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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.'"
The purpose of the electoral college was to avoid having the most important office in the federal gov't be victim to popular fervor. In a direct election, radicals can be too easily elected (see tea party). This system prevents that in theory (along with the voting system of the electors: in seperate areas. This prevented one guy from giving a moving speech and changing the minds of everyone.)
The whole indirect voting systems like the US Electoral College were created to deal with the logistical problems of giving every citizen the vote.
Uh, no.
We have the electoral college because we live in a federated representational republic, not a democracy. The individual citizens of the United States don't get a vote for president. Our states do. We only get a vote to tell our state government who we would prefer they vote for. And, they don't even need to listen to us (and have in the past chosen to vote against the will of the people)!
In this day and age, the only purpose of indirect elections is to give undue weight to rural areas.
In this day and age, we forget that Massachusetts and New York and Virginia, etc, saw themselves basically as sovereign nations, only joining together in that pesky federal government business to give them a united front in dealing with the old European powers. We forget, in this era of "excuse anything with the Commerce Clause", that the vast majority of the constitution took great pains to refer to the states as such, rather than as mere political subdivisions of the whole.
You also forget that before that whole "one man, one vote", having a voice in government depended solely on how much land you owned. Urbanites didn't give farmers more of a voice out of charity, but rather, the large landowners graciously allowed the unlanded to have a voice at all.
Has the time come when we should realign our political system with modern perceptions? Or should we respect that we have such an archaic system for damned good historical reasons?
Personally, I think the recent gun ownership debate has brought exactly this issue to the center of attention - We have urban yuppies who've created their own violent crimes hell, trying to take guns away from rural areas with almost no violent crime. Perhaps the Founding Fathers understood something about us that we have forgotten.
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
The purpose of the electoral college was to avoid having the most important office in the federal gov't be victim to popular fervor. In a direct election, radicals can be too easily elected (see tea party). This system prevents that in theory (along with the voting system of the electors: in seperate areas. This prevented one guy from giving a moving speech and changing the minds of everyone.)
The Electoral College was the result of a political compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention because the participants couldn't make up their minds how the President should be selected. Just about every possible method was suggested by one participant or another, and the Electoral College was just the one that happened to pass.
We can respect the work of the Founding Fathers without treating them as infallible gods. In fact, refusing to think for ourselves and instead treating their work as a kind of Holy Scripture is completely against the Enlightenment values that they stood for.
There's the British system: The people vote, someone emerges on top, and none of us can figure out exactly what goes on in between.
The key insight of the US federal structure as originally embodied in the Constitution was that every constituency deserves a hearing - the people are represented in the House, the states are represented in the Senate, and the President is elected by whatever means the States appoint - they can be more or less democratic in the selection of electors. A necessary consequence of the first-past-the-post system with specific electoral districts used in the US is that it is designed to produce a two-party state. Third parties have to influence one of them. Yes, third parties matter less here. On the other hand, it relentlessly forces both parties' platforms to the center of the electorate, strongly curbing radical influence.
The problem is the small state bonus. In 2000 Bush wouldn't have won without the extra votes that small states get beyond what they're populations justify. Candidates for President rarely if ever campaign in larger states because we have less pull than the smaller states do.
What's worse, is that these same states that are sparsely populated also tend to be welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars. All while fighting to eliminate programs that are necessary to keep the urban decay to a minimum.
rarely if ever campaign in larger states
No, they rarely campaign in states that always vote the same way, large or small. They campaign like maniacs in NH and IA because they're early, and they campaign like hell in the major swing states - ask anyone from Ohio.
That one favors the GOP so it's evil. No really, the wonkish left has been in a panic recently over a proposal to do just that in a few of the swing states (Pennsylvania and Ohio, I think).
Actually the reason it favors the GOP is that the proposal is just to do it in states that went Democratic that happen to have Republican governors. The Republicans certainly weren't proposing splitting up the electoral vote in Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina. Just the states they lost.
Then you tie in the rampant gerrymandering that passes for redistricting these days, there would only be a few places worth campaigning.
That's a guaranteed recipe for fragmentation and Balkanization.
Is that a bad thing? With our current system, large blocks of representatives behold to their parties obstruct everything. Anything that weakens the power of political parties, and enables representatives to vote their conscience, should be good thing.
We have the electoral college because we live in a federated representational republic, not a democracy
You seem to think that this is a good thing.
I certainly do.
It bothers the crap out of me to see uninformed people voting for their representatives. To see them voting on actual decisions? No quicker way of destroying the country that I can think of.
Before I'm accused of defining "uninformed" as "believes differently than I do," I'll just point out that I follow my own guidelines, and unless I've taken the time to research the issues and all of the candidates running for a particular office meticulously, I don't cast a vote. Which generally means that I rarely vote, and when I do I leave most of the ballot empty, voting only for those offices for which I've taken the time to study every candidate and the relevant issues. I refuse to potentially cancel out the vote of a more informed citizen.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
"But my local economy matters very little me."
Either you are lying or you don't know what you are saying.
Do you live in the slums? Does it take 20-60 mins for the cops to arrive if you call them? Are your streets covered in potholes? Are the local restaurants and food stores infested with rats and roaches? If it really doesn't matter to you, and the economy was so bad there was very little tax base to pay for these things, this would be your life.
Trust me -- your local economy matters VERY MUCH to you.
"It is pretty neat, but it still reflects 18th century thinking"
...
And if you want to understand the reasons for that feel free to read the federalist papers (particularly Federalist 10).
So, how is reading the document written 1787 supposed to convince him it's not 18th century thinking?
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?
welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars
is a very tired meme. The federal government spends most of its money on defense, interest, and income transfers, of which Social Security and Medicare are by far the largest. The red states get the defense dollars because the South has warm weather year-round and the West has cheap land for bombing ranges and secrecy. The red states get income transfers because, well, they're full of retirees (and, to a lesser extent, poor people).
If you want a properly indexed graph, check out this, which is the net flow of federal dollars as a percentage of each state's GDP over the past 20 years. Notice that the three mega-reds are West Virginia (poor whites), Mississippi (poor blacks), and New Mexico (poor Indians), and that there's a lot of red down the Eastern Seaboard, where the Northeast retirees go, and in the Mountain West, where the California retirees go.
Are you suggesting that means-testing Social Security and Medicare is on the table for the Democratic Party? Because I'd totally be on board with that. Hell, if the Democrats are going to become fiscally responsible, I'll become one. I'm tired of the Jesus freaks in the R column anyway.
The fear is not bogus.
Republicans managed to win more congressional seats while losing the popular vote (for the congressional elections). So it's not a fantasy that such a system gives them an advantage.
The gerrymandering is not bogus. While a state may lean one way or another, the distribution of the votes is not uniform, therefore Republicans and Dems will tend to win in states that the other party generally has an overall majority in. Gerrymandering is real, and is easier for Republicans because Dems votes are concentrated in urban areas and tend to be overwhelming. There was a fairly large precinct in the last election without a single Republican vote. Congressional districts tend to be the same size, so if, as a party, your supporters are concentrated in a single urban area, you get really large margins there. If you are trying to win an election, all other things equal (especially overall number and distribution of voters), you want to win by slim margins, and have your victories spread out.
Secondly, the only states where this was proposed were states that vote Democrat and have Republican controlled state senates and governors. Basically, the system rather blatantly takes away Democrat electoral college votes in the states the Dems are winning, while leaving them unchanged in the states that the Republicans are winning. Ignoring the 2 electoral college votes given to each state for the senators it has, if all states that vote Dem did this, they would lose up to 40% or so of their electoral college vote, and could never win a presidential election. For this alone, the idea is deeply repugnant. The fact that a "serious" politician actually discusses this should be unsettling to all voters. When politicians lose elections, they should either change to suit their electorate or quit, not change the rules to get into power regardless of the electorates wishes.