Alaska, Arizona, Maine, and West Virginia contain just over 3% of the U.S. population.

[SubjectTrip]

Times like these are when the benefits of a parliamentary system over a senatorial system are made apparent.

[Stargleamer]

1. I think I read once that Los Angeles County

has more people than 41 states. One person, one vote is made a mockery of in this country.

[empedocles]

3. To go a level deeper, Virginia by political county maps, appears all red.

Yet Virginia continually gets bluer. Disproportionate amount of tax revenues come from the lil blue splotches on the maps.

[quakerboy]

35. All of which just became irrelevant.

Kavanagh will be the vote to approve any voter suppression and gerrymandering, no matter how extreme, to make sure dems never take power in any state with less than 60%

[moose65]

14. Yep!

That's why I hate to see those "county maps" that get posted from time to time, or the right-wing posts about how Trump won like 2,000 counties and Hillary only won 60. A county is not a standardized unit! Los Angeles County has over 10 million people, while there are counties in Nevada and Wyoming that are huge in size, but barely have ten people and a tumbleweed in them.

[empedocles]

2. While NY, CA, FLA, have all of 6 Senators.

[sandensea]

22. To say nothing of our nonsensical primary scheduling traditions.

Basically, three small states (IA, NH, and SC) with 2% of the population between them get to decide for everyone else.

By the time the primaries got to California (typically on June 5), the nominee had long since had it signed, sealed, and delivered. One mostly showed up as a courtesy to one's party.

[Ligyron]

26. It's mind boggling to me that Cali or NY doesn't take charge of this.

They could totally change the primary system to the right direction. I know NH says they will do whatever but so could those 2 HUGE Blue states.

[sandensea]

36. Isn't it though.

Most other democracies with primary elections hold them all on the same day, or on two or three different days at most.

But big business would rather keep the real decision-making power in the hands of those three states because they know their voters tend to be more conservative than the norm. It works for them, so why fiddle with it.

[Ilsa]

4. Would requiring a supermajority help, or

just cause the SCOTUS to dwindle down as no nominations pass? I would hope it would cause presidents and senators to see that moderation and compromise are needed.

[MarcA]

5. Either that or let the States be Autonomous

and enter into compacts and treaties for just about everything.

[Johonny]

6. It's time for the issue of the make up of the senate to get more people angry

But sadly so many people get drilled into them in school the US political system is the best in the world...

[dajoki]

7. I agree n/t

[BSdetect]

8. Senate reps could be based on size of largest states

CA = 2

Next group of states that equals CA pop = 2

Fuck them up.

[Scurrilous]

9. Yep.

[brooklynite]

10. A Parliamentary system would have rammed through ACA repeal in about a month.

[mythology]

12. You may be underestimating Republican ineptness

They spent 8 plus years railing against the ACA and forgot to have a plan. There's a reason the last Speaker of the House literally whistled Zip-a-dee-doo-dah as he resigned.

[Fred Sanders]

15. It would not have been the ACA, it would have been universal health care they would have tried

to destroy.

[treestar]

17. It would have produced

Single payer. Which hasn’t been withdrawn in the UK and other countries when they had conservative governments.

[Jersey Devil]

11. and if the vote was in the House instead of the Senate?

then how would it be different?

[louis c]

25. It will be different next year

[eleny]

13. Add in Wyoming and I wonder if they would be less than 3% of the population

[treestar]

19. More in proportion

At least then it would be up to the whole country in proportion.

[NewJeffCT]

24. Wyoming, SD, ND and Alaska combined

have a little under 3 million people in total, combined. Just the city of Los Angeles has almost 4 million people.

as a comparison, the 4 smallest blue states - VT, RI, DE and HI - have a combined population of a little over 4 million

(I counted NH and ME as "swing" states since NH was close last election and ME has a nutty RW governor and Susan Collins)

[treestar]

16. Very true

That’s the senate. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

[moose65]

18. I've read several posts....

that say something like "in 15 years, half of the population will live in just 15 states." I think we're already there, though: a quick glance at Wikipedia tells me that slightly more than half of the population of the US lives in just 9 states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina. There are 166 million people in those 9 states, and they elect 18 Senators.

[Alpeduez21]

33. I think by 2040

if census numbers hold: 30%, mostly rural, of the population will control electing 70% of the senate. Something has to change or conservatism will never die.

[Garrett78]

40. That also impacts gerrymandering in House districts.

It's much easier for Republicans to gerrymander effectively when liberals and persons of color tend to be so concentrated.

We clearly have a tyranny of the minority system.

On top of that, Republicans are fighting a procedural war while Democrats are fighting a policy war: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/5/1/17258866/democratic-party-republicans-trump-election

[RockRaven]

20. Half of the Senators (25 states worth) are elected by 18% of the US population.

As a large state person, I'm very annoyed by this.

[pdsimdars]

21. Bill Maher often makes that reference about population and representation.

[sweetloukillbot]

23. I wonder how much the population of Maine and Alaska compare to Maricopa County in AZ

Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the country....

[DallasNE]

27. Thought The Same Thing When Flake Made His Move

I like the idea of a more deliberate chamber but it needs to be democratic rather than giving Wyoming as much power as California as is the case now.

[budkin]

28. Reminds me of Trump winning the election because of a very small number of votes n/t

[standingtall]

29. Changing to a parliamentary system is not constitutionally possible

but adding states is. There are 5 inhabited U.S. and D.C. where the demographics would favor Democrats. If they were all states now Kavanaugh wouldn't even be close to getting confirmed.

[Ligyron]

30. When we get some actual power Puerto Rico needs to be a state.

Actually, we could use a couple more and expand the SC too.

[standingtall]

31. We should expand the court first

because if we don't republicans will just try and use the supreme court to block it.

[MarvinGardens]

32. But wait, there's more.

Equal representation in the Senate can never be changed even by constitutional amendment. Quoting Article V:

and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

The good news is that there are two parallel ways out of our current morass of minority-majority rule. They may seem radical, but in theory they are easier than a constitutional amendment.

1. Increase the number of total House members. Requires merely changing federal statute. Will help better balance the Electoral College.

2. Large population states can divide into smaller states. Each new state will get 2 senators. This requires a simple majority in congress plus consent of the state, according to their state constitution.

[standingtall]

38. Pretty sure states cannot secede from states

Last edited Fri Oct 5, 2018, 05:04 PM - Edit history (1)

and even if they could it would end up being a zero sum game, because then low population states would just break off in response to be over represented in the electoral college. The only way to actually fix this is to actually add states. All the U.S. territories and D.C. are largely populated by minority groups so making them states would serve as a great counter balance to states like Wyoming being over represented in the electoral college.

[MarvinGardens]

39. It has happened a few times.

But there have been many more serious partition proposals that have not been successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals

Nowadays we hear mostly about California proposing to divide. I agree with you that the less populous states would want to try it too, once they saw California et al doing it.

[standingtall]

41. Those were all before the civil war

there is no way it could be done today. Also I believe it would be against the constitution of California for that to happen and probably many other states.

[zentrum]

34. So agree!

The only reason we don't have one is because of the slave states insisting that they have equal power---that's
my understanding.

Almost every horror in our country goes back to slavery and the un-faced true history of the country.

[Bradical79]

37. Wouldn't be so bad if the house hadn't been warped

The House is supposed to be what's representative of our population.