I wasn’t sure if this should be dumped in the Whither Democrats thread, or another thread - but it is a topic that has become extremely present in the current architecture of the American government.
We all mostly understand the system of checks and balances that have been in place since the inception of our country - The House rules by population majority, the Senate checks the majority by giving equal representation to every state. The POTUS (historically) rules by popular decree, and the SCOTUS smooths partisan swings by allowing life-time appointments.
Those checks and balances are supposed to give everyone equal say in the government - whether you’re in the city or the country, or whether you are in the majority or minority party.
However, we have seen the system mutated over the past 20 years to the point that American is now ruled by a minority political party. They’ve got hugely unequal representation in the House and unequal representation in the Supreme Court. They’ve also won two Presidential elections in the last 20 years without winning the popular vote of the country.
The Economist has done an excellent job analyzing this in an article I cam across today:
I, personally feel that the country is systematically broken, and in dire need of change. Things I would recommend by fixed in the Constitution
Abolish the electoral college
Implement term limits for SCOTUS judges, 18 years
Every two year, and new Justice is appointed
Methodology for developing congressional districts is enumerated in the Constitution, so as to eliminate gerrymandering
Removing the cap on the size of the House of Representatives
Where are you at with the structure and future of the American Democracy?
The idea is that with two or three times more members, you could have un-gerrymandered, compact districts that still met goals for diversity of representation.
FWWI, the size of the House is set by a law - the Permanent Appointments Act:
the House passed the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, fixing the number of Representatives at 435. The U.S. Constitution called for at least one Representative per state and that no more than one for every 30,000 persons
As such, the law can be fixed/adjuested upwards with just control of both houses and the executive office (per Mitch McConnell). The Electoral College doesn’t even need to be abolished if the House is fixed to be more representative of actual State Populations.
So, the cap has decreased the level of direct representation that citizens have. Now, the average congressman represents 711,000 people. That of course makes campaigning more difficult and COSTLY.
More reps means you end up with more compact districts and more accurate representation.
Also, you are put in an awkward position where your state could lose representation, even though you haven’t lost population in your district (simply because somewhere else had higher population gains).
Yes, it would raise all kinds of new procedural issues, since the size of the House would grow significantly.
Thinking on it, I’d be in favor of more reps in smaller areas.
In theory they’d be more connected to their districts and less able to blow people off.
Of course the downside is that most likely Congress itself would be even more of a clusterfuck and the building can really only hold so many people in it. If we had 1000 Reps everything would be even more of a nightmare than it is already, but fuck it I’m willing to give it a shot.
Edit: As far as the rest of it:
Abolish the electoral college
Maybe. I’d rather see proportional electoral voting. If 40% of California votes for Bush, he gets 40% of their electoral votes. If every state did it, the effect would be about the same and the smaller states would likely get on board since they wouldn’t be ceding power to larger states.
Implement term limits for SCOTUS judges, 18 years
Not in favor, though I wouldn’t lament it if it happened much
Every two year, and new Justice is appointed
See above
Methodology for developing congressional districts is enumerated in the Constitution, so as to eliminate gerrymandering
Why I am in favor of three seat proportional vote districts with single transferable vote (a form of ranked voting). That way each person has 3 reps, and it makes it so that having 50.1% of the vote in the district does not give you 100% of the power. Would make representation much more representative, and give minority votes (be they of ethnic, religious, or political type) the ability to have a voice.
I love Lessig and all, I even read one of his books, but… this can’t possibly work, right? The states get to say how they run their elections. The Supreme Court isn’t going to wade into that. This is the same Supreme Court that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, right? No, it isn’t, it’s worse.
And the states aren’t going to change, because the swing states benefit enormously from being swing states; and the big states will just be helping the party that most of their residents don’t support if they split their votes. This is why the NPVIC hasn’t gone anywhere.
(3) is not. The Senate could, theoretically, refuse to consider more than one new SCOTUS appointment every two years. And the POTUS could, theoretically, simply add a new SCOTUS justice every two years. That means the size of the SCOTUS would vary, but it would tend towards some new equilibrium value. I think the main difficulty here would be finding a mechanism to enforce the new practice.
(4) Even now, a federal judge can reject a districting plan than does not comply with the Voting Rights Act. And if Congress can make demands regarding who lives in a congressional district, then they can make demands regarding its geography.
(5) The cap can be changed by Congress easily enough.
So basically, most of this plan is feasible! Call your representatives and get it done!
I like all these ideas, but even (5) seems out of reach. Dems would need control of the House and Senate and a Dem President (could happen in 2020 but not likely) or they need majorities in both houses sufficient to override a veto (won’t happen anytime soon).
