4 ms·

What's the argument for rural votes currently having disproportionally more power than other votes?

drak0n1c 6y ago
Fears of Tyranny of the majority, with our geographic size and mutual ignorance of each others' local concerns. An extreme depiction in popular culture is the domination of rural districts in "The Hunger Games". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- mattnewton 6y ago
  Tyranny of the majority is avoided by giving organized minority parties rights, so they can negotiate from positions of weakness, not arbitrarily choosing a minority to have disproportionate representation. Our current system of democracy suffers because we can attack a much smaller % of the population with misinformation, and rural voters are more efficient to target.
  - drak0n1c 6y ago
    Your second sentence does not serve the argument against because it can be just as arbitrarily purposed for the opposite. That dense cities with packed schools and omnipresent media make it more efficient to sway them with "misinformation".
    - mattnewton 6y ago
      No, you have to convince more people in dense cities to get the same voting power, because of the electoral college. At the extreme, you have to convince 3.6 people in california to have the same electoral vote impact as convincing just one voter in Wyoming, and that’s before taking into account that being a winner take all system in most states, you have to influence up to half of California in the worst case, before getting any return on investment. https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/how-much-voting-power-do-you-really-have-in-your-state https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/how-much-voting-p... You would have to make the argument that people in cities are cheaper per capita to convince, because of their density; cheap enough to offset these massive differences in electoral power. I don’t buy it, as dense cities have the most expensive media markets and modern internet advertising can easily target rural areas.
      - masonic 6y ago
        You don't have to influence any of California, which is essentially a 1-party state for statewide elections. California hasn't elected a Republican to the US Senate in 32+ years.
        jhayward 6y ago
        What is your point, and how is it relevant?
        mattnewton 6y ago
        I guess this just proves my point? Because of the electoral college Californian republicans are just pissing into the wind. In a national popular vote, it would be counted the same as a Wyoming republican or California democrat’s vote. As it is, however, you can ignore California’s population entirely and focus on flipping half of the population of all the rural states, where their votes count for more and you have a lower minimum investment to get any return.
grahamburger 6y ago
That things that happen (agriculture, manufacturing, etc) in rural parts of the country are important to everyone, but will suffer if the people living there have no voting power.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  I get your point, but the current result is that Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and the other swing states affect the result. The rest of our votes effectively matter far less. I lived in one of those states in 2016, and was surprised by how both parties actually seemed to care about trying to get votes, compared to all the other years I've lived elsewhere.
- barnaclejive 6y ago
  "things that happen" is for sure... extremist terrorist disgruntled white dudes is apparently what happens. Agriculture, manufacturing, etc in the US needs to fend for itself on its merits and/or support by a majority, not based on an inflated influence of rural populations. A strong case could be made that could inspire urban people to be in favor of uplifting these segments also. For example, I would gladly pay more for food or goods made in the US if the case was made to me that it was helping more rural population of my country, just like how I gladly accept paying higher taxes that benefit the unemployed and poor. You don't have to give an artificial amplification of power to make sure good things happen for everyone. Sadly, that is where my argument falls apart, people are selfish.
albntomat0 6y ago
> On the one hand, the Senate has always been unequal, long giving less populous states an outsized voice relative to their population.1 But for more than a century, this hasn’t posed much of an issue: Until the 1960s, Republicans and Democrats competed for both densely and sparsely populated states at roughly the same rate > But over the last several decades, that’s changed. The parties have reorganized themselves along urban-rural lines, and there is now a clear and pronounced partisan small-state bias in the Senate thanks to mostly rural, less populated states voting increasingly Republican. In fact, it’s reached the point that Republicans can win a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-has-always-favored-smaller-states-it-just-didnt-help-republicans-until-now/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-has-always-f...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
baumandm 6y ago
It's less about rural votes and more about population. Electoral votes per state are based on population not population density, but with an additional 2 each. That tips the scale in favor of states with smaller populations. E.g. Rhode Island and Idaho both have 4 electoral votes, but Rhode Island is certainly not rural. Idaho also has a population of 1.8 million compared to 1.0 million in Rhode Island, so technically Rhode Island voters have more voting power than their rural counterparts in Idaho. Anyways these are just cherry picked states; my point is that the Electoral College is designed to give a disproportionate vote to smaller states, not rural states.
bawolff 6y ago
Voting by land area vs voting by population is one of the oldest debates ever. There's pros and cons to either side, but the general idea is that in a representative democracy you want the different groups to have their interests represented (i.e. if you have 30% of the vote, you should have 30% of the "power"). Pure population might be more likely to lead to policy for population centeres at the expense of rural centers, since you just need 51% of the vote to do what you want, as the majority takes all the power. E.g. if 75% of population is urban and 25% rural, and assuming that they are unified voting blocs (big if), rural effectively has 0% of the power, as 25% of the vote is going to win a majority vote 0% of the time. Ideally they would win 25% of the votes (or have 25% of the "power" somehow), but failing that, having half the power seems more fair than having none of it. I remember i heard once the idea that if the percent of the representitives was porportional to the sqrt of the population, that that tracks the amount of effective power much more closely to the population distribution than linearly assigning representitives, but i dont know how true that is.

Fears of Tyranny of the majority, with our geographic size and mutual ignorance of each others' local concerns. An extreme depiction in popular culture is the domination of rural districts in "The Hunger Games". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

mattnewton 6y ago
Tyranny of the majority is avoided by giving organized minority parties rights, so they can negotiate from positions of weakness, not arbitrarily choosing a minority to have disproportionate representation. Our current system of democracy suffers because we can attack a much smaller % of the population with misinformation, and rural voters are more efficient to target.
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  Your second sentence does not serve the argument against because it can be just as arbitrarily purposed for the opposite. That dense cities with packed schools and omnipresent media make it more efficient to sway them with "misinformation".
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    No, you have to convince more people in dense cities to get the same voting power, because of the electoral college. At the extreme, you have to convince 3.6 people in california to have the same electoral vote impact as convincing just one voter in Wyoming, and that’s before taking into account that being a winner take all system in most states, you have to influence up to half of California in the worst case, before getting any return on investment. https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/how-much-voting-power-do-you-really-have-in-your-state https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/how-much-voting-p... You would have to make the argument that people in cities are cheaper per capita to convince, because of their density; cheap enough to offset these massive differences in electoral power. I don’t buy it, as dense cities have the most expensive media markets and modern internet advertising can easily target rural areas.
    - masonic 6y ago
      You don't have to influence any of California, which is essentially a 1-party state for statewide elections. California hasn't elected a Republican to the US Senate in 32+ years.
      - jhayward 6y ago
        What is your point, and how is it relevant?
      - mattnewton 6y ago
        I guess this just proves my point? Because of the electoral college Californian republicans are just pissing into the wind. In a national popular vote, it would be counted the same as a Wyoming republican or California democrat’s vote. As it is, however, you can ignore California’s population entirely and focus on flipping half of the population of all the rural states, where their votes count for more and you have a lower minimum investment to get any return.

grahamburger 6y ago

That things that happen (agriculture, manufacturing, etc) in rural parts of the country are important to everyone, but will suffer if the people living there have no voting power.

albntomat0 6y ago
I get your point, but the current result is that Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and the other swing states affect the result. The rest of our votes effectively matter far less. I lived in one of those states in 2016, and was surprised by how both parties actually seemed to care about trying to get votes, compared to all the other years I've lived elsewhere.
barnaclejive 6y ago
"things that happen" is for sure... extremist terrorist disgruntled white dudes is apparently what happens. Agriculture, manufacturing, etc in the US needs to fend for itself on its merits and/or support by a majority, not based on an inflated influence of rural populations. A strong case could be made that could inspire urban people to be in favor of uplifting these segments also. For example, I would gladly pay more for food or goods made in the US if the case was made to me that it was helping more rural population of my country, just like how I gladly accept paying higher taxes that benefit the unemployed and poor. You don't have to give an artificial amplification of power to make sure good things happen for everyone. Sadly, that is where my argument falls apart, people are selfish.

albntomat0 6y ago

> On the one hand, the Senate has always been unequal, long giving less populous states an outsized voice relative to their population.1 But for more than a century, this hasn’t posed much of an issue: Until the 1960s, Republicans and Democrats competed for both densely and sparsely populated states at roughly the same rate > But over the last several decades, that’s changed. The parties have reorganized themselves along urban-rural lines, and there is now a clear and pronounced partisan small-state bias in the Senate thanks to mostly rural, less populated states voting increasingly Republican. In fact, it’s reached the point that Republicans can win a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-has-always-favored-smaller-states-it-just-didnt-help-republicans-until-now/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-has-always-f...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

baumandm 6y ago

It's less about rural votes and more about population. Electoral votes per state are based on population not population density, but with an additional 2 each. That tips the scale in favor of states with smaller populations. E.g. Rhode Island and Idaho both have 4 electoral votes, but Rhode Island is certainly not rural. Idaho also has a population of 1.8 million compared to 1.0 million in Rhode Island, so technically Rhode Island voters have more voting power than their rural counterparts in Idaho. Anyways these are just cherry picked states; my point is that the Electoral College is designed to give a disproportionate vote to smaller states, not rural states.

bawolff 6y ago

Voting by land area vs voting by population is one of the oldest debates ever. There's pros and cons to either side, but the general idea is that in a representative democracy you want the different groups to have their interests represented (i.e. if you have 30% of the vote, you should have 30% of the "power"). Pure population might be more likely to lead to policy for population centeres at the expense of rural centers, since you just need 51% of the vote to do what you want, as the majority takes all the power. E.g. if 75% of population is urban and 25% rural, and assuming that they are unified voting blocs (big if), rural effectively has 0% of the power, as 25% of the vote is going to win a majority vote 0% of the time. Ideally they would win 25% of the votes (or have 25% of the "power" somehow), but failing that, having half the power seems more fair than having none of it. I remember i heard once the idea that if the percent of the representitives was porportional to the sqrt of the population, that that tracks the amount of effective power much more closely to the population distribution than linearly assigning representitives, but i dont know how true that is.