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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.'"
Have you any idea how many US cities and counties, let alone states, have Native American names already? Alaska (through Russian), Arizona (through Spanish), Hawaii, Idaho (disputed), Illinois (through French), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan (through French), Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are all derived from Native American words in some form or another. That's almost 40% of the states.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
To the founders, the "Senate problem" was a solution, not a problem. Proportional representation was not the ultimate goal; it was a goal that needed to be tempered. The Senate does that.
"The Founders" weren't one unified body. The bicameral system was a compromise between large-state representatives who wanted proportional representation by population, and small-state representatives who wanted all states to have an equal vote.
The people we usually think of as "Founding Fathers" – most notably James Madison and Alexander Hamilton – wanted proportional representation and weren't too thrilled about the Senate, though they were willing to accept it to avoid scuttling the whole enterprise. According to Wikipedia, "Madison argued that a conspiracy of large states against the small states was unrealistic as the large states were so different from each other. Hamilton argued that the states were artificial entities made up of individuals, and accused small state representatives of wanting power, not liberty." The people who were gung-ho for an equal representation Senate were much more marginal figures, such as Gunning Bedford, Jr.
I don't know if that's quite true. I live in a small state and there's very little campaigning ever done here. Why? Same reason that there's not a lot of campaigning done in other states: it's pretty much a given that no matter who runs under the Republican ticket, they'll get the most votes here. Kind of like how it really doesn't matter in California and New York, because they're going to go to the Democrats. Why bother campaigning beyond a token appearance when everyone already knows that baring any major scandals, the results are practically a given. So really, it's just the states that have early primaries or the swing states that get the most attention.
Also the system was originally designed in such a way so that the larger, more populous states wouldn't have too strong of an influence over the federal government.
"It is pretty neat, but it still reflects 18th century thinking"
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the constitution.
We do not have a single election for president. We have 50 SEPARATE elections for president. Each state decides who best represents it's population and all electors (with few exepctions) go to that cadidate and the number of electors is based on population.
We need to remember we do not have a "democracy" by design. It's a consitutional republic based on federalism. And if you want to understand the reasons for that feel free to read the federalist papers (particularly Federalist 10).
"Congresspeople shouldn't represent geographical regions, but specific groups of people, where ever they are"
Um -- they don't represent regions. The do represent "specific groups of people". They are called their "electorate". I'm sorry, but my representative wasn't selected by the San Gabrial mountains, but by the majority of the people in his disctrict. Those very specific groupe of people.
Hell, let's compare it to Mississippi (same website), which I think we can all agree is a quintessential red state.
In short, WA is ignored because there is essentially zero chance it will go R in a national election (regardless of its Congressional delegation's composition). Are you being deliberately obtuse?
The problem is the small state bonus.
The small state bonus doesn't exist. Part of the Electoral College design was intended to give small states a boost, so they're not completely dominated by their larger brethren, but the founders didn't have the mathematics necessary to really understand the effect of their design. We do now, and the conclusion you reach by evaluating the situation according to the various vote power measures is that in fact the reverse is true. The power of bloc voting means that power disproportionately accrues to large blocs, which means large states in this context.
If all states were to allocate their electoral votes proportionally, then small states really would get a boost. As it is, they're actually disadvantaged by the system. Not as disadvantaged as they'd be without their extra vote or two, but still disadvantaged.
Candidates for President rarely if ever campaign in larger states because we have less pull than the smaller states do.
Nonsense. They focus their campaigning on the states whose vote isn't a foregone conclusion. Obama didn't need to campaign in California or New York, and there was no point in him campaigning in Texas. Both Obama and Romney spent lots of time in Florida, however; a swing state with 25 electoral votes is important to them.
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