n/t

due to 3 decades of a one-sided game where Democrats kissed Republican asses on appointments even when Dems held all the cards ...


Put those things altogether and you have a disaster for democracy. This is nothing the Founders ever could have envisioned in their most horrific nightmares.

and they only had in mind Land Owners/Merchants and only White Male ones at that.

But to the other points I completely agree with you.

Is that what you want? Or would you prefer a unicameral federal legislature (just the proportional House) that will remain in the hands of the Republicans until 2022 or Hillary's election in 2016 if that happens.

please quote what "I want".

or were you just creating a straw man of what I want?

Otherwise, why would you ask a question that was asked, debated and settled roughly 225 years ago? Also, if you disagreed with your original hypothetical, why are complaining about a response that disagrees with it?

California has roughly 12% of the seats in the House yet it is still under Republican control. You think a proportional Senate would be any different?

do you have a problem understanding this issue?

you think that the ONLY way to make the Senate proportional is to make it EXACTLY like the house?

The assumptions in your theory simply collapse when the reality of American politics is applied to them.

in the past 12 statewide elections, they've won 1 out of those 12.

in fact, of the past 17 statewide elections, they've won just one of those 17.

how many do you think they're going to win?


here's a list of Partisan Statewide Elections in California:

1-2012 Senator: D
2-2012 President: D
3-2010 Senator: D
4-2010 Governor: D
5-2010 Lt. Gov: D
6-2010 Sec of State: D
7-2010 Atty Gen: D
8-2010 Treasurer: D
9-2010 Controller: D
10-2008 President: D
11-2006 Senator: D
12-2006 Governor: R
13-2006 Lt. Gov: D
14-2006 Sec of State: D
15-2006 Atty Gen: D
16-2006 Controller: D
17-2006 Treasurer: D

Then there are the various states which are slightly more likely to elect more Repubs than Dems - AZ, FL, MO, NC, OH for instance - given their red legislatures and red governors (except for MO's gov) not to mention the tendency of some blue states to elect Republicans to statewide offices or the Senate - IL, MI, PA and WI.

CA may have some deserved influence due to its size; but it is a long ways from containing 50.1% of this country's population. CA does not guarantee a Dem majority in this hypothetical proportional Senate.

the 2010 election?

i'm supposed to oppose that forever because of the 2010 election?

I am just saying that the Senate would likely be in Republican hands now or next January at the latest if it was a proportional body.

Ultimately, this was settled back in the 1780s and debating it now really is no different than debating evolution.

in the 1860's. it was already settled in the 1780's.

Divisiveness of slavery that existed in this country in the 1860s?

Please do explain how they are even comparable. I would love to witness the logical fallacies you make while comparing the two.

if that's what you'd like, you could at least show the courage to actually ask me.

and no, it's not harmful to discuss, nor ask.

the Supreme Court has done away with this type of representation throughout the country except for the US Senate, because that is dictated by the constitution.

so the thinking is relevant and not fringe.

... voters.

What are they trying to prove by letting the GOP restrict voter access

While Senators are democratically elected, it's not meant to be a body that is representative of the people. The Senate was intended, from the get-go, to prevent population-heavy states from politically dominating less populous states. It was designed by the founders of this country to act as a counterweight to popular democracy.

While we now get to vote for our Senators (the fact that we originally weren't allowed to is another testament to the fact that it wasn't intended to be a democratic body), the role the Senate plays in government is essentially unchanged since the founding of this nation.

The House of Representatives was designed to represent the will of the people. The Senate was designed to represent the will of the States, preventing the will of the people from running unchecked. Preventing democracy from running unchecked.

not letting non property owners vote...

Of course, if the House of Representatives is any indication of what a U.S. parliamentary system would look like, we'd all be complaining about Prime Minister Boehner and the Republican/Tea/Libertarian national coalition government right about now. So things really could be worse...

heavily gerrymandering and instituting voting regulations and procedures in the way that typifies our country.

The problem, of course, is that changing the methodology used to assign Representative districts would require amending the Constitution. Amending the Constitution requires assent from 2/3'ds of the states. The Republicans control enough states to prevent that from happening. While the Republicans would probably jump at the idea to phase out the Senate in favor of a more parliamentary-style House of Representatives, they'll never willingly give up the ability to gerrymander those House districts into their favor.

Of course, you could just make the entire system truly proportional and eliminate districts entirely. THAT would be a game changer, but it's a move that could never get any traction in the United States for a myriad of reasons It would destroy all existing political parties, it would require trustworthy computerized vote counting systems, it would require the nationalization of the entire elections system, etcetera, etcetera. A person can dream though....

Thanks!

You had the federalists and the anti-federalists. And nearly everything they did when writing this document was one gigantic compromise. The reason for the House and Senate elected in the manner that they are is a result of a compromise.

Keep in mind that after the Revolution, there was no central government. You had 13 individual colonies and each sort of wanted to safeguard some sense of autonomy and not have some overlord authority telling them what to do. They just fought a war to get rid of that. So you dont have the same starting point most other nations have following a revolution. You could have very easily had a civil war following the revolution if the colonies didnt all stick together. They needed to compromise on everything. And they needed adoption of the constitution to be unanimous. They needed to make everyone happy.

The document largely focused on the structure and limitations of the federal government. Its purpose was never really designed to solve social problems because the founders believed those issues would likely change many times through the ages and would be best suited for future society to determine for themselves through legislative processes. Putting social issues there would create a rigid document that might be a barrier to social progress.

There was absolutely no way you can abolish slavery in 1789. You'd spark a civil war. Some of them did understand the hypocrisy of creating a free country that also has slaves. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and others made note of it in their writings. But they were far more concerned at this time about stabilizing the nation and preventing a repeat of tyranny. The issue of slavery would have to be solved later.

In Britain, the House of Lords traditionally represented the nobility, while the House of Commons represented the people. Laws introduced in one House had to be approved in the other. In practice, this prevented the nobility from passing laws that the people didn't like, and kept the democratic House of Commons from passing any laws that were onerous to the nobility. It was designed so that the people had a voice in the national government, but neutered that voice so it didn't do anything that the powerful might object to.

The founders of the U.S. wanted to borrow the concept for the same reasons, but because the U.S. lacked a nobility, they gave the power of the Senate to the state legislatures. It's designed to limit the ability of a popular democracy to enact change that the state governments and politically powerful might object to. It's a check against the power of democracy.

Whether it's a "good" or "bad" thing largely depends on who you ask about it, and who is in power when you ask.

satisfactory.

you thought it was better to make some votes count more than others so that presidential candidates would visit rural areas.

imagine that, we'll just count some people's votes, mostly minorities in large states, less, because you hypothesize that rural areas get more visits that way.

for me i just dont think that the big cities should get the ability to control all facets of government.

do you have quote from me that proves otherwise?

and it sounds like you don't believe in one person = one vote.

my point is that you need a system where the more rural states have an interest in the government rather than all facets controlled by a few metropolis.

rural and urban interests dont always coincide.

There are no trains, buses or other mass transit stopping every half hour in the rural parts. A rural soul would grow roots waiting for a bus to town in most areas outside of the cities.

at the federal level?

Buses, trains and other vehicles of public transportation.

They did the best they could given that almost everybody was a "teabagger" back then. This notion that the people who wrote the Constitution were god-like in their wisdom and prescience is complete hogwash. They did a pretty good job under the circumstances. But none of them would be proud of what we ave today. In fact, they would be appalled that there is anybody arguing that we ought still to be laboring under the bad deals they found it necessary to strike in order to to get the country started.

If Jefferson and company were to come back today, they would think everybody is insane, trying to live by the rules that were in place 250 years ago..

.... and that reason is still valid. It isn't going to change, so I am not sure why we are discussing it.

The one thing the parasites fear most is that the host gains the means to rid themselves of parasites.

"Founding Fathers" no fans of democracy, by and large. Civics 101, people, were we napping?

Otherwise, the major metro areas would rule the rural voters.

Proportional allocation of seats makes much more sense.

And I don't see the more rural states buying into it.

out of 435 or however many there are in total. They want to take our senators now, too? I think the current system is a good compromise.

Electoral college could use some fixes, though.

I just know I don't aspire to have the USA be like India.

and a caste system that's thousands of years old, and religious and ethnic tensions, and not related to their system of government (and to be fair the USA has some of those problems, in lesser degree, but has been very historically lucky in being an advanced Western society that industrialised relatively early and had abundant natural resources).

so there is still a buffer against unfettered democracy.

I assume most parliamentary systems have an equivalent upper chamber, some of them appointed.

they debate and amend bills from the Commons; the Lords may delay a bill but they may not veto it. All "money bills" (relating to tax and spending) must originate in the Commons; the Lords may not amend them, and all money bills passed by the Commons receive royal assent (that is to say, are enacted into law) within a month after being passed to the Lords whether the Lords have passed them or not. See here: http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/parliamentacts/

We're one of the few democracies left where the upper house gets the same legislative powers as the lower house does.

However, it's what we're stuck with.

and no presidential electors.

I suppose that's the way the people there want it, since they haven't acted to enroll as a state, but it has always seemed weird to me.

Montana has 989 thousand people per house representative and Rhode Island has 1 per 526 thousand.

Some might say New England and the Mid-Atlantic states are over represented

It's a wacky system thanks to the artificial limits on the total size of the the House.

As in, for instance, 2 senators for 33 Million Californians, and 2 for 400K Wyoming residents.

My point is that when you look at New ENgland and the mid-atlantic states many of them have much better representation in the electoral college.

On the government's direction, than the Senate does.

Certainly one can criticize the setup of the EC; but in terms of results, with a few glaring exceptions (2000) the Potus ends up being the person who won the popular vote anyway.

Politicians from southern states haven't felt that way, they've carped about the influence of the NE for decades.

It seems quite unlikely anything will be done at a national level to force any change other than to respond demographics that mostly reflect growth in the sun states.

and being courted in that regard.

things are set up the way they are precisely because the intent was to limit democracy. The mythic "founders" feared democracy as mob rule. The Electoral College exists because the number of electors were selected based on population, not on number of voters; at a time when only white male property owners could vote? The three-fifths compromise in the Constitution ensured the outsize influence of the South relative to its number of voters in national politics. The Senate is the same sort of thing, only it wasn't even democratic, originally (as Senators were appointed by state legislatures and not elected by voters), with the equal numbers of Senators ensuring that smaller states had more relative power (which was the scheme of representation under the Articles of Confederation and in the Continental Congress). See here for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise

Are a good balance and enhance the stability of our nation.

Our current problems stem from the lack of character of our current politicians on both sides of the asile

We have one. People seem to think sometimes there's only a single type and it would favor them.

A number of SCOTUS and even Congressional decisions were "undemocratic" in the sense that they weren't supposed by 50% + 1 of the population. We forget this. Civil rights. Abortion. Desegregation.



There's also the issue at which level we want "democracy." Do we force a single, proportionally representative down the throats of people by saying it must be at the federal level and not at the state level? How about at the county level?

The decision people choose usually boils down to what would happen to issues they like given one or the other. If it's an issue that carries the state but which would lose at the federal level, it's all "states' rights." If it's an issue that would fail locally but carry nationally, let the federal-level decision reign.


We have one democratic solution. It's worked reasonably well as long as people worked reasonably well together. Now that there's no reason to work together and every reason to insult and obfuscate--with partisans jeering and cheering, depending on their sides--it's not working. What's changed isn't gerrymandering or the way the Senate is elected. What's changed is the culture and political pandering.

Basically, this is an enforceable state compact or contract among the states that takes affects when states with 270 electoral votes join. When the plan goes into effect, the winner of the national popular vote will automatically become the winner of the electoral college http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ This plan has been adopted by 10 states/jurisdictions with 136 electoral votes

1. Non-partisan Boundary Commissions that would set district boundaries based strictly on geographic considerations, eliminating gerrymandering (the UK has this system);

2. Setting each state's electoral college votes to be proportional to that state's population.

But I wouldn't want to turn the Senate into a clone of the House.

It makes all states equal, a rich state and a poor state have the same power.

The people have the House for representation and the state as a whole has the Senate, it makes sense to me.

Let's start with the fact that the US was/is not a pure Democracy. So if you don't like that, amend the Constitution.

Other than that, it's just wrong for a giant mass of people in NYC and LA and CHICAGO to control, legislate and regulate people in farmers in Nebraska, miners in West Virginia, ranchers in Texas or nature loving people in Oregon.

It's called Tyranny of the Majority and it was a grave fear of the founders and was extensively written about by de Tocqueville and Mills.

So no... as long as the country is this massive with such diversity of population it's a good thing.

Just imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. If NYC and LA and CHICAGO were full of teabaggers and tried regulating the lives of normal people all over the land we'd be incensed.

The Constitution, while imperfect... corrected a number of flaws of pre-18th Century governments and was quite forward looking of course. Over time we've added amendments keeping in the spirit of the Constitution but the ideals have never been altered.