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The problem with this argument is the Permanent Apportionment Act. The House is more representative of the people than the Senate, but capping the size means th

by cthalupa 11mo ago

The problem with this argument is the Permanent Apportionment Act. The House is more representative of the people than the Senate, but capping the size means that as it stands lower population states still receive an outsized amount of power per capita in the House vs. more populous states. As electoral votes are based on Congressional representatives across the two chambers, this also means they have outsized impact on Presidential elections as well. The deck is stacked in favor of rural states in too many places for it to be balanced. Repeal the PAA and I am much more sympathetic to the idea that the Senate as it stands is fine.

rootusrootus 11mo ago
I probably need to go read the arguments at the time the 17th amendment was adopted, because my inclination is that we should repeal the 17th amendment right along with repealing the PAA. Then the senate can truly represent the States, and we can have representatives who more closely reflect their constituency.
- cthalupa 11mo ago
  Also perfectly fine with a repeal of the 17th alongside the PAA. I think even with the 17th the Senate still quite closely represents the States so it's less of a priority, but the current status quo for Congress is just insane.
  - potato3732842 11mo ago
    We could also split states. It could very much be gerrymandered in a way to keep the red-blue balance of power neutral. But it will never happen because the state governments would never give up any power.
alistairSH 11mo ago
This. If we pegged the size of a congressional district to the population of the least populates state, we'd end up with more House seats, many of which would be apportioned to CA and TX (as two large states with average district sizes much larger than Wyoming's state population).
Terr_ 11mo ago
> The deck is stacked in favor of rural states in too many places for it to be balanced. As a technical quibble, the mechanics have nothing to do with rural-vs-urban, but low-vs-high population chunks. I mention it mainly because there's a certain bloc that argues farmers deserve extra votes for dumb reasons. One could theoretically carve up any major metropolitan area into a bunch of new states that would be the same population as Wyoming and 100% urban, and they'd still get Wyoming's disproportionate representation.
- cthalupa 11mo ago
  True. I just meant in practice that the low-population states tend to be rural.
giantg2 11mo ago
The Huntington-Hill method used since the 40s has supposedly reduced any discrepancies.
- cthalupa 11mo ago
  Reduced doesn't mean remove. Huntington-Hill is better than nothing but it is still significantly worse than getting rid of the PAA and letting the House grow based on population size. Pressing my hand down on a bullet wound will slow the bleeding more than if I didn't, but not getting shot to begin with would sure be preferable. https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/section/6 https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/... This argues for just an increase to 700, and shows a ~5% swing in likelihood of Democrat control, and I would argue that just increasing it to 700 is still not where we want to be - a ratio similar to the UK would put us at closer to 3k representatives, and I believe this is still within reason (and is roughly the size of the equivalent chamber in China). Ideally we get rid of gerrymandering at the same time and redistricting is done apolitically by independent groups. At 3k seats, every state is above their 1 rep minimum, representatives have 1/7th the number of constituents, population to representation at each state is much closer to 1:1, etc. Obviously not everything will end up on clean divisible lines so there's going to be some differences, but Wyoming would be more like .96:1 instead of .75:1 like they are currently. Ideally the size should also be set to be revisited based on population on a periodic basis

rootusrootus 11mo ago

I probably need to go read the arguments at the time the 17th amendment was adopted, because my inclination is that we should repeal the 17th amendment right along with repealing the PAA. Then the senate can truly represent the States, and we can have representatives who more closely reflect their constituency.

cthalupa 11mo ago
Also perfectly fine with a repeal of the 17th alongside the PAA. I think even with the 17th the Senate still quite closely represents the States so it's less of a priority, but the current status quo for Congress is just insane.
- potato3732842 11mo ago
  We could also split states. It could very much be gerrymandered in a way to keep the red-blue balance of power neutral. But it will never happen because the state governments would never give up any power.

alistairSH 11mo ago

This. If we pegged the size of a congressional district to the population of the least populates state, we'd end up with more House seats, many of which would be apportioned to CA and TX (as two large states with average district sizes much larger than Wyoming's state population).

Terr_ 11mo ago

> The deck is stacked in favor of rural states in too many places for it to be balanced. As a technical quibble, the mechanics have nothing to do with rural-vs-urban, but low-vs-high population chunks. I mention it mainly because there's a certain bloc that argues farmers deserve extra votes for dumb reasons. One could theoretically carve up any major metropolitan area into a bunch of new states that would be the same population as Wyoming and 100% urban, and they'd still get Wyoming's disproportionate representation.

cthalupa 11mo ago
True. I just meant in practice that the low-population states tend to be rural.

giantg2 11mo ago

The Huntington-Hill method used since the 40s has supposedly reduced any discrepancies.

cthalupa 11mo ago
Reduced doesn't mean remove. Huntington-Hill is better than nothing but it is still significantly worse than getting rid of the PAA and letting the House grow based on population size. Pressing my hand down on a bullet wound will slow the bleeding more than if I didn't, but not getting shot to begin with would sure be preferable. https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/section/6 https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/... This argues for just an increase to 700, and shows a ~5% swing in likelihood of Democrat control, and I would argue that just increasing it to 700 is still not where we want to be - a ratio similar to the UK would put us at closer to 3k representatives, and I believe this is still within reason (and is roughly the size of the equivalent chamber in China). Ideally we get rid of gerrymandering at the same time and redistricting is done apolitically by independent groups. At 3k seats, every state is above their 1 rep minimum, representatives have 1/7th the number of constituents, population to representation at each state is much closer to 1:1, etc. Obviously not everything will end up on clean divisible lines so there's going to be some differences, but Wyoming would be more like .96:1 instead of .75:1 like they are currently. Ideally the size should also be set to be revisited based on population on a periodic basis