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‘There are less of you therefore you do not mean as much.’ This has been applied in the past with terrible consequences. The founding fathers developed the Hou

‘There are less of you therefore you do not mean as much.’ This has been applied in the past with terrible consequences. The founding fathers developed the House and Senate to avoid a majority dictatorship.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> The founding fathers developed the House and Senate to avoid a majority dictatorship. How does lowering the support threshold for total political control, as long as the faction seeking control is disproportionately distributed in smaller (and/or more effective at disenfranchising those outside the faction) states do that? It doesn't. It just makes dominance of a particular interest group, even with a majority, harder, while making dominance of the diametrically opposed group, even if it only has a minority, easier. (If the representational skew of the different bodies was opposite, it might do what you suggest, but both houses (and the electoral college) are, by design, biased in the same direction with different strengths.
- dllthomas 5y ago
  Yeah, the rhetoric supporting the current system often sloppily suggests we should somehow prefer tyranny of a minority. We shouldn't. The check on tyranny of the majority, beyond notional defense of rights, is that the representation of the House vs the Senate differ from each other and so agreement between them (and especially a durable agreement between them) probably means more than "mere" majority support. Obviously that property can't be preserved while also making both bodies representative. It would be nice, however, if they were centered around "representative", differing in opposite directions rather than differing in overweighting the same voters a little vs a lot. I've toyed around with that a little but don't have a concrete proposal (... much less one that would get anywhere).
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    Great points. I don't have a concrete proposal either, but can I throw some ideas? Among the 3 branches of the Government, the judicial one is the only technocratic one. We can try to replace the Senate with another technocratic body, some sort of "Council of Elders". I'm not sure how you'd determine the qualifications, so my idea is far from fully baked. The opposite direction would be a lottery. Juries are a form of democracy based on lottery. For example, if the House proposes a bill, instead of the Senate having to agree on it, one could subject it to some type of "trial", where you'd have a "Constitutional" judge presiding, and a jury. The judge might be a Supreme Court justice, and would have to explain various aspects of the Constitution to the jury. There would be advocates (maybe from the House?) that represent both the case for and against the law, but finally the determination whether the law should be allowed to be sent to the President for signing should be done by the jury. Obviously this proposal has between zero and nil chances of ever becoming reality, but I think at least in theory it's not really absurd.
    - dllthomas 5y ago
      I think that some variation on sortition could be interesting, although I note that it doesn't compensate for other biases away from "perfectly representative", being itself perfectly representative. As an example of the sort of compensation I meant, a potential proposal (which I'm not actually making but which gives the sense of what I mean) would be to leave the Senate alone but give each State representation in the House such that the total number of representatives across both chambers is (as close as practical to) proportional. This would mean the Senate would be undemocratic in its current direction, but the house would be undemocratic in precisely the opposite direction (in terms of the weights of individual votes, not necessarily in terms of policy), while the President would be chosen (approximately) democratically and overall the system shouldn't lean one way or the other.
      - dllthomas 5y ago
        To expand a little on why this isn't something I am actually proposing, beyond my not having anyone in particular to propose it to or any expectation anyone listens, I haven't thought it through as deeply as it deserves. In particular, there are a number of responsibilities assigned to the House of Representatives with the justification (at least notionally) that it is the more... well... representative body. If we make it - of itself - less representative, then we should consider those duties in turn, whether that original justification is well motivated and still important, and whether that should push us to move them elsewhere or change their form. There are doubtless other things that need thinking through, but that's a potentially meaty source of them that comes readily to mind.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > The check on tyranny of the majority, beyond notional defense of rights, is that the representation of the House vs the Senate differ from each other and so agreement between them (and especially a durable agreement between them) probably means more than "mere" majority support. The problem with this theory is that while they differ, they don't have opposing bias (and the electoral college combines their biases, so the bias in the Presidency also doesn't oppose the electoral bias of either House or Senate. Which is why (with the present ideological configuration of the parties) Republicans outperform their popular vote share in the House, and the Senate, and the Electoral College; aligned bias does not inhibit total domination by the majority, it enables it (or even domination by the minority) in the direction of the bias. Now, ignoring the aligned bias in those institutions, one thing that works against dominance by a transiently electorally advantaged faction is the electoral calendar. While the House is elected every two years and the Presidendy every four, only 1/3 of the Senate turns is chosen every two years. The “good behavior” tenure of federal judges and the high Constitutional bar for removal (2/3 of the Senate) also serves this purpose ideally, though it has a failure mode that can instead increase the reach of a transitory political dominance, depending on timing of appointments.
    - dllthomas 5y ago
      > The problem with this theory is that while they differ, they don't have opposing bias I think the theory still holds, in that we see different results than if all of these bodies were picked with the same skewed representation at whatever the appropriately weighted average skew would be to match the existing "overall bias". This, of course, very much depends on the exact scope of what we mean by "the theory"; I would limit it to a statement that distance between who is represented by various government bodies can have a moderating influence and that this can be positive and important. I agree it can be overstated and in particular that it doesn't fully (or nearly) compensate for the biases in the present system. You are very much correct to bring up differing terms and term lengths as another moderating influence over time.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> The founding fathers developed the House and Senate to avoid a majority dictatorship. How does lowering the support threshold for total political control, as long as the faction seeking control is disproportionately distributed in smaller (and/or more effective at disenfranchising those outside the faction) states do that? It doesn't. It just makes dominance of a particular interest group, even with a majority, harder, while making dominance of the diametrically opposed group, even if it only has a minority, easier. (If the representational skew of the different bodies was opposite, it might do what you suggest, but both houses (and the electoral college) are, by design, biased in the same direction with different strengths.

dllthomas 5y ago
Yeah, the rhetoric supporting the current system often sloppily suggests we should somehow prefer tyranny of a minority. We shouldn't. The check on tyranny of the majority, beyond notional defense of rights, is that the representation of the House vs the Senate differ from each other and so agreement between them (and especially a durable agreement between them) probably means more than "mere" majority support. Obviously that property can't be preserved while also making both bodies representative. It would be nice, however, if they were centered around "representative", differing in opposite directions rather than differing in overweighting the same voters a little vs a lot. I've toyed around with that a little but don't have a concrete proposal (... much less one that would get anywhere).
- credit_guy 5y ago
  Great points. I don't have a concrete proposal either, but can I throw some ideas? Among the 3 branches of the Government, the judicial one is the only technocratic one. We can try to replace the Senate with another technocratic body, some sort of "Council of Elders". I'm not sure how you'd determine the qualifications, so my idea is far from fully baked. The opposite direction would be a lottery. Juries are a form of democracy based on lottery. For example, if the House proposes a bill, instead of the Senate having to agree on it, one could subject it to some type of "trial", where you'd have a "Constitutional" judge presiding, and a jury. The judge might be a Supreme Court justice, and would have to explain various aspects of the Constitution to the jury. There would be advocates (maybe from the House?) that represent both the case for and against the law, but finally the determination whether the law should be allowed to be sent to the President for signing should be done by the jury. Obviously this proposal has between zero and nil chances of ever becoming reality, but I think at least in theory it's not really absurd.
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    I think that some variation on sortition could be interesting, although I note that it doesn't compensate for other biases away from "perfectly representative", being itself perfectly representative. As an example of the sort of compensation I meant, a potential proposal (which I'm not actually making but which gives the sense of what I mean) would be to leave the Senate alone but give each State representation in the House such that the total number of representatives across both chambers is (as close as practical to) proportional. This would mean the Senate would be undemocratic in its current direction, but the house would be undemocratic in precisely the opposite direction (in terms of the weights of individual votes, not necessarily in terms of policy), while the President would be chosen (approximately) democratically and overall the system shouldn't lean one way or the other.
    - dllthomas 5y ago
      To expand a little on why this isn't something I am actually proposing, beyond my not having anyone in particular to propose it to or any expectation anyone listens, I haven't thought it through as deeply as it deserves. In particular, there are a number of responsibilities assigned to the House of Representatives with the justification (at least notionally) that it is the more... well... representative body. If we make it - of itself - less representative, then we should consider those duties in turn, whether that original justification is well motivated and still important, and whether that should push us to move them elsewhere or change their form. There are doubtless other things that need thinking through, but that's a potentially meaty source of them that comes readily to mind.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The check on tyranny of the majority, beyond notional defense of rights, is that the representation of the House vs the Senate differ from each other and so agreement between them (and especially a durable agreement between them) probably means more than "mere" majority support. The problem with this theory is that while they differ, they don't have opposing bias (and the electoral college combines their biases, so the bias in the Presidency also doesn't oppose the electoral bias of either House or Senate. Which is why (with the present ideological configuration of the parties) Republicans outperform their popular vote share in the House, and the Senate, and the Electoral College; aligned bias does not inhibit total domination by the majority, it enables it (or even domination by the minority) in the direction of the bias. Now, ignoring the aligned bias in those institutions, one thing that works against dominance by a transiently electorally advantaged faction is the electoral calendar. While the House is elected every two years and the Presidendy every four, only 1/3 of the Senate turns is chosen every two years. The “good behavior” tenure of federal judges and the high Constitutional bar for removal (2/3 of the Senate) also serves this purpose ideally, though it has a failure mode that can instead increase the reach of a transitory political dominance, depending on timing of appointments.
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    > The problem with this theory is that while they differ, they don't have opposing bias I think the theory still holds, in that we see different results than if all of these bodies were picked with the same skewed representation at whatever the appropriately weighted average skew would be to match the existing "overall bias". This, of course, very much depends on the exact scope of what we mean by "the theory"; I would limit it to a statement that distance between who is represented by various government bodies can have a moderating influence and that this can be positive and important. I agree it can be overstated and in particular that it doesn't fully (or nearly) compensate for the biases in the present system. You are very much correct to bring up differing terms and term lengths as another moderating influence over time.