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the big cities will tend to steamroll over the priorities of the rural voter, and urban voter priorities differ from rural voter priorities. in a way, it seems

the big cities will tend to steamroll over the priorities of the rural voter, and urban voter priorities differ from rural voter priorities. in a way, it seems natural that rural voters will lean a little toward whatever party is out of power in the cities. e.g. urban voters are happy to add more land to parks and monuments, while rural voters might be happy to leave the land open to hunting, cattle grazing, logging, etc because that's their livelihood. urban voters may be happy to rearrange water rights so that water flows into cities more easily. rural voters probably prefer to use the water locally for farming. in rural California, a voter who perceives that Los Angeles wants to take water away (hurting farms), might start supporting whatever political party pushes back on Los Angeles even if the voter disagrees with some of that party's positions on other issues

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>the big cities will tend to steamroll over the priorities of the rural voter Only if there are more urban voters than rural voters, with little spread of suburbia between them. For almost all of American history, this wasn't true. The original reason to over-enfranchise rural areas was because in the Colonial period, rural areas were wealthy and urban areas were perpetually in debt. The Founders didn't want the urban areas, which held pluralities but not majorities of the population, to vote away their debts to the rural landholders. Of course, nowadays it's the opposite way around: the cities hold the wealth and the rural areas are in perpetual debt, as well as constantly receiving net transfer payments from urban America even when rural citizens are not actually poor at all. If we had a one person, one vote system, I would be happy to discuss the cultural and economic divides between urban and rural voters. As it is, we have a system in which rural voters just count for more seats than urban ones, so the particular parties and policy positions don't matter nearly as much as that foundational issue.
- HillaryBriss 10y ago
  Interesting. It seems that the same underlying dynamic would quite possibly have been present at a lot of other times in American history too. But it would have run in the opposite direction: rural voters steamrolling the priorities of the urban voter, causing urban voters to lean a bit toward whatever political party opposed the rural voters (if there was such a party).

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>the big cities will tend to steamroll over the priorities of the rural voter Only if there are more urban voters than rural voters, with little spread of suburbia between them. For almost all of American history, this wasn't true. The original reason to over-enfranchise rural areas was because in the Colonial period, rural areas were wealthy and urban areas were perpetually in debt. The Founders didn't want the urban areas, which held pluralities but not majorities of the population, to vote away their debts to the rural landholders. Of course, nowadays it's the opposite way around: the cities hold the wealth and the rural areas are in perpetual debt, as well as constantly receiving net transfer payments from urban America even when rural citizens are not actually poor at all. If we had a one person, one vote system, I would be happy to discuss the cultural and economic divides between urban and rural voters. As it is, we have a system in which rural voters just count for more seats than urban ones, so the particular parties and policy positions don't matter nearly as much as that foundational issue.

HillaryBriss 10y ago
Interesting. It seems that the same underlying dynamic would quite possibly have been present at a lot of other times in American history too. But it would have run in the opposite direction: rural voters steamrolling the priorities of the urban voter, causing urban voters to lean a bit toward whatever political party opposed the rural voters (if there was such a party).