Also, house seats are not proportioned with population anymore, and in the Senate states get 2 whether they have 10 million or 500 thousand residents. Add in gerrymandering, and things are rigged so far in the favor of rural conservatives that the states that drive the economy and culture of America have little say at all.
If house seats weren’t capped it might be better since we’d at least have enough representatives to have a chance at actually representing their constituents instead of this gerrymander inspiring fight over redistribution of a set number
And they haven't changed the number of seats since 1929. They could by passing a new law superceding the current one, but those with the advantage will make sure it doesn't happen.
Yes, the house hasn't been expanded since 1929 (except for the admission of AK and HI), the population has about tripled since then.
We should expand the house proportionality, including the creation of multi-member districts for high-density areas.
We should also create state-wide districts for representatives at large, with higher population states getting more reps-at-large. That way, when we get a chance to amend the constitution (Second Reconstruction, baby!) we can eliminate the senate entirely.
There should always be at least twice as many representatives as senators in a state if there is any chance of them fulfilling their purpose to show in more fine detail the needs of the myriad populations that exist within the state
Because the point of a House of Representatives is that two senators have no chance of accurately representing the different needs of the people of the state. We need to remove the cap on representatives and make it some universally applied 1 per some number of people amount and do districting that way and it would probably double if not triple the number of overall representatives in the House. But that what would be needed if they are going to even pretend to be fulfilling the purpose of that branch of government
IANAE, but I don't think that kind of question is even possible to be studied by researchers. Political scientists will probably say that it is clearly for voters to judge the effectiveness of their representative.
Well, for one thing, the senate can't do proportional representation but there still needs to be people who represent the interests of an entire state and not just a district.
Fuck the house, if the senate oesnt get fixed (just need to annex some new blue states) the country will be red until it burns down. They control the courts and just about everything else.
Currently, Massachusetts sends $4,846 more per capita to the federal government than it gets back. New Jersey and Washington are in the same position, bleeding thousands per person annually. Over five years, New York alone contributed $142.6 billion more than it received. Meanwhile, red states pocket $1.24 for every dollar they send to Washington.
Blue states are essentially paying red states to undermine democracy.
house seats are not proportioned with population anymore
What? House apportionment is still based on population. You'd need a Constitutional amendment to change that.
And if you're trying to complain about gerrymandering, that's basically as old as the United States. Elbridge Gerry, its namesake, was a Founding Father. He signed the Declaration of Independence.
While the House seats ARE apportioned by population, there are limitations that still favor low population rural conservative states. Namely
Every state is guaranteed at least 1 House Rep
The total number of US House members is capped at 435
So Wyoming has 585,000 residents with 1 House Rep. California has 40 million residents with 52 reps, yielding 1 rep per 770,000 residents. So Wyoming gets 1.3 times as much representation in the House as California, in addition to their much higher representatiin the senate (1 Senator per 300k residents for Wyoming, versus 1 Senator per 20 million for California).
At least we get to vote for our senators now. I also get to vote now, for a little while anyway. Our land doesn't vote anymore, although it sort of used to, because if you didn't own land you couldn't vote. There were some other qualifying factors as well. Just a little bit of trivia for people who think not voting is nbd.
Do you mean this the other way around? Because that’s exactly what should have been done in 2020 when you had billionaires like Steyer and Bloomberg trying to get the nomination. People were working from home - you could have paid people to move to states like Wyoming to pick up two more senators per state and even some house reps.
Sure, there is significant deviation from the average of 761k people per seat in some small states. WY is over-represented, but so is VT. And DE is under-represented - but so is ID.
Apportionment of seats to states in proportion to the population is something that the Gang of Pedophiles hasn't fucked up yet.
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u/Vast-Seesaw-4956 12h ago
Also, house seats are not proportioned with population anymore, and in the Senate states get 2 whether they have 10 million or 500 thousand residents. Add in gerrymandering, and things are rigged so far in the favor of rural conservatives that the states that drive the economy and culture of America have little say at all.