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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 lar
by 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 agoI believe the intent was "1.7 representative per million citizens" as that was the unit used in all the comparisons.
- dsp1234 10y agoFor 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
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoNote that the United States had 512 658 elected state and local officials in 1992 [1], or 2,060 state and local elected officials per million people. [1] http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gov/gc/gc92_1_2.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gov/gc/gc92_1_2.pdf see page 19