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I don't think so - it runs counter to "one person, one vote." What's the argument you see for it? I think there's a lot of wisdom in protecting the rights of v

by geofft 6y ago

I don't think so - it runs counter to "one person, one vote." What's the argument you see for it? I think there's a lot of wisdom in protecting the rights of various minorities of all sorts of types, but a) that's a general problem we should solve, and I don't see why urban/rural is a special case b) that's generally solved by either adding supermajority requirements or adding structural protections for certain groups, not by weighting people's votes and flipping who's the majority and who's the minority.

deleted 6y ago
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lhecker 6y ago
Some very important goods are almost exclusively produced in rural areas (food for instance, being produced by few people). The importance of these goods might be as important as the goods produced by people living in large cities (services for instance, being produced by many people). If we start considering the people living in an area as the likely maintainers and experts of their field, I could imagine that we might want to assign the importance of votes based on the total importance of the "produced goods" in that area. That way these "maintainers" have a say in politics relative to their actual importance in society. I guess?
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >That way these "maintainers" have a say in politics relative to their actual importance in society. I guess? Who decides what's important? Who decides the relative importance of "maintainers?" Even if that were a good idea (I don't think it is), there's no reasonable way to make something like that work.
- geofft 6y ago
  You might be interested in Hong Kong's "functional constituencies" system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_constituency_(Hong_Kong) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_constituency_(Hong_... Half of their legislative council is selected by voters in specific constituencies. Among them is specific rural constituency ("Heung Yee Kuk") and one for agriculture and fisheries, but also various more-urban constituencies like tourism, IT, and healthcare. I don't have a good sense of how well this works in practice, and of course it is confounded by Hong Kong being a very unusual jurisdiction to start with. But yeah, I think it would be a more principled approach than having this one feature in our government to nominally give extra voting rights to rural populations in particular. It's difficult to figure out what those importances really are and it's unlikely everyone will agree, but I think everyone can agree that the answer is not that rural voters are the only special constituency. Alternatively, there's a simpler argument - those things that are important in society are important because everyone cares about it, and therefore an urban legislator is unlikely to say "We don't need farms," because the urban legislator needs to eat. If the agricultural constituency says they need some measure, they already have the ability to convince the general voting public in proportion to their importance in society. (Also, it's not like our current system effectively gives rural voters an additional voice. California is our top agricultural exporter, but it tends to vote in the opposite way from the smaller-population states. And even if you did give a specific voice to California's agricultural interests, it's highly likely that they'd disagree with the policies advocated by smaller-population states to reduce immigration and increase deportations, for instance.)
amscanne 6y ago
The argument is simple. It has nothing to do with urban/rural. The United States is a federation of separate legal jurisdictions (states). The House of Representatives has seats aligned with “one person, one vote” and the Senate is aligned with “one state, one vote” in an attempt to balance these interests. The obvious consequence is that federal legislation will only move forward when most states and most people are in agreement — which I think is the intended outcome. This is often framed as “rural voters have more influence” but this is over-simplified: you need agreement from both houses to legislate. Rural voters can’t push their agenda any more than urban voters, but less populous states effectively get a little extra veto authority. Besides, states are quite free to exercise their authority and many have large, active governments. Californians may be happy with their state government, but I’m not sure many smaller states would agree that their large population entitles them to impose their will on other states. The fact that this manifests in the electoral college is weird, but that’s a separate issue from the core argument.
- ece 6y ago
  The core argument doesn't change if DC and PR become states. The question is do the residents in DC and PR deserve the same rights to pick senators/congressmen/EVs that other states get? We have a two party system, it's a matter of a controlling majority seeing the advantage in DC and PR being states like they did with AK and HI.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - arcbyte 6y ago
    PR absolutely. DC never for very obvious reasons that have been well explained since the founding and haven't changed.
    - eli 6y ago
      The reasons seem neither obvious nor static to me. The founders never intended to leave 700,000 Americans in DC without voting representation. Are you under the mistaken impression that DC Statehood would give DC undue influence over the Federal government?

by geofft 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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lhecker 6y ago

Some very important goods are almost exclusively produced in rural areas (food for instance, being produced by few people). The importance of these goods might be as important as the goods produced by people living in large cities (services for instance, being produced by many people). If we start considering the people living in an area as the likely maintainers and experts of their field, I could imagine that we might want to assign the importance of votes based on the total importance of the "produced goods" in that area. That way these "maintainers" have a say in politics relative to their actual importance in society. I guess?

nobody9999 6y ago
>That way these "maintainers" have a say in politics relative to their actual importance in society. I guess? Who decides what's important? Who decides the relative importance of "maintainers?" Even if that were a good idea (I don't think it is), there's no reasonable way to make something like that work.
geofft 6y ago
You might be interested in Hong Kong's "functional constituencies" system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_constituency_(Hong_Kong) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_constituency_(Hong_... Half of their legislative council is selected by voters in specific constituencies. Among them is specific rural constituency ("Heung Yee Kuk") and one for agriculture and fisheries, but also various more-urban constituencies like tourism, IT, and healthcare. I don't have a good sense of how well this works in practice, and of course it is confounded by Hong Kong being a very unusual jurisdiction to start with. But yeah, I think it would be a more principled approach than having this one feature in our government to nominally give extra voting rights to rural populations in particular. It's difficult to figure out what those importances really are and it's unlikely everyone will agree, but I think everyone can agree that the answer is not that rural voters are the only special constituency. Alternatively, there's a simpler argument - those things that are important in society are important because everyone cares about it, and therefore an urban legislator is unlikely to say "We don't need farms," because the urban legislator needs to eat. If the agricultural constituency says they need some measure, they already have the ability to convince the general voting public in proportion to their importance in society. (Also, it's not like our current system effectively gives rural voters an additional voice. California is our top agricultural exporter, but it tends to vote in the opposite way from the smaller-population states. And even if you did give a specific voice to California's agricultural interests, it's highly likely that they'd disagree with the policies advocated by smaller-population states to reduce immigration and increase deportations, for instance.)

amscanne 6y ago

The argument is simple. It has nothing to do with urban/rural. The United States is a federation of separate legal jurisdictions (states). The House of Representatives has seats aligned with “one person, one vote” and the Senate is aligned with “one state, one vote” in an attempt to balance these interests. The obvious consequence is that federal legislation will only move forward when most states and most people are in agreement — which I think is the intended outcome. This is often framed as “rural voters have more influence” but this is over-simplified: you need agreement from both houses to legislate. Rural voters can’t push their agenda any more than urban voters, but less populous states effectively get a little extra veto authority. Besides, states are quite free to exercise their authority and many have large, active governments. Californians may be happy with their state government, but I’m not sure many smaller states would agree that their large population entitles them to impose their will on other states. The fact that this manifests in the electoral college is weird, but that’s a separate issue from the core argument.

ece 6y ago
The core argument doesn't change if DC and PR become states. The question is do the residents in DC and PR deserve the same rights to pick senators/congressmen/EVs that other states get? We have a two party system, it's a matter of a controlling majority seeing the advantage in DC and PR being states like they did with AK and HI.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- arcbyte 6y ago
  PR absolutely. DC never for very obvious reasons that have been well explained since the founding and haven't changed.
  - eli 6y ago
    The reasons seem neither obvious nor static to me. The founders never intended to leave 700,000 Americans in DC without voting representation. Are you under the mistaken impression that DC Statehood would give DC undue influence over the Federal government?