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Family Values posted:The main problem with the Senate is that it exists. Abolishing it is the only acceptable reform. 
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Oct 2, 2014 18:38
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The ratio of Representatives to Congressman has become a bit too skewed now compared to a century ago or especially the founding of the US. Congressmen used to represent 30-60,000 people per district on average, and it's inflated over time to 690,000 per district today. Which honestly is so big they are impossible to hold accountable for anything. The Constitution states that representatives shall not number more than one for every 30,000. I say they should amend it so there shouldn't be less than one for every... 200,000? 300,000 tops?
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Oct 2, 2014 18:38
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Samurai Sanders posted:Is there any practical reason that the house is being kept to its current size? Do they just not want to rebuild the building to have more offices and stuff? No, there is no practical reason. The congress didn't bother to pass a normal post-census house size increase + reapportionment law after the 1920 census, and decided to declare it not a problem in 1929 by decreeing it would be 435 members (the current size then as now) until further notice. We would need to have more than 800-1000 representatives in order to actually exceed the limits of the current House chamber absent major remodeling - it's a pretty big space with a lot of available seating, especially if you make the mezzanine area part of official seating. It regularly holds over 1000 people during joint sessions of the house and congress with executive branch officials and various visitors attending. Edmund Lava posted:To my understanding they are required to vote in person and the House is out of room to add more seats. This is only true in that they haven't bothered to put in more seats officially designated as for the house members. It already has formal seating for the entire senate plus the current house, and there's tons more room besides that.
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Oct 2, 2014 18:41
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Why is Nate Silver loving with Sam Wang? This is a small world etc, but what the hell is Silver trying to accomplish?
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Oct 2, 2014 18:43
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Right now the House is so gerrymandered that its makeup doesn't represent the popular vote in the last election, and the Senate coincidentally does. Normally you'd expect the opposite to be true, but the Republicans are way better at gerrymandering than the Democrats.
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Oct 2, 2014 18:46
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JT Jag posted:The ratio of Representatives to Congressman has become a bit too skewed now compared to a century ago or especially the founding of the US. Congressmen used to represent 30-60,000 people per district on average, and it's inflated over time to 690,000 per district today. Which honestly is so big they are impossible to hold accountable for anything.  I mean, my proposal still seems by popular consensus to be a terrible idea, but I'm not really seeing the legislative benefits that are supposed to occur by increasing the size of the house to 1,6000+ members or why it's any better. I'm not even sure how the supposed benefits of more accountable/more representative would even end up being a likely outcome.
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Oct 2, 2014 18:49
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If you increased the number of Congressmen in the House so that they would each represent a smaller number of people, I would be okay with the House replacing the Senate entirely, but only if all redistricting nationwide was done by a neutral third-party.
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Oct 2, 2014 18:54
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Pohl posted:Why is Nate Silver loving with Sam Wang? This is a small world etc, but what the hell is Silver trying to accomplish?
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Oct 2, 2014 18:56
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JT Jag posted:If you increased the number of Congressmen in the House so that they would each represent a smaller number of people, I would be okay with the House replacing the Senate entirely, but only if all redistricting nationwide was done by a neutral third-party. Probably impossible without layers of external auditing. A least lines algorithm would be easier and still pretty effective, even if it has the side effect of splitting up natural constituencies. Not that either is likely to happen
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Oct 2, 2014 19:00
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Good Citizen posted:Probably impossible without layers of external auditing. A least lines algorithm would be easier and still pretty effective, even if it has the side effect of splitting up natural constituencies. Who writes the algorithm? Who approves the district boundaries? Our system may seem like poo poo, its pretty nice when you get used to it.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:02
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Good Citizen posted:A least lines algorithm would be easier and still pretty effective, even if it has the side effect of splitting up natural constituencies.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:02
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Would anyone be interested in a thread about what exactly government and democracy are for, and what might be effective ways of better achieving those goals (both in the US specifically but also abroad and in general)? I might end up putting in the effort to try and make a decent effortpost to start it off later this week if people would actually be interested, though honestly considering how misunderstood I was earlier I'm probably not the best person for the job. I wouldn't mind actually citing stuff and linking resources and stuff about the purpose of democratic government as seen historically and what suggestions are commonly made and whatnot about it, though.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:03
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Edmund Lava posted:To my understanding they are required to vote in person and the House is out of room to add more seats. No its not, we cram about a thousand people in there for state of the unions.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:09
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ReindeerF posted:There definitely needs to be some kind of test of your faculties. This poo poo where we're re-electing guys like Byrd while he's basically fallen apart and LITERALLY (yes literally) LITERALLY cannot perform the job of Senator is just stupid and wasn't at all anticipated. With life expectancy and incumbency both on the rise guess how much more of that poo poo we're in store for? Should probably lump in letting old people drive as well.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:12
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Samurai Sanders posted:You mean, different than the manipulation that happens every time the redistrict, like they did a few years ago? Yes, the redistrict every 10 years. Or more frequent if you are Texas. But this is actually a similar example. The reason we have redistricting is because of a compromise that neither party is willing to undo because they both fear they'll lose more than they win. We could do it like apportionment, but we're frozen in fear.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:29
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Hey, quick question, why does the Electoral College exist? I was just checking out the Election history and saw that the president has been elected while losing the popular vote 4 times. To me, that seems like a gross misrepresentation of what the people want, especially in the case of Bush/Gore (mostly because I wasn't alive in the 1800's for the other 3 times)
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Oct 2, 2014 19:35
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GreyPowerVan posted:Hey, quick question, why does the Electoral College exist? I was just checking out the Election history and saw that the president has been elected while losing the popular vote 4 times. To me, that seems like a gross misrepresentation of what the people want, especially in the case of Bush/Gore (mostly because I wasn't alive in the 1800's for the other 3 times) The American system is carefully constructed to put barriers between direct democracy. I'm not being glib, the framers really didn't trust the average person to make good decisions.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:36
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zoux posted:The American system is carefully constructed to put barriers between direct democracy. I'm not being glib, the framers really didn't trust the average person to make good decisions. Right, I've known that, but with people more educated today (at least in most areas  ) why is it still this way?
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Oct 2, 2014 19:37
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GreyPowerVan posted:Right, I've known that, but with people more educated today (at least in most areas Because people still behave stupidly when you get to the mass level.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:38
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GreyPowerVan posted:Right, I've known that, but with people more educated today (at least in most areas Because they're not as educated or intelligent as you think they are.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:38
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWuMp6TRcYM Holy poo poo, Bill Clinton did an ad for Grimes.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:38
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GreyPowerVan posted:Right, I've known that, but with people more educated today (at least in most areas Uh, no they aren't. Avoiding more glibness, people aren't any better at discriminating between good and bad info so they aren't any better at making informed choices. zoux fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 19:39
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I would definitely say that, in general, the populace is more educated than it was in the late 18th century. I know that people are still idiots, but I know a lot of people that when I've tried to get them to vote, they are all apathetic and point to the bush/gore election as a reason that "voting doesn't matter". If people felt like their vote mattered more, they might be more likely to research candidates. I did say might. The reason I asked is what does the Electoral College really do? They're supposed to vote with their state, right? So when someone wins the popular election, they should in theory win a larger percentage of Electoral College votes... so if people are stupid and do stupid things, they will still elect who they want. Or can the college just up and decide to vote for someone that their state didn't? (Sorry, it's been a while since I've read up on it. If someone wins 51% of a state's vote, they get the entire college vote from that state in most cases, right? Except Nebraska in 2008...?) EDIT: Right, I was talking educated as in generally having more resources to use in research, but I won't disagree that people still don't do their research in most cases)
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Oct 2, 2014 19:43
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GreyPowerVan posted:Right, I've known that, but with people more educated today (at least in most areas They're not more educated, but the Electoral College is still dumb.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:44
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If you think things like the Electoral College are silly, spend some time reading about the ideas that were rejected. John Adams wanted the title of the President to be "His High Mightiness, the President of the United States and Protector of Their Liberties", for example.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:45
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I haven't been able to pay attention to politics for the past week plus, anything important happen besides the revelation that in TYOOL 2014 any jackass can apparently breach Presidential security? I assume not since it's do-nothing election season. (Besides ebola and war in the middle east I guess)
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Oct 2, 2014 19:46
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GreyPowerVan posted:I would definitely say that, in general, the populace is more educated than it was in the late 18th century. I know that people are still idiots, but I know a lot of people that when I've tried to get them to vote, they are all apathetic and point to the bush/gore election as a reason that "voting doesn't matter". If people felt like their vote mattered more, they might be more likely to research candidates. I did say might. It's kind of like a failsafe, like if suddenly "The Clone of Hitler" won a write in or something, the college can vote a different way. I don't know if there's an instance of a college defecting against the popular vote. Joementum posted:If you think things like the Electoral College are silly, spend some time reading about the ideas that were rejected. There's a great scene in HBO's John Adams where Washington has just had it with Adams trying to get everyone to call him "Your Excellency".
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Oct 2, 2014 19:46
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GreyPowerVan posted:Right, I've known that, but with people more educated today (at least in most areas Because they get taught in high school civics that the electoral college ensures that small states are still important to presidential candidates, since the notion that geography should vote is deeply ingrained in U.S. political education.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:46
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The talk about people not being educated reminded me of something I heard on the bus today at my University in Alabama. A guy got on with a face mask, and the person sitting next to me asked them jokingly if it was Flu or Ebola. The person with a mask just shook his head and stated angrily that he "Blamed Obama for all that Ebola poo poo." I guess you're right, but I still think the Electoral College is a dumb system.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:47
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re EC chat The institutions were created by people with a typical elite's contempt for the lower classes. The fact that the institutions reflect that contempt and today's elected officials largely share that contempt shouldn't be too surprising.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:50
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I have about as much contempt as they do/did so I can't throw stones.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:53
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So does everyone remember the new College Republican ad Joementum posted the other day; the Say Yes to Rick Scott, et al. ad? Well, Tucker Carlson thinks that the young people that the ad is directed at probably shouldn't be voting at all.quote:"I don't think as a general matter we should be encouraging people who don't know anything about what they're voting for to vote, that's what Democrats do," Carlson said later. "Republicans shouldn't follow suit on that. You shouldn't pander to people." radical meme fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 19:53
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radical meme posted:So does everyone remember the new College Republican ad Jomentum posted the other day; the Say Yes to Rick Scott, et al. ad? Well, Tucker Carlson thinks that the young people that the ad is directed at probably shouldn't be voting at all quote:"I don't think as a general matter we should be encouraging people who don't know anything about what they're voting for to vote, that's what Democrats do," Carlson said later. "Republicans shouldn't follow suit on that. You shouldn't pander to people."  except it's exploding into a billion rolleyes and more 's for infinity
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Oct 2, 2014 19:57
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If we can't pass the ERA we can't fix the electoral college et al.
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Oct 2, 2014 19:58
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Trabisnikof posted:If we can't pass the ERA we can't fix the electoral college et al. Why, does Phyllis Schafly oppose it?
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Oct 2, 2014 19:58
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GreyPowerVan posted:Right, I've known that, but with people more educated today (at least in most areas A person is more educated, a group of people is still stupid. Also if we all die of Ebola because we don't have UHC and people can't afford to go to the hospital, does that make Ebola Obama's fault?
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Oct 2, 2014 20:15
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Joementum posted:If you think things like the Electoral College are silly, spend some time reading about the ideas that were rejected. Not President of the Thirteen States and Protector of The America?
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Oct 2, 2014 20:15
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Luigi Thirty posted:A person is more educated, a group of people is still stupid. As the last American on this Earth coughs up their dying breath, rest assured on their blood speckled lips will be the words, "thanks, Obama."
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Oct 2, 2014 20:21
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Pohl posted:Why is Nate Silver loving with Sam Wang? This is a small world etc, but what the hell is Silver trying to accomplish? His site is under fire from ESPN for not doing so well plus Wang nitpicked a few things about him in a book review ages ago.
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Oct 2, 2014 20:32
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What's Sam Wang's rep? His Senate forecasts have been rosier so I want him to be better 
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Oct 2, 2014 20:33
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