially minority districts would have 90% minority support while majority districts could be much more competitive (allowing for far more of them).

oconnor663 10y ago

> There would be so many representatives, that votes would have to be made based on what the person feels is right for their 30,000 voters, rather than how much money they can collect from lobbyist for their next campaign. I feel like the author pulls this conclusion out of thin air.

gr3yh47 10y ago
pretty well supported by the idea that >9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials. because a ~20x increase in the number of representatives would probably mean a roughly proportional increase in lobbying resources
- peteretep 10y ago
  When the cost of something goes up 20x, one rarely sees demand unchanged at the new price point. I don't believe influence to be so price inelastic.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  The representatives become more dependent on their party to win the election and stay incumbent, so the lobbying money shifts to the members in the party leadership who will eventually direct the other members on how they should vote. The representatives become more dependent on scheduling and organization, so lobbying shifts to those people who control the calendars and schedules. You can't have a working organization of 9400 people who all have equal power. If it isn't given an explicit hierarchy, one will form spontaneously, and lobbyists will obviously focus on the topmost layers of it. If there are 9400 targets, you don't lobby all 9400 of them. You lobby the 940 most likely to sway the vote.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  How do you figure? Each person would be one-twentieth as influential and important to sway as before (assuming, probably wrongly, that there aren't blocs you can sway by targeting one or two people).
pc86 10y ago
Yes and no. When a member of Congress is deciding how they feel about an issue (in the rare example where the party line hasn't already dictated it), I think it's unlikely they think about specific individual voters in their district. I know when it comes to votes on our borough council, those council members think about their neighbors, the guy down the street, etc. Now they're only representing about 2k people each, but it's not hard to imagine that if you represent 30k people, only a fraction of whom are politically active, you're much more likely to think of individual voters than if you represent over 20x as many people.
geekamongus 10y ago
That tends to happen on personal blogs. Still, the point is that accountability is more likely to be present, and being bought off is less likely.
lucb1e 10y ago
Most blog posts', comments' and even some research papers' conclusions are similarly "pulled out of thin air", as you put it, or simply conclude what seems logical to them. It would be more interesting to hear your thoughts on why you seem to think it's wrong. Merely a "citation needed" isn't helping.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Research papers usually have more than a citation or two. It is the job of the person making an argument in a field with a long line of extant research to demonstrate that they understand what's been contributed before them.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    Many papers have been found to be non-reproducible, and from time to time I read papers where I don't see how their conclusion is logical given the data. To me that indicates that often conclusions are drawn that seem logical to the researchers, and I'm sure they make perfect sense at the time, but every once in a while they end up being wrong later.
emodendroket 10y ago
Indeed, in practice it seems that the fewer people someone represents the cheaper they are to bribe.

Pxtl 10y ago

Here in Canada we have 100,000 constituents per mp, and things are not better. Their political footprint is so small that their party affiliation is all that matters. This means they all do exactly what their party says for fear of losing that party affiliation and becoming unelectable. Compare vs the blue dog Democrats that held up healthcare reform. That kind of party infighting is unheard-of in Canada.

bitwize 10y ago
It's pretty much the same in most parliamentary systems. You're basically voting for a party, not a representative. American political parties are much more like broad coalitions than their Commonwealth counterparts. If a candidate is vaguely left-ish, supports high taxes, extensive government services, and/or is sympathetic to minorities and foreigners, they will likely run as a Democrat, whereas the small government and/or traditional values and/or America fuck yeah! candidates are more likely to run as Republicans.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  How many Democrats or Republicans would win election as independents? I doubt many would. While party discipline is looser in the US Congress, party affiliation is still very important.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    I think the point is that the US system encourages players to form a "coalition" before going to the polls, rather than afterward.
pc86 10y ago
Not familiar with Canadian elections, do you vote for a party or an individual?
- Pxtl 10y ago
  Individual, but with zero media coverage of these local individual seats, theyre basically just placeholders for their party platform. The media only covers the party's leaders. I mean, Toronto has dozens of elections for mp seats, which should the Star cover?

apaprocki 10y ago

It would be pretty interesting to look at a map of the large cities. A new waterfront development near me was slated to add somewhere around 15k new residents so you would probably hit the 30k mark after maybe 4-5 city blocks. There's a 2 block stretch nearby with 5 ~500 unit count towers, so they'd probably hit it. That would essentially make the government representatives akin to the building HOA Boards.

aaron-lebo 10y ago

> Can you imagine a House of Representatives with 9400 members? How would business get done? Well, maybe that's the point. There would be so many representatives, that votes would have to be made based on what the person feels is right for their 30,000 voters, rather than how much money they can collect from lobbyist for their next campaign. 9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials. It would make pork barrel projects almost nonexistent because districts would be too small to gather enough support for the most silly of funding requests. It's a lot harder to buy off 9400 people than it is 435. Particularly if each of those 9400 people have to go back to talk directly to just 30,000 people several times a year. Representatives' support would really have to come from the local grassroots level. They might even vote per their constituents desires! Imagine that! This seems like common sense, but there are a number of things in the social sciences that don't work out as common sense would. Voting is, after all, largely irrational. The other possibility is that corruption would be reduced in scope as to make it difficult to detect and and root out. Do you know 10 of the 435 representatives? The average person doesn't. Have you seen a corrupt city council? Now imagine every 9400 of those people representing 30k and imagine the possibilities for corruption. > The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. If we keep to the current system of making huge bills with tons and tons of legal code, things would be unmanageable. However, that doesn't necessarily need to be a roadblock. Maybe we shouldn't keep the current system of bill introduction! Maybe our Representatives should really just submit succinct laws that apply to very specific things. We would still need a huge bill from time to time to address social and other national issues, and the national budget, but we would pretty much end riders that plague the current system. We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process. (Anyone hear of this Wonder called The Internet?) Ok, so now the author is suggesting not just reforming law but reforming voting behavior. Good luck? What the author seems to be complaining about is an individual's access to their representative. This is fair, but reducing the number of constituents in no way guarantee that. The same dynamics discussed by Mayhew would still be in play. [1] Access can be increased via modern technologies, but that's a seprate argument. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connec...

10y ago

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago

>> "The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. ... We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process." An "issue tracker", if you will.

rtpg 10y ago
Is there any project where there are 4000 "real" decisionmakers? Though I suppose elections are kind of like this.

CapitalistCartr 10y ago

This is a solution to the excessive power concentrated in Washington, D. C. Dilution to more people. I think better would be not concentrating the power there in the first place.

eternalban 10y ago

I used to think our 3 'powers' - legislative, judiciary, and executive -- were sufficient. But I no longer believe that the legislative is up to the task of oversight of the executive. If the foundational debates were happening today, I would argue for a 4th branch of government: operational. A modern system should avail itself of available technology. An 'open source' operational branch of the constitutinal state would be afforded the power of runtime oversight of the executive, and ideally be crowd sourced. The issue of 'state secrets' is somewhat legitimate, but imo a healthy system would strive to minimize such requirements, and worst case it can refer such matter to the much more compact legislative body.

kchoudhu 10y ago
So basically the civil service?
- eternalban 10y ago
  Civil servants are not elected, and are part of the executive. Think civil monitors.
thomasfoster96 10y ago
So an auditory branch of government [0]? It’s not that uncommon outside the Anglosphere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_branches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_b...
- eternalban 10y ago
  That's interesting. Civil monitors would engage in activity that includes more immediate attention beyond the post facto review and redress (which is the sense I got from your linked content). [p.s. For example, detach from the deliberative legislative body functions such as United States House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.]
  - thomasfoster96 10y ago

Pxtl 10y ago

Imho, the correct solution to corruption is to fund the election process. People work for the one who pays them. If there is no money provided for elections, then candidates will be paid by private funders, and work for them.

kmm 10y ago

The US has 1.7 representatives in parliament per citizen. Compared to countries in Europe, that's very low [1], but even in Europe there's a clear trend for larger countries to have proportionally less seats, e.g. compare Estonia (1.3 million people, 76 seats per million citizens) to Germany (80 million people, 8 seats per million). Looking at larger democratic bodies, the US doesn't seem that underrepresented compared to the European Union (1.4 per million) and India (0.6 per million!) Having nearly ten thousand MPs seems very complicated, although I think it could be a good application of modern technology. However, how could this every be implemented? Even the most ardent supporters wouldn't be able to deny that it would be quite an experiment, and can you really do experiments on a nation state with hundreds of millions of people? We could try in a smaller country first, but using actual countries as "guinea pigs" sounds totally ludicrous. 1: https://jakubmarian.com/number-of-seats-in-the-national-parliament-by-country-in-europe-total-per-capita-map/ https://jakubmarian.com/number-of-seats-in-the-national-parl...

sparky_z 10y ago
>The US has 1.7 representatives in parliament per citizen. Either I'm reading this wrong (what do you mean by "parliament"?), or this can't possibly be correct.
- morinted 10y ago
  I believe the intent was "1.7 representative per million citizens" as that was the unit used in all the comparisons.
  - dsp1234 10y ago
    For reference, the actual numbers are 535 congressmen (435 representatives and 100 senators) for about 324 million people for a ratio of about 1.65/Million. This ratio is likely only going to get lower. The number of senators is equal to (2 x number of states)[0]. The number of representatives is set by law at 435, and has not changed since 1911[1]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_1:_Composition.3B_Election_of_Senators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_Stat... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911

douche 10y ago

Having a US representative for every 30k residents would, in many cases, result in congressional districts that are smaller than currently existing State legislative districts.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Having a US representative for every 30k residents would, in many cases, result in congressional districts that are smaller than currently existing State legislative districts. That's something of an understatement...Los Angeles (just the city proper, not the metro area) would have more members of the House of Representatives than there the total members of the California State Assembly and California State Senate combined. (133 vs. 120).
- douche 10y ago
  The other extreme would be New Hampshire, where we have just over 3000 residents per representative, and thus the third-largest legislature in the English-speaking world. Possibly one of the lowest-paid legislatures, as well - $100/year, plus gas money...

hlandau 10y ago

The more I look at parliament, the more it seems like a really crummy version of Git, at least with regard to how it proposes and amends legislation. Modern technology could make very large parliaments feasible, and make them more visible and accountable to the public.

neuromancer2701 10y ago

There is this(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am...) still outstanding. It has passed the house and the senate so it just need 27 more states to be put into law. It would seem getting this through 27 states would a lower barrier than a lot of other options. Add in term limits and repeal of the 17th amendment is a better formula then amending the constitution to overturn Citizen United.

fcsuper 10y ago
That failed Amendment didn't seem important enough to the founders, but nowadays, it makes good sense. At the very least, it would have forced consideration of this issue throughout our history, rather than being able to forget about it since 1911. As for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, I'm not favor of that, as this is the only hedge we currently have against gerrymandering that keeps our House in the hands of the two parties. There's a reason that there is commonly a party mismatch between the House and Senate. Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely. I also agree with you regrading Citizens United, but it really shouldn't need an amendment since the idea of a corporation existing on its own is a modern day fabrication in the first place. However, since the courts went a bit sideways on this issue, it seems like an amendment will be necessary.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely. The Senate is only redundant because it is popularly-elected, just like the House. What it ought to be is the voice of the states. The state legislatures and governors should select senators (I'd like to leave the exact mechanism up to each state, but the key is that the senators should represent the state; honestly, I'd like to make them responsible to the legislature & governor as well). Our federal system was gravely damaged by the 17th Amendment; the states have become not much more than glorified local governments, rather than the sovereign states they ought to be (and, legally, still are).

SubiculumCode 10y ago

In the past one might reasonably expect to meet your representative at the local pub, tea and coffee house. You'd say, "Hey Sally, we should really do something about patent reform" and she'd say "Bob, I agree. There are two bills that are being ..." Right now, it is nothing like that. My representative lives in another town, and I have never even seen her face in person except at a rally. This should be unconstitutional.

thomasfoster96 10y ago
That sort of situation has never existed at the national level (except maybe back when only white male property owners voted). Even with almost 10k representatives in Congress, representatives would still have 30k constituents each to deal with. It would be almost impossible to meet 30k people in a year, let alone give each of them time to discuss issues and fit in actually being a legislator.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  > That sort of situation has never existed at the national level (except maybe back when only white male property owners voted). At that time (ending in 1856), travel was also arduous and slow; nobody was going back home for the weekend.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  at 3ok they might not know your name but they probably shop at one of the same three grocery stores.

SubiculumCode 10y ago

The point of the Senate is to represent States, and the House, the People. We've screwed both up, and each does neither.

jdmichal 10y ago

I don't understand the conceptual leap at all from more representatives to smaller bills. Large bills are the result of political negotiation. You want X, I want Y, let's talk... That results in a bill with both X and Y. That's not going to go away with more people involved. In fact, it will probably get worse as everyone wants their own piece of pork in the barrel.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> 9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials. Rather, it would be easier; the larger a body is, the less the body actually works in a flat egalitarian manner, and the more the work of the body gets done through formal or informal power structures created within the body; this is already a substantial difference between the Senate and the House when the latter has a bit over 4 times the size of the former, at 94 times the size it would be even a bigger distinction. Lobbyists are experts at understanding and leveraging both the formal and informal power structures in governing bodies to focus efforts at influence.

tmzt 10y ago

Interesting proposal, but what is the justification for maintaining a geographical orientation in a system with a larger number of representatives? What if I'm more interested in advocating for an issue that in bringing money into my district. What if I'm ideologically disconnected from my neighbors. Can I put my vote towards a representative in Silicon Valley even if I live in Ohio? If we are looking at modernizing the system, could we stop tying ourselves to a time when communcation was by horseback?

emodendroket 10y ago
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The intent of this system is to protect regional interests, many of which are still with us (natural resources, garbage disposal, and employment are three obvious examples to me).