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The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States
First time accepted submitter Daniel_Stuckey writes "Bam! For anyone that's paid a speck of attention to the tedium of political redistricting, which happens while a state grows unevenly, (and must dynamically respond to density, electorate disparity, natural resources and ridgelines, etc.), this is straight out of some psychedelic dream. For Democrats, it could be straight out of a nightmare. That's because Freeman's map necessitates 50 equally populous United States. His methods for creating the map are explained thusly: 'The algorithm was seeded with the fifty largest cities. After that, manual changes took into account compact shapes, equal populations, metro areas divided by state lines, and drainage basins. In certain areas, divisions are based on census tract lines... The suggested names of the new states are taken mainly from geographical features.'"
Geography is beautiful. I made this my wallpaper yesterday.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I always enjoy looking at stuff like this. Although I noticed that the proposer seems to have a penchant for native American names. Not that there's anything wrong that that! but that isn't what most present-day people would probably want to see.
But of course, the map that the pols would draw up instead would be twisting, doubling back, mandering, having states composed of non-contiguous regions...
Of course this is a much easier solution then just switching to popular vote...
Where is Puerto Rico, USVI and others in this map?
IF you are going to remap stuff at least put them in as well.
Popular vote is the only method to accurately capture the desire of the entire population. It does NOT mean only the coasts will be visited since every vote counts those 10 democrats in Nebraska and the 5 republicans in Vermont now count for a national win.
as the population density constantly changes over the coming years. And if we are re-"thinking" state lines, why do we need to have 50 states. Why cant/shouldnt there be just one? Or how about 100? Shit, if we are doing something this dramatic, why stop there? Let's solve all of our issues by re-addressing them with modern techniques. 86'd from my thought train due to shortsightedness.
...getting put into the state of Gary.
How fitting.
They're not states. One of his key design constraints was the Electoral College, and only states get to vote in the Electoral College.
Washington, DC gets included since it does have EC votes. That messes with the Congressional representation, but he didn't make than explicit design constraint.
Maybe he didn't want to do anything controversial that might hinder acceptance of his proposal.
Which is basically what that map does. Although I like the algorithm for determining voting districts within a state
Of course, everyone's going to look at their own area - to see how it got right or wrong regarding where they live.
In my case, I'm in Western MA, and I have to say that they got this little part of it exactly right - merging us in this area into "Willimantic" which connects us with CT with Hartford as the capitol instead of being in the "ass end" of Massachusetts.
I've long been bothered by how little we in this part of MA have to do with those east of 128 / or even east of 495.
I can't speak for any other part of the country, though I love some of these kinds of maps. I like the ones like this where you see the US through the eyes of a New Yorker:
http://www.refinery29.com/map-of-america-according-to-nyc
The Digital Sorceress
Tyranny of the majority is the reason to avoid a republic and a pure popular vote. That is to say, people need adult supervision, and there's a reason we have a republic instead of a democracy.
Eh? I don't even know what that sentence was trying to say, but certainly not what was written...
It's pointless to argue for this. We don't have a unitary system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_state) of government like say the United Kingdom. Oh, how I wish we did. My kingdom for everything from speed limits, and rules on turning right on red, on up to more important things like firearms licensing and ownership to be the same no matter where you travelled or lived in the country.
Instead we have Federalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism) where the states share sovereignty. And if you think they're going to just dissolve themselves, it's just not going to happen. And if you believe they would, please I have multiple bridges around the world to sell you. The only up side to this model in my book is what some people would argue about different states trying different things, and those that are found to work tend to get adopted by others as well. I simply don't buy the argument that the Federal government is out to get us all. But that is a discussion/argument/flame war for another day.
For him to claim his map:
Preserves the historic structure and function of the Electoral College.
Ends the over-representation of small states and under-representation of large states in presidential voting and in the US Senate by eliminating small and large states.
shows he knows nothing of what the Electoral College represents, or what its historical importance was at the time of its inception.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Fail. Why?
It puts primacy of power at a national level as the vastly overriding, important factor, when, in fact, it's the freedom people have to move around.
There are people upset at gerrymandering, even "well-meaning" gerrymandering that creates districts along highway corridors, because they dislike being placed in one nice little homogeneous pool "so you can elect your guy", sayeth those in power, who then sleep like a baby that night.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This just shows how we need to return to the original apportionment of representatives, as laid out in the constitution, and never modified within. There must be one representative for every 30,000 people. If we did this, the government would not be so "Black and White" it would be shades of grey, and better represent the will of the people, not the will of the corporations.
"compactness of shape" is an anti-democratic principle to begin with, "one acre one vote" is a rule of the rotten borough.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
A map of equally populated areas to promote equality in voting? We experimented with this some time ago... Couldn't make it work. It didn't promote voting equality on a per-person basis, just created the illusion that people had common interests that were defined by some arbitrary old lines that were drawn up a long time ago. Maybe it was the semicircular arrangement, or the blocking out of all sunlight in 1950. It still looks pretty.
Nice bit of copying and pasting there, Mr. Submitter. I mean, the "Bam!" is dumb enough in the article, but at least it's an exclamation at the presentation of the map. Copied and pasted like that it just looks stupid.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Not to nitpick (so, here comes the nitpicking), but he quite clearly stated this wasn't a serious proposal...
The idea here was more about raising the issue and making people think about it in a different light.
The Digital Sorceress
I've always loved these thought experiments, carving up the world into new and improved political alignments. This stemmed from encountering C. Etzel Pearcy's proposed 38 State map published in the 1975 People's Almanac; his notions of a better functioning nation arising from a more equitable distribution of state alignments really had an impact on me, growing up as I did on the mostly barren east side of Oregon, and listening to my elders constantly complaining about getting shafted via taxes by the moneygrubbers in Portland/Salem/Eugene. The Almanac also featured another new map of the US, with 22 states I think; can't find any info about it at the moment though.
Also an interesting read was Joel Garreau's book The Nine Nations of North America, which was more about the cultural mass regions that make up the continent.
The idea here was more about raising the issue and making people think about it in a different light.
Now that is dangerous - downright seditious...
And as an art project, it's interesting.
As a serious proposal, I don't see how this really changes anything.
Do these 50 equally populous states assign their electoral votes "winner take all" or proportionally?
If "winner take all" then very little will change, since that is how most current states award their electoral votes, and since each state has a number of electoral votes based on it's population the outcome wouldn't likely change.
If proportionally, then that would be a shift from the current model, but would the actual result really change? In the last election, President Obama won re-election with 51% of the popular vote, but won by a larger margin electorally. I would be very interested in seeing someone run this "50 Equal States" map against the county-by-county results from the 2012 election and see how the electoral results would change. (Obviously the popular vote wouldn't change.)
Ken
We are a union of states. Not an empire to be subdivided.
This assumes people from different parts of the country are interchangable and are going to be happy no matter how you group them. The problem is that isn't the case; you think things are politically polarized now, a plan like this would be even worse.
You think the people in Highway are going to be happy being governed by politicians in Oregon that doesn't really care what's going on in a set of islands hundreds of miles away because they massively outnumber them don't need their votes anyways? You think the people in Montana and Idaho are gonna be happy being controlled by the busybody Mormons in Utah? And Shiprock is probably going to have an actual shooting war when Lubbock and Abilene figure out that Austin is going to dominate them electorally.
This speaks to doing away with winner-take-all rules that many states have. I can pretty much guarantee that people living in central California have little in common with people living in downtown San Francisco, ideologically speaking. So why should the latter get to speak for the former? Yet in California, all electoral votes have been magically switched leading people to think the whole of California is liberal. I've been saying this for the past 20 years that the political divide in this country is not about Republican vs. Democrat. It's much more about ruralite vs. urbanite. When you look at election results broken down by county instead of by state, you see a much different picture. Urban districts generally vote liberal Democrat while rural districts vote conservative Republican. Party ideology aside, people in rural areas have vastly different priorities than those who live in cities. People who live in cities often are so full of themselves that they think only they know what's good for city dwellers as well as those who live in the country and they tend to impose legislation without having the slightest bit of experience living in the country.
And if my grandmother hand wheels on her shoes,
she'd roller skate down the hill.
Crack pipe posting on slashdot. Must be a slow weekend.
What's next? A map of how different US presidents with all-changed-names
would have made us into either HItler-slaves or Battlestar-Galactica Cylon
killers?
Score one for the "Yeah slashdot wasted bandwidth on something so stupid
it's unbelievable" queue.
E
Slavery and the balance between slave and free states. The author of the article has no sense of US history, which is sad and scary. Logically it makes no sense to lump Hawaii with a west coast area due to isolation and different climate. Lumping Alaska with Rainer makes no sense either for the same reason. There is more to geography than human population. Remember, the "Geo" in geography means "Earth". The physical features of the planet, politics, and limitations of technology often trump an idealization of reality. So over all I give the article a big "meh". It's too simplistic to be interesting.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"Keep in mind that this is an art project, not a serious proposal, so take it easy with the emails about the sacred soil of Texas. "
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Great! Until the population composition of the country changes...
lol just vote directly from every citizen
If we're going to presume a constitutional amendment, why aim so low? Instead of a minor tweak, why not try for something radical?
In issue after issue, popular sentiment seems to lie with the idea of federal supremacy, and national uniformity of laws and policies. Neither the federal government,nor the national public seems to have any respect for States Rights, States Sovereignty. Any time there seems to be a rational argument for uniform laws, sovereignty is forgotten. My favorite example is the federal deadbeat dads law. Sure there's an argument for it. What argument remains to still have states? Why have state and local governments?
I'm not serious; just trolling.
I keep reading the sentence, "For Democrats, it could be straight out of a nightmare." How exactly is this true? If anything, the current system favors Republicans by overrepresenting rural (mostly red) states.
population shifts.. deal with it, bible belt.
DC should never have been given EC votes; it should have (mostly) been given back to Maryland. The people mostly don't live in the key Federal building areas, and so the idiotic idea of DC statehood wouldn't matter - they'd be citizens of Maryland.
With the Agenda in place the distribution of human population would only be a limited number of human reserves with most of the country completely depopulated and returned to the wild. Once that's accomplished there won't actually be any further elections as we'll have devolved to a tyranny in order to keep people on the human reserves. They won't be allowed to even go out and visit the newly recreated wild areas as in would contaminate the purity of the new wild lands.
I agree with some posters that this lacks a sense of history and an appreciation of geography.
It also deeply lacks a sense of culture. There are combined areas with no common culture and indeed cultural opposition across geography. This re-Balkanization, so to speak, might as well offer the opportunity to dismantle the United States -- which is, in all ways except language, as culturally distinct as most of Europe.
What we need is Urban Secession!
For starters, make NYC metro area a separate state , taking away parts of NY state, NJ, CT, and possibly even Pike Country from PA. Rename the upstate region to Buffalo, or something like that. Do the same for metropolitan areas of Chicago, Washington DC, Philly, LA + San Diego, SF, etc. There wouldn't be much left of NJ / MD / DE - perhaps their outlying non-metro areas can be glued to other non-metro states. (Not sure if Boston and Houston / Dallas will want to be separated - their politics are not much different from the rest of the state.)
It will be a win-win for everybody: socialists, which tend to mooch off more densely populated areas, will get to play socialism, and the rest of us will be free from their control. Chicago-less Illinois will recognize the Right to Self-Defense. Mayor Bloomberg will get his toilet paper ban. Everybody will be happy (at least until the socialists will run out of competent people to tax, but that's their problem).
--libman
You are correct, and judging by the collective responses, most here don't either. The problems of the electoral college have nothing to do with state boundaries.
Sadly, this just another of countless examples of the internet enabling fools to masquerade as experts to the detriment of us all. Now we have, in addition to real problems, more misinformation to overcome.
Texas would secede from the union rather than let some federal legislation break in up into smaller states. Seriously introduce this along with mandatory gun surrender and Texas will drop out of the union faster that you can fire a shot.
It's true that the Electoral College somewhat overrepresents small rural states. This is because each state's electoral votes is equal to the size of its Congressional delegation, and all states have 2 Senators regardless of size. (Also, the smallest states still have 1 Representative, no matter how minuscule their population.)
But that problem really doesn't come up too often. It did in 2000, to be sure, but in every other instance in the past century, the Electoral College results had the same winner as the popular vote results. A much more serious issue is that the Electoral College gives rise to the phenomenon of "swing states."
Defenders of the Electoral College often claim that if it was abolished, then Presidential candidates would only bother campaigning in the big states and ignore everyone else. But under the current situation, we have an even worse situation: the campaigns are largely restricted to a handful of states that happen to be almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. That means that if you live in New York or California or Texas, you'll be essentially ignored through the whole Presidential campaign. On the other hand, if you live in Ohio, there is no end to the amount of pandering the parties will do to get your vote. The current situation results in a vast majority of the American people being written off as irrelevant to a Presidential campaign! This is one way we wind up with crappy policy like ethanol subsidies: they play really well in Midwestern swing states, so no one with Presidential aspirations will dare to challenge them.
I think he already realized he had serious problems lumping the present-day citizens of Hawaii in with Oregon, and Alaskans in with Washington state. That dog ain't gonna hunt. Can you imagine Seattle legislators drooling over the Alaskan oil money, which is currently distributed as a subsidy to residents? Or if went the other way, the legislators in Anchorage would get rid of the intrusive gun laws across Ranier, so folks in Redmond WA could finally enjoy the great sport of hunting deer from helicopters.
This is interesting. I always assumed (being raised in Washington) that it would be best to divide our state straight down the Cascade Mountains, farther west than the line is in this map.In line with the "tt" of Seattle, the "a" of Tacoma, and continuing towards the central "a" in Shasta.
Many people in Eastern Washington would actually love to see a split like I described, because the west side has too much control over the rest of the state.
Come on /. Who is posting this worthless crap?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Many countries, not just the U.S.A., have provisions that legislation must be passed by both a majority of population and a majority of geography. Hence congress allocated by population, but each state has two senators, whether it's Wyoming or California.
Canada doesn't. Our Senate is appointed by population (by regions on paper, but by population in practice), so Ontario has the most MPs and the most senators. Here in B.C. we have similar issues: the vast majority of the population live in the southwestern corner of the province, but the happening industry is in the northeast, which feels more kinship with neighbouring Alberta. Including using the same time zone.
We've also looked at proportional representation in B.C., but that didn't get off the ground. I would have welcomed it.
...laura
I haven't run the numbers, but the electoral college favors less populous states by guaranteeing a minimum of 3 electoral votes. California has 66 times the population of Wyoming but only 18 times the number of electoral votes. My initial guess would be that the voters in rural Western states (Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, etc) would lose clout in this scheme, and those are all Republican strongholds.
However, the 10 least populous states (+DC) are Wyoming (R), Vermont (D), DC (D), North Dakota (R), Alaska (R),
South Dakota (R), Delaware (D), Montana (R), Rhode Island (D), and New Hampshire (swing)
So that's a 50-50 split pretty much: both parties benefit from the electoral college.
The top 10 states are California (D), Texas (R), New York (D), Florida (swing), Illinois (D), Pennsylvania (swing), Ohio (swing), Georgia (R), Michigan (D?), and North Carolina (swing?). So 4 D, 2 R, and 4 swing states (depending on how you define them): so maybe the Dems suffer a bit from the electoral college at this end of the spectrum.
The hard question is what happens when you split these states up: Atlanta freed from the rest of Georgia goes blue, but the middle of Pennsylvania goes red without Philly and Pittsburgh, etc. So maybe the article is right that when you run the numbers it disadvantages Democrats, but I'd be interested to see the analysis because I don't understand how you come to the conclusion that this favors Republicans without it.
(I know this isn't a serious proposal so apologies for geeking out over it. :)
Let me explain:
The Electors job is to insure the Eelectorate has the best chance to survive/thrive in the world as it is.
Various population segments sample a part of that world, and this is reflected in their electors.
A large set of the populations may sample a small part of the word as it is and should be so represented.
The longer term future is unknown, the importance weight of military might,, industrial power, political/economic maneuver, or survival farming will be determined by future events.
As a rough first cut a voters weight factor should probably be inversley proportional to the population density where he lives.
In terms of the new map then; each of the fifty new regions should have equal electoral representation.
Beg is oft used as a synonym for ask. That evolved it into one of those common phrases that some people have a difficult time with -as if English was not their first language. It may be a regionalism, I've heard it, and it seems as if you have had prior experience with it yourself; Deal.
It's just my usual cut-and-paste, you're supposed to google it and see who actually said it.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Looks like my Shadowrun campaign.
Actually metro areas are getting all the attention. That's where politicians get the most bang for the buck, particularly Democrats. But this nation isn't just for inner city dwellers and their issues, positions, or "solutions" should not be the only metrics that decide how everyone will live. That's such a divisive way of thinking for those who claim to celebrate diversity. It's appalling they don't see their own hypocrisy. Those hick rural people may have the franchise but no voice, no representation because they're safely ignored by politicians whose only interest is ensuring their own elections.
California is a prime example. All that's needed is LA and SF. The tens of millions who make up the rest of the state, including residents of one of the largest cities in the country are safely ignored. That's why we keep seeing proposals to break up the state.
Statewide challengers cannot afford to build a winning coalition. Look where leadership and statewide officeholders come from: they're increasingly concentrated to three metro areas: L.A., SF and the state capitol. Worse, we've seen challengers who aren't from one of those areas unable to get a toehold. The end result is immoveable local machine politics and an entire state lead by people with an insular, myopic viewpoint all connected to the same socio-political circle. Failed ideas are repeated and replicated across wider and wider geographic areas. Let's run the state like L.A. or Detroit or your favorite metro area, because failures there were because we didn't do it everywhere.
Consider the battle of the big box stores who wanted to offer grocery areas to compete with unionized chain stores. The policy was overturned in San Diego because people wanted competition and lower prices but, in a huff, the policy was taken to the state level. Why is that even possible? Because the Democrats control the state entirely since they control L.A. and SF and these unions are their allies. Incidentally this political alliance is why pension funding problems are so systemic. They won't say no because they need them for GOTV efforts in their urban areas.
Political echo chambers form and systemic LEGALIZED corruption builds. Dynasties like that of the Hahn family concentrate power and influence. Multigenerational family members have been mayor, DA, council members, state legislator and now in Congress. MA has had its Kennedy problem. Some see the Bushes this way. These are issues everywhere and across party lines; I just happen to be intimately familiar with the CA situation.
You should always be suspicious of concentrations of power and the replication of failed policies on a higher and higher level all because those are the experiences of the people who are so easily elected only because of their familiarity to urban dwellers and the political machines available to them.
Think about it... would you want the inverse? What if "hick" politics dominated because that was where the financial and logistical advantage was?
It's been a problem throughout history and "progressive" people keep fighting to make that political power structure easier and easier to build and maintain under the guise of "fairness" when sold to voters. The same party that talks endlessly of "fairness" and a "balanced approach" demonstrates no interest in compromise that accede points, position or advantage to their political enemy.
The Founding Fathers were keenly aware of these issues and debated them. They wanted checks-and-balances and it seems the aim of the "progressives" has been to remove those under the guise of "fairness" yet for their own political advantage.
I keep telling people who are blindly one party or the other, particularly in my minority group, if your vote is a given you've ceded your power. You become irrelevant. At the same time you don't want to be impossible to get as some on the right are.
Right on !
here's my algorithm and code for fair redistricting - i release it to the public domain - https://raw.github.com/happyjack27/autoredistrict/master/README.md
Just because many people use it incorrectly does not make that usage correct.
http://astutehosting.com/
This is how redistrcting should be done: with a computer algorithm that mathematically guarantees fairness: https://raw.github.com/happyjack27/autoredistrict/master/README.md
notice how the blue, democrat counties tend to line our borders? (not just our mexican borders) it's like an invasion of foreign thinkers.
Makes sense.
Mod this up.
If the purpose of redrawing state boundaries (an absolutely impossible proposition) is to come up with a better alternative to the "winner take all" aspect of the Electoral College, just don't make the College such a "winner take all" proposition. Since most folks have figured out that amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College will never happen, the next best alternative is to make electoral votes proportional by selecting presidential electors by congressional district. This gives the more rural areas somewhat better representation without overly skewing the results. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives each state legislature the authority to determine how it chooses its electors, so such a change is much easier to accomplish than amendments to the Constitution (which require a 2/3 vote by each house of Congress and adoption by 3/4 of the states).
Maine and Nebraska already have their electors selected this way, and Virginia and Pennsylvania have put forward similar proposals. This system preserves states' rights, yet allows for a more representative result in the Electoral College.
That ain't a good argument.
Just because many people use it incorrectly does not make that usage correct.
But then you're assuming they use it incorrectly when trying to prove that this usage is incorrect.
When the U.S. constitution was written, states with small population complained they would be underrepresented. So the Senate was created. I can't tell, is Daniel talking about gerrymandering? If he is, states such as Iowa have created nonpartisan committees to redistrict the state as the population shifts. I think what Daniel wants is a Senate-like legislative body that gives each district in a state equal representation. Unfortunately he thinks gerrymandering is a problem at the national level, which was solved with the signing of the Constitution.
Redrawing election area map boundaries in order to equalise the population size of the regions.
Fail.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work. It's been tried, tested, and is in use in some countries, but it doesn't work.
The basic problem: Population figures are dynamic. People move. One city has a baby boom. Another has a jobs crisis. And suddenly, you've got to re-draw the maps all over again. And again. And again.
Your complaint makes as much sense as complaining that the US and the Maldives get equal votes in the UN General Assembly (the Maldives get much more vote per population).
Theoretically, a very small % of the world population could have undue influence at the UN.
But nobody (except George Soros?) is calling for direct proportional elections to the UN.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
While TFA is an interesting approach, the simpler solution to one of the main thrusts in TFA (of having equal EC representation/distribution) is to simply change the EC to where each congressional district (or in this case, electoral district) is autonomous and controls its own vote independent from the rest of the state it's in.
Even if the two extra EC vote afforded each state are kept, I see this as a far better system than a strait popular vote system. Why? Because the EC has a side effect of doing something amazingly positive that few realize. It contains vote fraud to within the state it happens in.
Consider this for example: Imagine a politically corrupt jurisdiction in your state. Imagine that they start cranking out fraudulent votes. The votes they dilute are limited to the vote in their state. But in a popular vote system, they now dilute everyone's vote. By tweaking the EC system to treat congressional districts autonomously, the fraud is contained even further.
And since congressional districts are explicitly drawn to contain apportioned sections of the population (given a few constraints of not crossing state boundaries and the like), the goal towards equal vote weighting is more naturally furthered.
The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
I think it's cute how you guys went out of your way to betray, then close to exterminate, your indiginous natives (American "Indians") but still love to steal words from their language and even name your sports teams (ie. Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves) after them. :-P Up here in enlightened Canuckistan, we just sent 'em to school and terrorized them into assimilating; not that it worked or anything.
Spin in your grave, Custer.
As for TFA, I very much resent the loss of Idaho. It's one of my favourite places. And Hawaii is part of "Shasta?" !@#$ that! Hawaii plus Guam (and Cuba?) would make more sense.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
...not states. Like Virginia did. Or rather tried...
Where's the -1 Paranoid Delusions mod when you need it?
If this is based on even population in each of the new States wouldn't you have to adjust the State boundaries every census to account for demographic changes? What's the potential for gerrymandering there?
I didn't know Emeril Lagasse had a Slashdot account... nor that he had any interest in geography.
#DeleteChrome
It reminds me of the map of the world as seen by Ronald Reagan. The area of each nation or continent is in proportion to how much thought he gave to it.
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/38-the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan
[Scroll down]
There is zero chance of the ever happening.
Why are you guys even debating this?
For Democrats, it could be straight out of a nightmare.
Um... why? For one thing, the Democrats aren't exactly being helped by a system that gives Republican Wyoming as many Senators as Democratic California. And even in the House the only thing that has Boehner in power is gerrymandering; the majority of votes cast for Representatives were for Democrats.
It's rural interests that have the most to gain by unequal representation, particularly in the Senate. Right now, those interests are voting Republican.
Your joking right?
A pretty savvy joke if you ask me.
Sortocracy -- sorting proponents of political theories into governments that test them -- is the correct constitutive dimension of States -- not mere population.
Seastead this.
I agree; I think that 3 EVs is much too much for DC. Retrocession is a much better idea. They can technically leave out the area immediately around the Mall, where nobody lives, but contains the Capitol, Supreme Court, White House, OEOB, Dirksen, etc. just to satisfy the Constitution, if somebody insists. There are already plenty of government-leased office spaces in Md and Va.
That would balance out the disproportionate electoral votes with a vote in Congress. It'll boost Maryland's representation by 1, perhaps 2. Maryland is going to want rent money from the Feds, and that's going to make people cranky.
South of K street N, west of 2nd Street E. That's the part that really needs to be stateless territory. The rest doesn't. It would have taken a big bribe to MD to get them to take it thirty years ago, but with gentrification proceeding apace I think it's a winner today, assuming that the feds thrown in a little property-tax-substitute grant.
As a resident of the DC metro area, I'm liking the new "Washington State."
I guess that's one way for DC to finally get statehood.
Ooh! And this finally solves the problem of which state government is on the hook for paying for the DC Metro!
Historically the world has gone about creating it's political boundaries completely backwards, using waterways as division lines. Understandable or even intuitive as this may be (it's a dead-simple visual reference that can't be disputed), it has not served the people well. Take for example the polluting factory or livestock yard that simply builds on the opposite side of the same river where it has fewer pollution regulations, however continuing to affect the same river and the population on the other side who have no say in the regulation of said factory, because it's in a different state/county/whathaveyou.
The USA (every country, for that matter) should be redistricted from the state level, down to county level, down to political districts should be strictly based on watersheds. Think about that - It would have the potential to solve many current problems, including putting an end to gerrymandering once and for all, improving local autonomy, ending irrigation squabbles, improving environmental & health protection, etc.
This is not a new idea, and now more than ever needs more popular discussion. A couple of maps:
Wikipedia: Drainage basin
US Watershed map (just from a quick web search, I'm sure a more useful map exists but this gives a good idea)
The States are independent and Free, They belong to the union because our Constitution guaranteed a level of representation.
Or maybe 420 is too many; we could save a lot of administrative overhead by having fewer states, maybe 42. Then name them carefully to represent people in each state, e.g. Alloy, Sour Diesel, Green Kush, Strawberria, West Strawberria, Dino Sour, Chem, Grape Ape, etc. Of course to make it politically palatable would require redefining states in the order they legalize marijuana- we have to be realistic.
This isn't deigned to avoid gerrymandering it is gerrymandering.
The whole idea of gerrymandering is to group like minded voters together to minimize their electoral power. Which is precisely what this algorithm does as its fundamental design. Dense population areas generally lean left so the core of the algorithm leads to gerrymandering.
The way to solve the problem is to change to direct voting for president, and likely come form of purely proportional voting for Congress. This would out course essentially eliminate the states at least at the federal level, but no more so than redrawing state lines every few years based on population and would at least work.
Yes, please, get me out of Alabama. I'd much rather have associate with Nashville, even if the new state has a silly name.
Actually, it does, like it or not.
Actually, that's pretty much the definition of "correct usage" for any language, given enough time for people's understandings of a word to change.
Languages diverge, meanings change. It's okay, the world won't end. If you know what was meant, being a reactionary pedant doesn't really improve the situation.
I saw you sucking on a fag the other night. Don't call it a cigarette. Fag is the appropriate term - that everybody uses 'fag' to mean something else doesn't mean it's correct usage, you know.
1. Fundamentally we are a republic of states. The states together define the nation. We are losing sight of this. 2. Seems a bit like the nation building that was done with good intentions at the end of WW 1. That didn't work out so well in many cases.
Fuck you and fuck retrocession. We have enough trouble dealing with the modern shithole that is Baltimore, I'd be very pleased if my tax dollars didn't also have to subsidize DC.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Why should Maryland have to babysit the few square miles that is our national disgrace? No thanks. It's bad enough dealing with Baltimore. Let VA have it. Hell, we can make them a good deal on PG County as well.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
...with a spice weasel.
How do you vote if you are pro gun and pro gay rights?
Libertarian, obviously: "Americans Moving in a Libertarian Direction: More Back Gun Rights, Gay Marriage"
Are you sure that the person you vote for will vote for a president who has the same ideas?
Yes. "Libertarian Gary Johnson’s Bold and Consistent Stand on Gay Marriage" (and the firearms/weapons rights issue we can take for granted). It's amusing that the Libertarian candidate has a stronger endorsement of gay rights than the Democratic candidate (ostensibly being the party everyone thinks of as pro-gay rights).
Does the party you vote for give you that option?
Yes. It's their raison d'etre. It would be a breach of the basic ideology of the party to do otherwise.
Does that party have any chance of ever being part of a government?
Not unless we change our voting system or one of the two major parties collapses. It's a consequence of Duverger's law.
In Europe there are people from the Pirate Party who have a seat in governments. There are people from all over the place representing the people.
I applaud that. Fortunately, you don't have to deal with the inevitable consequence of our first past the post voting system. In that case, the Pirate Party would be almost completely locked out of government until they absorbed a sizable portion of a now-defunct major party. That would inevitably dilute the ideology of the Pirate Party and probably lead to some ironic legislator votes (eg. compromising on increased copyright enforcement).
Heh, also, I presume there are no "guns, gays, recreational drugs, and limited government" parties anywhere in Europe (and yes, the guns part is required when comparing).
Actually in modern language theory it does.
Absolutely. Though arguably it would be better to simply avoid the use of states as an important distinction in federal governance altogether.
Let me godwin that for you: Hitler was elected by proportional voting. Nazis rose to power in Germany in one of those convoluted negotiations that countries with proportional voting do all the time.
An extremist has little chance of being elected when candidates are chosen to represent a district. In any given geographical area, there are different sorts of people, therefore moderates are much more likely to get elected.
Under a proportional system, things are different. It's easy to find enough supporters for any extremist view, if you count votes all over the country. And when you try to make a coalition with extremists, who do you think will end with all the power?
A coalition government often has 45% of moderate politicians for one side, 45% of moderates for the other side, and the power ends in the hand of the 10% of extremists who can choose to support one or the other side.
There's been an attempt to draw New York's border like that before and it resulted in a spanking across Lake Champlain.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
They should just let the electoral votes split within a state down to 1 or 2 decimal places. Or perhaps even easier just switch to a pure popular vote. Hey, then they'd have to convince the entire US that they're a good candidate instead of a few key swing states, what a novel idea!
The problem with the premise (and I recognize it's not serious) is that it utterly ignores the entire basis of the foundation of the United States.
It's understandable when people from other countries don't "get it". It's sad/pathetic (and I'm really talking about the comments here) when people ostensibly FROM this country don't understand the basic premises of their own history.
"The electoral system overrepresents the least-populated states". Yes, that is PRECISELY the point.
The United States is not a country like most others, in which case the subdivisions are relatively-arbitrary political/administrative districts, counties, oblasts, whatever.
The separate states are (or were) SOVEREIGN states, with a constitutionally-enforced protection of that sovereignty. The US Federal government is only allowed to act in very narrowly-defined areas that were mutually agreed by the original colonies to be of jurisdictional benefit - defense, foreign policy, etc.*
It's worth saying again: the States are NOT 'districts' of the US in the familiar sense that most countries have. For example, the US Federal government passes few laws that directly impact citizens. By far, the majority of laws applicable to people directly in the US are state laws and local (city) ordinances. The US Fed doesn't set national speed limits, for example; they set a limit and tell the states to comply or they won't get their Federal highway maintenance dollars.
The union of the Colonies was specifically predicated on a level of balance that allows them a voice disproportional to population.
One might further point out that Congress ITSELF has worked to make it less representative. Note that in the first Congress, the House was approximately 62 members for a colonial population in 1790 of 3.8 million. Proportionally, this would mean the House today would be over 5000 members. Remember, that this likewise would impact the number of electoral votes in play, and pretty much eliminate the 'senator' anti-populist bias.
*Granted, the Constitution is pretty nearly in tatters, the remaining shreds filthy with the wipings of modern administrations and congresses who have actively colluded to evade and sap both the letter and spirit of the original framers.
-Styopa
It was a necessary compromise at the time that turned out to have some useful emergent properties.
Not to single you out - I know nothing of your political views - but it does amuse me that one of the more liberal states in the Union doesn't want the slackers in DC on the grounds that they're a bunch of dead-weight degenerates. It's almost as if they don't believe their own hype about how all that you need to do is have a little more spending on education and a little job training and everything will turn into utopia...
So instead of 13 regions for the Hunger Games, we start with 50?
Oh minus one because the capital was devastated.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
...you got our vote here in the great state of Adirondack.
This is outmoded thinking, and it opens up all sorts of pitfalls. The loss of State sovereignty, the ability to "redraw" states on a whim, and they can be done so to support one party having an advantage over another to almost guarantee party supremacy.
F' this plan.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
The US is specifically designed to prevent what is called the "tyranny of the majority". It is also designed to limit the power of the federal government by balancing it with the states. One aim was to limit the power of the densly populated cities. That is why it works that way. Except, of course, the Senators were origanally supposed to be selected by the Governors of the States.
People who say the Electoral college is broken, don't understand why it was done that way. 8-)
The breaking up of the voting areas is also a way to increase the individual power of each voter. It makes it (somewhat) more likely that an individual vote could turn an election. Voters are more powerful in a state (or other area) where all the electoral votes go together. This was actually proved mathematically some years ago. (sorry no link)
Welcome to the new (for 5 years now) /. of not really dealing with tech anymore. Politics, OS wars, and climate stuff. Yay.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
When I lived in Allegheny, Charles, or St. Mary's counties, you could call me a liberal. Now that I live in MoCo, I believe I'm a reactionary right winger by MD standards.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
1) Vote
2) ???
3) PROFIT!!!
Mormons want thier own planet that's why they have so many blind offspring. By blind I mean blissfully unaware that their views are a little messed up.
I think this would make the elections one where the popular vote would be more important
The problem with this solution is that it would be only temporary, as the populations will continue to shift, making his state map obsolete in a generation or two.
The real problem stems from the changes made to uncouple the number of representatives, and thereby the Electoral College, from the population of the US.
Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Delaware each get three electors. One for each of it's two senators, and one for it's representative.
Each elector represents the wishes of as few as 192,000 Americans.
California gets 55 electors - but each elector represents the wishes of 691,000 Americans - 3.6 times as many people.
Texas gets 38 electors - but each of it's electors represents the wishes of 684,000 Americans - Also neary 3.6 times as many people.
New York gets 29 electors - and each of it's electors represents the wishes of 672,000 Americans - 3.5 times as many people.
Florida gets 29 electors - and each of it's electors represents the wishes of 666,000 Americans - 3.5 times as many people.
The issue here is that with the distortion of the electoral college caused by the fixing of the total numbers of representatives at 435, has led to the undo
discrimination of those living in populous states, in that their electors votes count for far less than do the votes of the electors in the small states.
The only permanent solution is to return the elctoral college to one that give one elector for every so many Americans. For ease, set the number at 200,000 Americans or portion there of. And then tie the electors vote to the popular vote, But on a national level, so one state can not play games making it's state winner take all, while another splits it's votes. It needs to be the same way for all Americans in a Federal Election.
The result would be about 1800 electors, with each ones vote counting for roughly the same number of Americans. This is less than the number of representatives being sent to the Party Conventions each four years.
There was a very interesting board game called "Fortress America." The design was such that invading forces could care less about our states' boundaries, but only geographical features. Boardgamegeek has some photos. I still have this game. http://boardgamegeek.com/image/761195/fortress-america?size=original