598
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
598 points (92.5% liked)
politics
19120 readers
2211 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's bad per se and also ludicrous. It gives way too much power to states with small populations, which tend to be rural and very right wing. But it is also ludicrous, we should all vote for the person selected to rule the nation, and every vote should have equal weight. Those same states - the right has a hugely unbalanced say in the senate for the same reason, small rural states have massively disproportionate representation. Reforming presidential elections can be done by amendment or by efforts like the popular vote compact, by agreement between enough states. The stupid constitution forbids amending the way the senate is apportioned, so there might have to be a court fight over changing that rule.
Again… The outsized power of smaller states is 100% an artifact of the permanent apportionment act of 1929. It decreed that the size of the House would be set at 435 members. And then we added two states and tripled the population.
And the House is still 435 members. Some congressional districts have more than a million people. How the hell can a Representative actually be said to represent 1 million people?
To fix this would take a single act of congress. Just a simple repeal of one law, and the adoption of a new apportionment standard. That's it. Then the popular vote would mostly line up with the electoral college, because the votes would have to line up. Because it would actually be representative of the actual population.
Just massively increase the size of the house to match the actual population.
I agree the house needs expansion, however I also think that would only moderately address the electoral college skew toward rural states. Also it is in my opinion irrelevant as it does not address the core problem: the president should be elected by a direct national vote, each person getting one vote of equal weight to every other vote.
I'm saying that if you expand the house, the skew that you are complaining about goes away.
Here's a Time article on the subject that uses the current algorithm to find the most representative number of Representatives while still being a fairly low number. The answer comes out to 930.
That's the on the lower end of fixing the House. There are proposals that go much higher.
And all it takes to get to any of them is a simple act of congress. No need for a constitutional amendment, no need to get the states on board, just one law passed.
Fixing the House would also massively curtail gerrymandering. Particularly the packing and stacking tactics.
And again, all it takes to do this is a single law passed by congress.
Ditching the electoral college completely? That's either get the states to agree to the National Interstate Compact, or a constitutional amendment.
Both would be very hard to actually accomplish.
The skew in the house would be reduced, it might even go away, but with 2 exceptions the states do not allocate electoral college electors proportionally , it’s winner takes all, and doesn’t even require a majority. The small population rural states would continue to have inordinate representation in the presidential vote.
Yeah, that's the second issue. Now, that might be able to changed with an act of congress.
Congress can change the rules around elections, but the federal government tends to be pretty hands-off with elections at the state level, and we'd have to fix the supreme court to get anything like that to stick.
It might take a constitutional amendment, which again, is almost impossible in today's political climate.
So the easiest thing to work towards is un-capping the House, because that would instantly make the government better represent the people, and being honest here, would deny conservatives the House and probably presidency for the foreseeable future. All because conservatives are not actually as popular as the slanted voting system makes them seem to be.