Electoral college is for the presidency. But the political power discrepancy between rural and urban areas is quite stark in other branches of government.
For example:
Right now in the US there are 2 senators from each state. California with a population of over 39 million has 2 senators, Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators.
> Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators
As does:
1. Wyoming (Population: 572,381)
2. Vermont (Population: 627,180)
3. Alaska (Population: 735,720)
4. North Dakota (Population: 760,900)
5. South Dakota (Population: 892,631)
6. Delaware (Population: 975,033)
7. Rhode Island (Population: 1,056,738)
8. Montana (Population: 1,074,532)
9. Maine (Population: 1,342,097)
10. New Hampshire (Population: 1,363,852)
These states combined control 20% of the Senate with a roughly combined population of 10 million people. That's only 25% the population of California alone, or 3% of the total country.
Now obviously the Senate/House power balance was designed with this in mind. But the House hasn't reapportioned representation by population in a century.
Seems to me like the American democratic system has a very large bias for rural voters, especially when you consider where in the country presidential campaigns start every 4 years.
> The House hasn't increased total size since the reapportionment after the 1910 census, which is probably what you are thinking of.
Doesn't this effectively make it impossible to correctly reapportion by population though, because without a change in size a number of low population states "should" have < 1 member?
Ok, but that's heading into a circle though. The complaint I thought is that the "correct" method does not result in proportion by population, and some people think that would be better.
Many people often think that something different than an existing system would be better or more advantageous for themselves and advocate for it. Claiming rightness or correctness is an appeal to a moral sense of fair play for which their counter-parties are not likely imagine reciprocated once the change comes to fruition.
I’m surprised that given technology advances people don’t just cut out the expensive elected officials and put everything up to several national votes per day. If you think that the founders got the proportional balance wrong, what about the temporal balance? Why invest decision making power in one person over such long time frames?
> Doesn't this effectively make it impossible to correctly reapportion by population though, because without a change in size a number of low population states "should" have < 1 member?
You can define “correctly reapportion” in a way that this is true, but there is no reason to think that was the Constitutional intent.
Which isn't to say I don't think there is a policy problem, I just don't think you can reduce it to incorrect apportionment.
No. 385 are redistributed, which still enforces unequal representation, as states with less population than some territories have more purchasing power in the House. For example, Wyoming get a rep for 500,000 people, but everyone else has to pay 700,000 people.
To truly remedy this situation in the House, you have to bring the House up to about 930.
That was the explicit purpose of the Senate: each state is equal in the union. Senators weren't even supposed to represent the state's people; they represented the state itself up until the misguided Seventeenth Amendment. Representation proportional to the population is the purpose of the House - that's why our government has two chambers.
The House is the chamber with actual power, while the Senate was intended to act as a check on the House and the executive. That's why the 17th amendment made such a mess: they were supposed to represent state interests, and especially having a balanced budget is much more a state interest than a popular interest.
In particular, for any bill requiring spending, the Senate can only amend a bill that started in the House. Impeachment must start in the house and is then tried in the Senate. The Senate can't nominate someone to office, they can only confirm a nominee presented by the executive.
This isn't a spatial metaphor any more than "upperclassmen" and "underclassmen" are for high schools or "left" and "right" are for politics. We call it the "upper" chamber because it's supposed to be the higher status, more "dignified" chamber.
Words have histories of course, and probably at one point this was a spatial metaphor - maybe some bicameral legislature literally did have one of their higher status body on a different floor than their lower status body. But the words upper and lower when applied to the legislative branch have evolved since then.
Misguided? Are you saying you want to go back to when your state's House Reps decided your state's Senators?
I understand our federal politics are a complete mess but think that has more to do to equating money with freedom of speech, the great return on campaign donations, the polarization of our media and the lack of solid non-partisan research institutes that our elected leaders can rely upon. Have you ever watched CSPAN? Our leaders routinely become informed about the world around us through the same mass media as we do.
This would give even more power to special interests, as they only need to influence a governor (or a small number of state reps) to get their senate choice, rather than all the voters in the state. I can’t see why that’s better, since at least now senators have to pretend to represent constituents.
>>For example: Right now in the US there are 2 senators from each state. California with a population of over 39 million has 2 senators, Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators.
This was all by design. The smaller states would not have joined the union if it mean that the bigger states would monopolize all the power.
Yes but maybe we can reform the system to make US more democratic. This question is about why this has been this way, rather it's about whether it's worth to change it even it was originally justified. Are people in Wyoming willing to leave the union if their votes are exactly equal to Californians?
>For example: Right now in the US there are 2 senators from each state. California with a population of over 39 million has 2 senators, Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators.
This is why we have the House of Representatives, which is based on population. California has 53 representatives, Alaska has one.
The original idea as I understand it, before the 17th amendment, was that the Senate was supposed to represent the interests of the states, hence two senators from each equally represented state. While the House was supposed to represent the interests of the residents of those states.
It's still not proportional. Life the limit of Representatives in the house. It was passed by simple law, it can be repealed by simple law. Make it proportional and you will have an argument, though not a great one because the Senate has more power than the House based on judicial appointments alone.
For example: Right now in the US there are 2 senators from each state. California with a population of over 39 million has 2 senators, Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators.