3 ms·

Why not take a step further and get rid of states?

by asdfologist 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago
That's actually a really good idea for the House.
- CalChris 10y ago
  Agreed since Wyoming already gets two Senators and a House member for their 584,153.
koenigdavidmj 10y ago
American states are sovereign entities, not mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Feds.
- CalChris 10y ago
  The sovereignty of states most definitely does not exist outside of the Constitution. For example, states can be split into two; Kentucky was originally part of the State of Virginia and became a separate state in 1792, the 15th. West Virginia was a part of Virginia, Maine was a part of Massachusetts, Vermont was a part of New York. This is covered in Article IV, Section 3, clause 1 of the Constitution which says: no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State... without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. This too can be changed. States are mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Constitution. This state sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation was done away with by the Constitution.
  - ende 10y ago
    No they are not. The states share sovereignty through the Federal government. That's the very definition of Federalism. We are not a single Unitary state. The mere fact that any partition of union requires the approval of the legislatures of the involved states is demonstative of this.
    - CalChris 10y ago
      That was litigated in the 1860s.
      - ende 10y ago
        Are you referring to West Virginia?
grandalf 10y ago
This is the right logical point to make. When we impose a political boundary due to a specific geographic boundary, we crystalize a bunch of winners and losers (compared to if we'd chosen a different geographical boundary). In the same way, however, nearly any law creates winners and losers compared to a slightly different, hypothetical version of the law. I think the intention behind creating geographical districting was to allow geographically dispersed interests to gain political power that would otherwise end up concentrated in population centers. This is the same basic idea as the Electoral College -- create a definition of consensus that requires not just population-dominated consensus, but geographically diverse consensus. The tension about what constitutes legitimate consensus mirrors the sort of debate in the cryptocurrency community about proof of work vs proof of stake vs other methods of weighting the consensus algorithm. Redistricting is thus somewhat analogous to developing an ASIC that exploits a quirk of the consensus algorithm. Of course interest groups are going to want to exploit whatever loopholes they can find that are within the rules. But in the case of redistricting we can easily see the folly of it. The impact of minority votes all being lumped into one district is that all the politicians in the other districts can safely ignore minority concerns, whereas if each of the other districts had 10% minority voters, those concerns would not be something all politicians could ignore. But on the other hand, with a single minority-dominated district, we're much more likely to get minority politicians winning at least one seat, whereas with minority votes spread thinly over all the other districts, this would be less likely. We can impose whatever restrictions on shapes we want, but ultimately we are just shifting the balance of power between geographically-general interests and geographically specific ones. Since redistricting is so embarrassing, though, I'd support limiting district shapes to regular polygons whose height and width are within 10% of one another.

Why not take a step further and get rid of states?

dragonwriter 10y ago

That's actually a really good idea for the House.

CalChris 10y ago
Agreed since Wyoming already gets two Senators and a House member for their 584,153.

koenigdavidmj 10y ago

American states are sovereign entities, not mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Feds.

CalChris 10y ago
The sovereignty of states most definitely does not exist outside of the Constitution. For example, states can be split into two; Kentucky was originally part of the State of Virginia and became a separate state in 1792, the 15th. West Virginia was a part of Virginia, Maine was a part of Massachusetts, Vermont was a part of New York. This is covered in Article IV, Section 3, clause 1 of the Constitution which says: no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State... without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. This too can be changed. States are mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Constitution. This state sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation was done away with by the Constitution.
- ende 10y ago
  No they are not. The states share sovereignty through the Federal government. That's the very definition of Federalism. We are not a single Unitary state. The mere fact that any partition of union requires the approval of the legislatures of the involved states is demonstative of this.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    That was litigated in the 1860s.
    - ende 10y ago
      Are you referring to West Virginia?

grandalf 10y ago

This is the right logical point to make. When we impose a political boundary due to a specific geographic boundary, we crystalize a bunch of winners and losers (compared to if we'd chosen a different geographical boundary). In the same way, however, nearly any law creates winners and losers compared to a slightly different, hypothetical version of the law. I think the intention behind creating geographical districting was to allow geographically dispersed interests to gain political power that would otherwise end up concentrated in population centers. This is the same basic idea as the Electoral College -- create a definition of consensus that requires not just population-dominated consensus, but geographically diverse consensus. The tension about what constitutes legitimate consensus mirrors the sort of debate in the cryptocurrency community about proof of work vs proof of stake vs other methods of weighting the consensus algorithm. Redistricting is thus somewhat analogous to developing an ASIC that exploits a quirk of the consensus algorithm. Of course interest groups are going to want to exploit whatever loopholes they can find that are within the rules. But in the case of redistricting we can easily see the folly of it. The impact of minority votes all being lumped into one district is that all the politicians in the other districts can safely ignore minority concerns, whereas if each of the other districts had 10% minority voters, those concerns would not be something all politicians could ignore. But on the other hand, with a single minority-dominated district, we're much more likely to get minority politicians winning at least one seat, whereas with minority votes spread thinly over all the other districts, this would be less likely. We can impose whatever restrictions on shapes we want, but ultimately we are just shifting the balance of power between geographically-general interests and geographically specific ones. Since redistricting is so embarrassing, though, I'd support limiting district shapes to regular polygons whose height and width are within 10% of one another.