4 ms·

That is because the people of the USA don't want the ~40e6 people in California to be able to dictate policy for the ~2 million people in Kentucky. Most America

That is because the people of the USA don't want the ~40e6 people in California to be able to dictate policy for the ~2 million people in Kentucky. Most Americans are perfectly okay with this because there hasn't been any serious effort at an Amendment to grant each citizen with similar amounts of power in the Senate.

tomjakubowski 6y ago
> Most Americans are perfectly okay with this because there hasn't been any serious effort at an Amendment to grant each citizen with similar amounts of power in the Senate. This doesn't follow. There is no way to amend the Constitution by a national popular vote so the opinion of the majority of Americans is irrelevant to the question of any Amendment's passage. A more likely reason such an Amendment wouldn't exist is that a majority of states favor the status quo, because most states are small and benefit from their current outsized representation in government.
- basementcat 6y ago
  One of the mechanisms for beginning the amending of the USA constitution is via a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress. The USA House of Representatives assigns political power approximately proportionally to population and it has never passed any proposed amendment to proportionally elect Senators or delegates of the Electoral College. Source: Article V Edit: Corrected 3/4 -> 2/3 Edit2: I stand corrected. The Bayh-Celler proposal was passed by the House and filibustered in the Senate in 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_amendment#Bayh%E2%80%93Celler_amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_am...
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    > One of the mechanisms for amending the USA constitution is via a 3/4 vote of both houses of Congress. I believe this is factually incorrect. I'll offer Article V of the Constitution as my citation. Do you have a contrary citation to support this claim?
sukilot 6y ago
40e6 people in California aren't a bloc. The blueness/redness of a state is nothing more than the arbitrary balance of urban vs rural population. States are "purple" in actuality. The major geographic divide in US politics is urban vs rural, not state vs state

tomjakubowski 6y ago

> Most Americans are perfectly okay with this because there hasn't been any serious effort at an Amendment to grant each citizen with similar amounts of power in the Senate. This doesn't follow. There is no way to amend the Constitution by a national popular vote so the opinion of the majority of Americans is irrelevant to the question of any Amendment's passage. A more likely reason such an Amendment wouldn't exist is that a majority of states favor the status quo, because most states are small and benefit from their current outsized representation in government.

basementcat 6y ago
One of the mechanisms for beginning the amending of the USA constitution is via a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress. The USA House of Representatives assigns political power approximately proportionally to population and it has never passed any proposed amendment to proportionally elect Senators or delegates of the Electoral College. Source: Article V Edit: Corrected 3/4 -> 2/3 Edit2: I stand corrected. The Bayh-Celler proposal was passed by the House and filibustered in the Senate in 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_amendment#Bayh%E2%80%93Celler_amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_am...
- sokoloff 6y ago
  > One of the mechanisms for amending the USA constitution is via a 3/4 vote of both houses of Congress. I believe this is factually incorrect. I'll offer Article V of the Constitution as my citation. Do you have a contrary citation to support this claim?

sukilot 6y ago

40e6 people in California aren't a bloc. The blueness/redness of a state is nothing more than the arbitrary balance of urban vs rural population. States are "purple" in actuality. The major geographic divide in US politics is urban vs rural, not state vs state