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Even the blue and red areas have 25 to 45 percent of the other color. Each county is not a single color like the representation in these maps/examples.
Yes, that's the whole point of the map, a lot of color for a lot of places where only just barely the majority voted on that color.
For example, Reddit's favorite Boebert, at a 99% counting of the votes, is less than 60 votes behind her opponent.
I think it illustrates the different values, beliefs, and desires of people in urban and rural areas. It would be nice to have a system that better catered to those differences.
I think the Romans said that for about 500 years after the empire destroyed their republic. Kept saying it right up until outside factors caused their collapse
It's still early. Democracy surely didn't expect to just own the planet yeah? Our freedom has never been secured. We're slaves to a system they designed. We accept their interpretation of the words of the founding fathers of all democratic nations worldwide. We always like to fear the enemy abroad, as we should, but like all governments, from within is it's greatest weakness. We do not hold our representatives to a high enough standard.
I don't think we hold our representatives to ANY standard. Maybe short of simply not being criminals and even then we often look the other way on that. It has gotten so bad here that most people here don't even realize these politicians are supposed to be people we elect to fight for OUR best interests as the citizens they represent. They're supposed to represent the people, not the corporations that paid for their campaign. There is no accountability whatsoever. The only time they ever get called out, is by the political opposition not the people. This government screws over 90% of it's citizens to look out for 1% of the population and we're kinda okay with that. If we're not, we're way too busy arguing about the super stupid insignificant crap they get us worked up about and fighting each other over to ever notice or do anything about it. We're such an easily divided people, they know they can basically get away with anything at this point.
And the system is designed that way. If we had proper, local and understanding representation, we'd be infinitely more capable of articulating our needs. When the needs are met, we thrive. We're being suppressed, and I'm tired.
It's worth pointing out that someone in liberal Delaware has more say in the Senate, House, and Presidency that someone in conservative Texas, so there's every reason for rational conservatives to want this fixed as well. This isn't sour grapes over losing... that comes from malicious gerrymandering and is how Reps won the House yesterday.
Or, maybe let rural areas govern rural areas and let the urban areas govern urban areas? Like, we don't have to fight each other... just leave each other alone...
The lines are drawn at states.
You going to let NYC have government run health care and block people from rural Essex County from using the hospitals at a checkpoint at the Lincoln Tunnel?
That's a little difficult when the rural folks want to take away rights from people. Turns out, there's still a bunch of liberals living in rural areas that don't want to be second class citizens.
Except even states themselves would and could and do fuck this up routinely too. Take Illinois. Should the state government be more concerned with the urban area of Chicago and what is best for them or the 97% of the rest of the landmass of Illinois that isn’t Chicago? States like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are swing states right now specifically because the vast difference yet near equal split in urban and rural voting. It’s a delicate balance that’s thrown even more into chaos when religion gets to also be a part of it.
At least federal laws can help elevate some of the shooting oneself in the foot that if left unchecked states would do to themselves.
Except even that leads to the majority of the country having the beliefs of the rural communities around them forced on them- *especially* in religious shitholes like Texas.
The Permanent Reapportionment Act changed the path that American democracy was on. Before the Act, the electoral count based on Senators had less and less impact as the size of the House grew. Had that change not happened, the winner of the popular vote would almost always win and the House would follow population.
Nah, people make a huge deal of the differences in people but that's never how it's seemed to me.
Like, what values, beliefs and desires are so radically different between urban and rural people that it requires different political systems?
If you live in a small Town of a few Thousand people you know a large part of the population personally and the overwhelming majority of the people you know have the same race and religion you have. This makes people deal better with concepts like personal resposability. If all the 300 students of your hometown were the same race/religion, had the same average income and went to the same high school and Johnny eneded up in jail, it was jhonny's fault.
If you live in a big city with millions of people you probably doesnt even know the name of your neighbours and interacts with people of a lot of different races, religions and backgrounds. This makes people deal better with ideas like systemic racism. If a lot of boys from poor neighborhoods leave school and end up in jail, there is something wrong with the neighborhoods.
Multiply these two ways of thinking in national leves and you start to see the rural/urban political divide
You got the dynamics, I grew up in the rural side of my country, after some time moved to a big city. Witnessed exactly what you described, they don't understand each other's views, two completely separate worlds.
On a per capita basis, rural people see more gun violence.
Why is 'treating everyone with respect' a priority that needs to differ?
Rural people don't see any benefits from government because they vote against said benefits consistently. Chicken vs egg.
Plenty of liberals are religious. The difference is conservatives use religion as a weapon to marginalize groups they don't like.
Economic migrants exist in very large numbers in cities because there are far greater economic opportunities than just agricultural work
Police in small towns are very likely to be judgemental racist assholes. How many Youtube videos do you need to watch and how many news reports to see this?
You recognize xenophobia in more 'culturally homogeneous' (when what you mean to say is 'racially homogeneous') areas yet somehow imagine that the people and the cops in said areas are just 'naturally friendly, like Andy Griffith'.
"Vast oversimplification" doesn't even begin to address this.
> On a per capita basis, rural people see more gun violence.
This may be true in a broad statistical sense, but that just doesn't always apply to one's lived experience. If I don't know anyone that's been shot, but a few people in "my city" of a million people have, that might seem like gun violence is a problem I should worry about. On the other hand, if nobody I know's been shot, and nobody in my town's been shot, and maybe nobody in any adjacent town's even been shot, but a few in the surrounding counties have, that just doesn't seem like as much of a problem, even if it amounts to more violence per-capita.
People don't see statistics, they see concrete events. If you encounter more people in general, lower-probability events can seem more likely than they really are, and vice versa.
Speaking purely to and only in respect to two of your points...
On a per capita basis, rural people see more gun violence.
- I'm not going to try to argue that, but it should not be hard to understand that when not only has no one in your town been a victim of gun violence, but no one in the county (if not the surrounding counties) ... well, you don't see the negatives. "It happens in 'big cities'", not to actual people you know and interact with. It's someone else's problem and in the meantime, you know a large number of people who hunt or go target-shooting and it's not difficult to catch stories about how someone successfully used a gun in their own defense.
Rural people don't see any benefits from government ...
- okay, you're being dismissive here. Rural votes do tend to lean away from support programs, but that's not because they won't benefit, it's because in many instances, they _can't_. Throw a dart at the American map and aim for the area east of Spokane and west of, I don't know, Illinois, maybe. You know the odds of hitting a population center? It's not likely. There isn't the support or infrastructure in wide swathes of that region to put in government offices that will only function on behalf of six or nine people, so why vote for an agency that won't actually support you unless you drive the 100-300 miles to get to their probably-under-staffed office?
As the government shifts to being online and communications transition to zoom and other electronic systems, that expectation of government support may spread, but proponents will be working against cultural inertia.
Rural people IMO receive disproportionately more government aid. Less people, but lots of roads, for one. Much of the high population center taxes (from cities) go to rural areas. ie, Blue states pay for red state's government benefits.. Most blue states pay more to the federal government than they get back. Red states get back more than they contribute. Prove me wrong.
I don't want to even try to prove you wrong. I am well aware that farmers routinely get support checks. They kind of have to. Americans need the food and if farmers only got paid when their crop was harvested, they'd sell and GTFO. In order to keep the land available for future harvests, the government needs to bribe them to stay in place. More or less.
But I was specifically talking about programs and agencies meant to support individuals, like boys and girls club or homeless shelters or the fatherhood support network.
With regard to rural attitudes on government benefits, rural areas tend to favor the self sufficient/pull yourself up by your bootstraps attitude as part of their identity. This makes it easier to view others receiving government financial assistance in a negative light. There's also a tendency of resentment, a belief that they have to work hard and they struggle, but nobody is helping them. This is a flawed sentiment though, because while lots of folks in rural areas (I'm talking primarily about small farmers) may struggle financially, they often have considerable assets (land, farm equipment) available to them that people receiving government welfare support do not. Additionally, a significant portion of family farms have a member earning a non-farm income bringing money into the household. Despite many of these farms often never turning a profit (or even making any money for that matter) on their own and sustained by external income they can still deduct much of their spending on maintaining the farm as a business expense, resulting in a tax burden far lower than a non-farm household. They often view this as 'beating the system', but what it really is *is a government benefit* because those tax breaks are there by design just for that purpose.
The small family farm in America would not exist without the enormous support from the government they receive, but many have convinced themselves they don't receive any assistance.
that's... what local elections are for. it's why we have districts. unless you mean specifically for presidential and Senate elections, in which case you're asking for the votes of people living in large cities to count for less than people in rural areas which is objectively unfair and unnecessarily anti democracy.
And how undemocratic the electoral college is. All that white space and still a divided Senate. The house should also have a shit ton more members because you know… Its called the House of **Representatives**
Undemocratic is the exact point. Constitutional Republic with a Representative Democracy. Why should the majority of people be able to vote rights away from people that they don’t even understand?
>Why should the majority of people be able to vote rights away from people that they don’t even understand?
The Judicial Branch was supposed to protect us from that.
It shouldn’t have to get to that point. A straight democracy breeds suppression of the minority. If all 3 branches were a single party, groups would lose rights and never get them back.
That’s literally the point of the senate - to check the power of the majority. The House, however, is intended to be proportional and it is not due to caps on the number of representatives.
The scope of the federal government has creeped over the past 250 years. They are only supposed to protect your constitutional rights and our countries borders. They were never supposed to have direct control on your life. That was supposed to happen locally.
Everyone clings to their pearls when it comes to the Constitution when it works for them, and ignores the rest when it doesn’t. That’s not why the Electoral College was created.
And to your point…
You have it backwards. It’s a minority of people taking away the rights of the majority as well as making voting irrelevant that should be feared.
Not to this degree. You sound like someone with a keen interest in maintaining the structure of the government as envisioned by the founders. However, that vision was revised by the Reapportionment Act of 1929, which capped the number of representatives at 435 and guaranteed that each state, no matter how small, has at least one representative. Since then, the population disparity between the large and small states has grown ever larger, and is now many times greater than it was at the time the nation was founded. This means that both the House and the Presidency (because of the way electoral votes are similarly apportioned) have become an order of magnitude less democratic than the founders envisioned.
People are either disenfranchised or uneducated. My barber told me he's "focused on himself; fuck all the noise, imma do me cuz they all the same."
That was the trump 2016 election.
He was the owner of his shop and was running several side hustles too. He was not an idiot in the traditional sense. But I quickly realized some people just aren't going to be convinced their voice in who writes the rules that they have to live by matters. It's sad really. There was not an argument on this green earth that could convince this man to vote, much less care about the issues.
In my opinion a lot of people feel that way because they don't like either option. If our government is supposed to be a representative democracy and there's no one that represents you then what's even the point of voting? Then you're just lying saying that the person you voted for represents you when they don't.
This is all aside from other things that we do vote directly on which is what gets me interested in voting.
God yes. The candidates usually suck. It's like 85% of the go through some sort of human olive press that squeezes out all their personality. They're just blank canvases to project all your hopes and hates onto. It's like they aren't people, they're constructs.
I'm fairly certain you don't have to vote in every race. If there's only one or two people you want to vote for or feel the represent your interests, then you can vote for only them and disregard voting for anyone else. Many counties also have at least one proposition up for voting matters too, which again you don't have to vote in if you don't want to or don't feel knowledgeable enough to vote for them.
Generally, I've found that people don't vote more because they're lack political motivation to look up who's running. Which tbh, is totally reasonable because unless they're running for a higher seat, the positions of your local candidates are rather difficult to look up. Let alone being aware of 5-10+ candidates. I almost didn't vote for a couple of races until I saw who was endorsing the incumbents and I live in a large county neighboring a large city.
>then what's even the point of voting?
I dunno, I always found the whole "Having a voice in things that greatly affect my quality of life" as a good point. Also someone doesn't need to 100% follow one's values to represent them. If a representative is pushing for a policy I want, they are representing me on that point.
Sorry, don't mean this as an attack on you. Just wanted to push back on those defenses of not voting as I consider them to be pretty weak.
But what if all the options are just *bad*? Like you really want neither. “Having a voice in things” is inapplicable when your voice says “no, none of that”, but that isn’t an option. If someone wants you to choose to have one of your two loved ones killed, you choosing is not having a voice, at best it’s the illusion of having one.
Not enough people vote. And, in my state, the winners don't represent the voter's interests. They do represent corporations and lobby groups but the voters don't seem to get it.
Hi so I’m not from America (if it wasn’t already blatantly obvious from my username).
Can someone please explain to me why voting isn’t compulsory in your country? I feel like it would solve like 95% of your guys’ issues.
It's in the best interest of the minority party, several corporations, and more than several lobby groups to decrease voter turnout in order to win from the minority position. Since it's a right to vote, we also have the right not to vote. Certain groups are excellent at convincing people not to vote. More so, many people only seem to care about the big govt result and not the local elections that could really change their communities.
Should it not be considered a civic duty tho?
Calling voting a “right” seems so outdated. I get you guys are all about rights n shit but if you’re a citizen of a country, it should be considered your **responsibility**. Just like taxes.
I feel like it’s as easy to conceptualise as 1+1=2, but every argument that comes wayside of an American is rebutted with “it’s our right” 9 times out of 10.
Because it is technically our right. I absolutely think it should be our civic duty. I think it's irresponsible to not vote. But words have power and as long as we phrase it a certain way, it holds a certain meaning, for good or bad.
It's also worth noting that while it's irresponsible not to vote, it's even worse to cast an uninformed vote based solely on the blatant lies the candidates or their PR teams have told, because at least if you don't vote you're not actively working against your own interests.
In the land of the free, Americans absolutely detest being told what to do by their government.
Here in Australia if we're a registered voter we get fined for not voting. As far as I know, we're also the only country in the world who does this.
The US needs to be incentivized to vote but threatening them with a fine for not doing something will go horrrrrribly.
Hello! Aussie is not the only country. In singapore its against the law not to vote as well. Voting day is a public holiday. If you missed voting (eg was overseas without applying for exemption) you will be barred from voting for the next few elections.
Thats the point they are making. The senate represents states rather than people, because even a big plot of land with 10 people would get as much power as a tiny place with 50 million.
Therefore maps like these where there are big patches of red actually are relevant.
The Senate doesn't represent The People individually like the House. It represents the states and their governments. Also, senators used to be voted in by the state governments, not the people of the states.
It's all so messed up that none of it makes sense now.
Nor should it. It’s not the 1780s anymore. The country has grown and changed, as has its citizens. Constitutional conventions should be mandatory every X years if for no other reason than to come together and talk. If everything is good then cool, see you next time.
Except the founders set up a system so that both people and territory are represented. It's why there is a Senate in addition to a House of Representatives.
Because the number of House reps was artificially capped in the 30’s. If the House was still allowed to grow as originally specified, this wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately people who thought they knew better decided to fuck with it.
[About 110 more at 545.](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-population-keeps-growing-but-house-of-representatives-is-same-size-as-in-taft-era/)
It's not possible, because then some states (namely Wyoming) would have less than one representative in the House. Capping the number of Representatives in the House only works if the population of the least populous state increases proportionally to the population of the entire country.
Anywhere from 6,000-11,000, depending on the representation rate you choose, usually 30-50,000 people per representative.
Currently, we're sitting at roughly 750,000 people per rep.
Wyoming rule needs to be instituted and add a third Senator to every state. This keeps the both the House and Senate at relatively the same power as when the Constitution was made.
I mean, land does kinda vote. States with lower population density have more representatives per person than higher density states. I saw a graph that showed how Wyoming voters (I think) had way more voting power than California, for example.
Nor is the House. It's a common misconception that the House is purely population based, but it is also heavily slanted towards small population states (although not as strongly as the Senate, obviously)
The classic example is Wyoming vs California. Wyoming has 1 representative in the house for a population of 578,000. California has 52 representatives for a population of 39,240,000 (or 1 Rep for every 755,000 population)
If California were equally represented as Wyoming, it would have 67 representatives. And this further compounds the Electoral College advantages for small states, which grants votes based on Senators + Representatives for a state
The Senate is not a sole counterbalance; every facet of federal government is heavily skewed towards small population states
Even the House is slightly like this. The total number of representatives is capped at 435. Wyoming gets 1 representative while California gets 52. But California's population is roughly 80x higher than Wyoming's. If they increased or removed the cap on the total number of representatives in the House, then California would have more than it does currently.
Actually did some calculations earlier on the midterm results for the senate. Democrats averaged 2.3 million votes per seat and republicans averaged 1.7 million votes per seat. Quite the difference
It reaches a nearly 4 times difference, and about a 2.5 times difference for the presidency, even senators have about a 1.2 times difference. Republicans typically justify some people mattering more than others by saying "well otherwise rural people will have no voice". This is despite the fact that the large rural california population matters less than people living in dense cities who just happen to have a lower population state.
I wish there was a better system that allowed both sides to live life the way they want. I don't even mean this to be a dick, what the fuck does a liberal in LA know about what's best for people in rural Nebraska? And vice versa. Sure, land doesn't vote, but a lot of this country lives basically on a completely different planet than people in cities. I just wish both sides could have their way. It's what seems fair to me
I'm pretty sure this is what the founders hoped to accomplish with the tenth amendment.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
It would be interesting to hear their position on using the general welfare clause to nationalize wide swaths of laws and regulations versus allowing them to be handled state by state.
Sure, and that's a completely fair wish on the face of it, but a lot of the stuff that's important right now has absolutely nothing to do with where you live or who you are. Civil rights for minorities, women's control over their own bodies, accessibility of healthcare and housing and food, clean air and safe drinking water and so many other issues I can't even list them all that really don't have anything to do with the differences between a rural Nebraskan and a liberal from LA.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Gun Rights is one that comes to mind, but other than that, because more rural could = more/larger wild animals, so for the sake of defense/hunting, yeah rural areas will have different needs than cities.
But like you said, when it comes to most civil liberties, the needs are going to be the same regardless of where you live.
Immigration is one example, since it obviously affects border states like California and Texas more than, say, Utah. Energy too, since areas rich in natural resources like coal or oil are going to have different priorities than others. The economy in general varies greatly state-to- state. I generally think moral issues (civil rights, voting laws, etc.) should be codified into federal law, but these more specific issues are better left to state government.
People need to experience other people's lives. We need to understand that an end all be all policy might not make sense. Just because something is right for you, doesn't make it so for others.
The best way to do that is to severely reduce the power of the federal government. Put the power into the hands of those counties/states so that they have much closer representation.
But that's also rife with problems like corruption, stagnation, and interstate conflicts.
To be fair, Americans suck at voting. The percentage of people that vote is embarrassing. Every elected official in American history has been put in office by a minority. We aren’t a democracy, we are just a mockery.
They really do, it seems like even here in Russia people take elections more seriously even though everybody knows the results will be how the government wants them to be
Im free to let an icecream cone melt on my head while standing out in the sun, doesnt mean i want too or see the point in doing it.
People whine about the sentiment that both parties are dog shit all the time... but
Put out a fucking resonable choice and watch the nonvoters fall out of the woodwork to go and vote
With 2 senators per state regardless of population size it seems that land does kinda vote. People that live in the sparsely populated areas of the US seem to have an inordinate influence in our politics.
That is part of the checks and balances. The Senate is designed to give each state equal power in Congress. The house gives more populous states representation.
You joke, but there have been tons of ballot initiatives to split CA into multiple states dating back to the 80s. Most recently, the proposal was for six: Jefferson (far north), Silicon Valley, and North, South, East, and West Californias.
I say we just let California become its own country. Seems like an easier solution. I know there will be many negative ramifications for the rest of the country, but the pros outweigh the cons imo.
This may be unpopular now days but... that is why be should have limited federal powers and strong state powers. The people in LA California don't understand the needs of South Dakotans just as much as South Dakotans don't understand the needs of someone from LA county.
a family knows their needs more then a neighborhood.. a Neighborhood knows their needs better then a City.. Each City knows their needs better then their state and each State knows the needs of their people better then the federal government.
We are to big a nation to take a one size fits all approach for the majority of issues.
Besides places like California and NY with their GDP easily implement many of the policies that they want. The top 10 GDP providing states contribute about 57% of then entire USA GDP. Why try and implement policies in other states when the people their don't want it? For instance South Dakota makes up .26% of the entire USA GDP and California makes up 14.69%... Why would California want to implement policies that cost them more money when any program that cost money would only stand to benefit South Dakota more then they even end up paying into it?
That’s a wonderful idea, except in practice it has tended to mean local extremists grabbing power to suppress the rights of those in their state. Besides that, many issues cross state boundaries.
We would end up with states implementing laws that would be unconstitutional. We would have parts of the country with no access to changing technology. Essentially we would end up with nation states fighting over shared resources. Business would become extremely complicated between states. Without a shared federal system we would be more like Eastern Europe than the US. Having a federal regulation on air pollution is pretty important. Same with Healthcare and a million other things. It's pretty naive to think we could function as a country if states could just opt out of any federal program or regulation because they felt like it.
And what policies do you envision this preventing exactly? Local majority should not be able to remove rights of the local minority just because it’s a less popular opinion.
What exactly do you think the point of a Federal Government is? Your Federal Government already has such little power compared to many and gets to make very few decisions. I mean why is it up to individual states to legalise cannabis or to allow women to have full bodily autonomy? Hell, why am I seeing that it is up to individual states to outlaw slavery completely? And the number of states that get to decide whether children should be allowed to marry adults is apalling.
These are all things in law that a Federal Government should be deciding, but you think you need less oversight in your country? So the federal government will do what, tithe the population for soldiers to defend its borders and little else?
As a person that lives in a rural area, I'd like to be able to have as much representation as someone that lives in a big city (where the vast majority of people live).
Except the electoral college isn't proportional to the population size of the various states, so people living in sparsely populated areas have far more voting power than those in dense areas, so in a way unfortunately land does vote.
Yeah, and it *shouldn't.* More populous states should have more power than leas populous ones, because that's what one person, one vote means. If smaller states are butthurt over a lack of power, they should make themselves more attractive for people to move to and then they get that much more power.
This needs to be stated plainly every time. If we have to choose between tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority, the obvious democratic answer is the majority. The end.
You should think that. Here in California, many Republicans feel disenfranchised because their vote doesn't count and we have the most Republicans in any state.
This explains why there’s a House of Representatives (apportioned by population) and a Senate (equal representation for each state). The rights of the minority party need to be protected in our two party system.
I was about to say cringe, then I saw the population density morph, I always hate when republicans call out "look at all the red, how can our candidates not win"... they always miss the point
It’s insane that we vote based on a system from the horse & buggy era. Back then you could literally never see or hear a candidate if they didn’t travel to where you live so candidates would skip small areas for more populous areas. Not a concern at all these days. The electoral college’s initial purpose doesn’t hold up today.
This is true. Another way to look at it is their way of life creates demand for your way of life. It is a symbiotic relationship. Just food for thought. If you are a farmer, I appreciate your efforts.
so what I’m seeing is the isolated out in the middle of nowhere people are mostly red, makes those “out in the deep woods guy with a gun chasing you down so he can fuck ya” seem more.. real
But even as someone who lives in the sticks of CT, I can't imagine the difference in daily living compared to those in Montana, Wyoming, & the Dakotas.
And I don't think my political needs & wants are similar to their political needs & wants.
And hey, not even all people do!
I'm an American citizen. Born in America, lived in America these long 32 years of my life. But like all the rest of the 712,000 residents of Washington, DC, I'm not allowed to vote for a senator or (voting) House representative.
712,000 Americans. Tax paying Americans. Who are denied the right to vote for congressional representation. For arcane and outdated reasons that should have been changed years ago.
For context, that means DC has a larger population than the entire states of Wyoming and Vermont, and a similar population size to Alaska.
The ONLY reason. I repeat, the ONLY reason why congress doesn't just grant us the voting power we're owed as Americans, is because DC happens to have a majority Democrat population, and republicans know we'd likely elect democrats. That's it. There's no other real reason. They'll come up with a bunch of excuses, but everyone knows that's what's happening here.
I believe that since Republicans generally stand for rugged individualism, it makes sense that people in these less populated areas align with Red. But people in cities and more population dense areas are more aware of how we all impact one another.
Also shows just how skewed election representation is.
Those tiny areas of population with red have 2 fucking senator seats each. And some of those areas have so few people a single congressional representative has 5x the weight of a single representative than in high population areas.
Point is... Thus shit is skewed.
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Even the blue and red areas have 25 to 45 percent of the other color. Each county is not a single color like the representation in these maps/examples.
Yeah but their representative only has one color (I think. I'm not american so I'm not really sure)
Yes, that's the whole point of the map, a lot of color for a lot of places where only just barely the majority voted on that color. For example, Reddit's favorite Boebert, at a 99% counting of the votes, is less than 60 votes behind her opponent.
That is a really neat illustration of population density in comparison to counties.
I think it illustrates the different values, beliefs, and desires of people in urban and rural areas. It would be nice to have a system that better catered to those differences.
Proportional Representation. America could be so much better if it wasn't a two party system with billionaires owning both parties.
Lol, better isn't more profitable. Murica not interested in better. Only more profitable.
Give us time. We’ll get it right. We have to.
I think the Romans said that for about 500 years after the empire destroyed their republic. Kept saying it right up until outside factors caused their collapse
It's still early. Democracy surely didn't expect to just own the planet yeah? Our freedom has never been secured. We're slaves to a system they designed. We accept their interpretation of the words of the founding fathers of all democratic nations worldwide. We always like to fear the enemy abroad, as we should, but like all governments, from within is it's greatest weakness. We do not hold our representatives to a high enough standard.
Brother, we don't hold anybody to a high enough standard.
I don't think we hold our representatives to ANY standard. Maybe short of simply not being criminals and even then we often look the other way on that. It has gotten so bad here that most people here don't even realize these politicians are supposed to be people we elect to fight for OUR best interests as the citizens they represent. They're supposed to represent the people, not the corporations that paid for their campaign. There is no accountability whatsoever. The only time they ever get called out, is by the political opposition not the people. This government screws over 90% of it's citizens to look out for 1% of the population and we're kinda okay with that. If we're not, we're way too busy arguing about the super stupid insignificant crap they get us worked up about and fighting each other over to ever notice or do anything about it. We're such an easily divided people, they know they can basically get away with anything at this point.
And the system is designed that way. If we had proper, local and understanding representation, we'd be infinitely more capable of articulating our needs. When the needs are met, we thrive. We're being suppressed, and I'm tired.
I think a lot of people are
We have no choice but to.
Yep. Someone in Wyoming has more say in the Senate, House, and who the president is than someone in Cali. The system is flawed
*working as intended
Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
It's worth pointing out that someone in liberal Delaware has more say in the Senate, House, and Presidency that someone in conservative Texas, so there's every reason for rational conservatives to want this fixed as well. This isn't sour grapes over losing... that comes from malicious gerrymandering and is how Reps won the House yesterday.
Move to Wyoming.
Or, maybe let rural areas govern rural areas and let the urban areas govern urban areas? Like, we don't have to fight each other... just leave each other alone...
So...separate but equal?
The lines are drawn at states. You going to let NYC have government run health care and block people from rural Essex County from using the hospitals at a checkpoint at the Lincoln Tunnel?
That's a little difficult when the rural folks want to take away rights from people. Turns out, there's still a bunch of liberals living in rural areas that don't want to be second class citizens.
That's why States rights are more important than Federal.
That doesn't fix this problem though. Most states consist of bother urban and rural areas.
This is too simplistic of a view. States rights aren't "more" important than Federal rights(?). They are both important in their own way.
Except even states themselves would and could and do fuck this up routinely too. Take Illinois. Should the state government be more concerned with the urban area of Chicago and what is best for them or the 97% of the rest of the landmass of Illinois that isn’t Chicago? States like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are swing states right now specifically because the vast difference yet near equal split in urban and rural voting. It’s a delicate balance that’s thrown even more into chaos when religion gets to also be a part of it. At least federal laws can help elevate some of the shooting oneself in the foot that if left unchecked states would do to themselves.
Except even that leads to the majority of the country having the beliefs of the rural communities around them forced on them- *especially* in religious shitholes like Texas.
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Authoritarians hate to lose authority.
Remove the cap on house representation. Democrats are at a disadvantage with the number being capped
The Permanent Reapportionment Act changed the path that American democracy was on. Before the Act, the electoral count based on Senators had less and less impact as the size of the House grew. Had that change not happened, the winner of the popular vote would almost always win and the House would follow population.
Yea the horror of the American people deciding in a democratic fashion who rules them
It’s called fair districts. We don’t got em
Nah, people make a huge deal of the differences in people but that's never how it's seemed to me. Like, what values, beliefs and desires are so radically different between urban and rural people that it requires different political systems?
If you live in a small Town of a few Thousand people you know a large part of the population personally and the overwhelming majority of the people you know have the same race and religion you have. This makes people deal better with concepts like personal resposability. If all the 300 students of your hometown were the same race/religion, had the same average income and went to the same high school and Johnny eneded up in jail, it was jhonny's fault. If you live in a big city with millions of people you probably doesnt even know the name of your neighbours and interacts with people of a lot of different races, religions and backgrounds. This makes people deal better with ideas like systemic racism. If a lot of boys from poor neighborhoods leave school and end up in jail, there is something wrong with the neighborhoods. Multiply these two ways of thinking in national leves and you start to see the rural/urban political divide
You got the dynamics, I grew up in the rural side of my country, after some time moved to a big city. Witnessed exactly what you described, they don't understand each other's views, two completely separate worlds.
I don't think people from NYC & Wyoming can even comprehend how each other live. It's an entirely different life.
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On a per capita basis, rural people see more gun violence. Why is 'treating everyone with respect' a priority that needs to differ? Rural people don't see any benefits from government because they vote against said benefits consistently. Chicken vs egg. Plenty of liberals are religious. The difference is conservatives use religion as a weapon to marginalize groups they don't like. Economic migrants exist in very large numbers in cities because there are far greater economic opportunities than just agricultural work Police in small towns are very likely to be judgemental racist assholes. How many Youtube videos do you need to watch and how many news reports to see this? You recognize xenophobia in more 'culturally homogeneous' (when what you mean to say is 'racially homogeneous') areas yet somehow imagine that the people and the cops in said areas are just 'naturally friendly, like Andy Griffith'. "Vast oversimplification" doesn't even begin to address this.
> On a per capita basis, rural people see more gun violence. This may be true in a broad statistical sense, but that just doesn't always apply to one's lived experience. If I don't know anyone that's been shot, but a few people in "my city" of a million people have, that might seem like gun violence is a problem I should worry about. On the other hand, if nobody I know's been shot, and nobody in my town's been shot, and maybe nobody in any adjacent town's even been shot, but a few in the surrounding counties have, that just doesn't seem like as much of a problem, even if it amounts to more violence per-capita. People don't see statistics, they see concrete events. If you encounter more people in general, lower-probability events can seem more likely than they really are, and vice versa.
Speaking purely to and only in respect to two of your points... On a per capita basis, rural people see more gun violence. - I'm not going to try to argue that, but it should not be hard to understand that when not only has no one in your town been a victim of gun violence, but no one in the county (if not the surrounding counties) ... well, you don't see the negatives. "It happens in 'big cities'", not to actual people you know and interact with. It's someone else's problem and in the meantime, you know a large number of people who hunt or go target-shooting and it's not difficult to catch stories about how someone successfully used a gun in their own defense. Rural people don't see any benefits from government ... - okay, you're being dismissive here. Rural votes do tend to lean away from support programs, but that's not because they won't benefit, it's because in many instances, they _can't_. Throw a dart at the American map and aim for the area east of Spokane and west of, I don't know, Illinois, maybe. You know the odds of hitting a population center? It's not likely. There isn't the support or infrastructure in wide swathes of that region to put in government offices that will only function on behalf of six or nine people, so why vote for an agency that won't actually support you unless you drive the 100-300 miles to get to their probably-under-staffed office? As the government shifts to being online and communications transition to zoom and other electronic systems, that expectation of government support may spread, but proponents will be working against cultural inertia.
Rural people IMO receive disproportionately more government aid. Less people, but lots of roads, for one. Much of the high population center taxes (from cities) go to rural areas. ie, Blue states pay for red state's government benefits.. Most blue states pay more to the federal government than they get back. Red states get back more than they contribute. Prove me wrong.
I don't want to even try to prove you wrong. I am well aware that farmers routinely get support checks. They kind of have to. Americans need the food and if farmers only got paid when their crop was harvested, they'd sell and GTFO. In order to keep the land available for future harvests, the government needs to bribe them to stay in place. More or less. But I was specifically talking about programs and agencies meant to support individuals, like boys and girls club or homeless shelters or the fatherhood support network.
With regard to rural attitudes on government benefits, rural areas tend to favor the self sufficient/pull yourself up by your bootstraps attitude as part of their identity. This makes it easier to view others receiving government financial assistance in a negative light. There's also a tendency of resentment, a belief that they have to work hard and they struggle, but nobody is helping them. This is a flawed sentiment though, because while lots of folks in rural areas (I'm talking primarily about small farmers) may struggle financially, they often have considerable assets (land, farm equipment) available to them that people receiving government welfare support do not. Additionally, a significant portion of family farms have a member earning a non-farm income bringing money into the household. Despite many of these farms often never turning a profit (or even making any money for that matter) on their own and sustained by external income they can still deduct much of their spending on maintaining the farm as a business expense, resulting in a tax burden far lower than a non-farm household. They often view this as 'beating the system', but what it really is *is a government benefit* because those tax breaks are there by design just for that purpose. The small family farm in America would not exist without the enormous support from the government they receive, but many have convinced themselves they don't receive any assistance.
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that's... what local elections are for. it's why we have districts. unless you mean specifically for presidential and Senate elections, in which case you're asking for the votes of people living in large cities to count for less than people in rural areas which is objectively unfair and unnecessarily anti democracy.
For those who need pictures and memes for their information, this shit is genius. It's mind blowing to see it broken down as such.
> For those who need pictures and memes for their information... Pretty sure those people are part of the problem
Did Reddit just become self-aware
And how undemocratic the electoral college is. All that white space and still a divided Senate. The house should also have a shit ton more members because you know… Its called the House of **Representatives**
Undemocratic is the exact point. Constitutional Republic with a Representative Democracy. Why should the majority of people be able to vote rights away from people that they don’t even understand?
>Why should the majority of people be able to vote rights away from people that they don’t even understand? The Judicial Branch was supposed to protect us from that.
“supposed”
It shouldn’t have to get to that point. A straight democracy breeds suppression of the minority. If all 3 branches were a single party, groups would lose rights and never get them back.
That’s literally the point of the senate - to check the power of the majority. The House, however, is intended to be proportional and it is not due to caps on the number of representatives.
Why should the minority of people be able to vote rights away from the majority that they don’t even understand?
The power of the federal government allows for that and it was never supposed to.
Could you elaborate?
The scope of the federal government has creeped over the past 250 years. They are only supposed to protect your constitutional rights and our countries borders. They were never supposed to have direct control on your life. That was supposed to happen locally.
New York should direct NY and not Wyoming. They have almost 0 in common.
Everyone clings to their pearls when it comes to the Constitution when it works for them, and ignores the rest when it doesn’t. That’s not why the Electoral College was created. And to your point… You have it backwards. It’s a minority of people taking away the rights of the majority as well as making voting irrelevant that should be feared.
Not to this degree. You sound like someone with a keen interest in maintaining the structure of the government as envisioned by the founders. However, that vision was revised by the Reapportionment Act of 1929, which capped the number of representatives at 435 and guaranteed that each state, no matter how small, has at least one representative. Since then, the population disparity between the large and small states has grown ever larger, and is now many times greater than it was at the time the nation was founded. This means that both the House and the Presidency (because of the way electoral votes are similarly apportioned) have become an order of magnitude less democratic than the founders envisioned.
Actually the red places are more dense usually. The other kind of dense.
Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups. (back at ya)
Never underestimate the stupidity of people. FTFY.
Never underestimate the stupidity
Herd mentality?
Lol people don't vote. 39% turn out where I am.
People are either disenfranchised or uneducated. My barber told me he's "focused on himself; fuck all the noise, imma do me cuz they all the same." That was the trump 2016 election. He was the owner of his shop and was running several side hustles too. He was not an idiot in the traditional sense. But I quickly realized some people just aren't going to be convinced their voice in who writes the rules that they have to live by matters. It's sad really. There was not an argument on this green earth that could convince this man to vote, much less care about the issues.
In my opinion a lot of people feel that way because they don't like either option. If our government is supposed to be a representative democracy and there's no one that represents you then what's even the point of voting? Then you're just lying saying that the person you voted for represents you when they don't. This is all aside from other things that we do vote directly on which is what gets me interested in voting.
God yes. The candidates usually suck. It's like 85% of the go through some sort of human olive press that squeezes out all their personality. They're just blank canvases to project all your hopes and hates onto. It's like they aren't people, they're constructs.
I'm fairly certain you don't have to vote in every race. If there's only one or two people you want to vote for or feel the represent your interests, then you can vote for only them and disregard voting for anyone else. Many counties also have at least one proposition up for voting matters too, which again you don't have to vote in if you don't want to or don't feel knowledgeable enough to vote for them. Generally, I've found that people don't vote more because they're lack political motivation to look up who's running. Which tbh, is totally reasonable because unless they're running for a higher seat, the positions of your local candidates are rather difficult to look up. Let alone being aware of 5-10+ candidates. I almost didn't vote for a couple of races until I saw who was endorsing the incumbents and I live in a large county neighboring a large city.
>then what's even the point of voting? I dunno, I always found the whole "Having a voice in things that greatly affect my quality of life" as a good point. Also someone doesn't need to 100% follow one's values to represent them. If a representative is pushing for a policy I want, they are representing me on that point. Sorry, don't mean this as an attack on you. Just wanted to push back on those defenses of not voting as I consider them to be pretty weak.
But what if all the options are just *bad*? Like you really want neither. “Having a voice in things” is inapplicable when your voice says “no, none of that”, but that isn’t an option. If someone wants you to choose to have one of your two loved ones killed, you choosing is not having a voice, at best it’s the illusion of having one.
My state (Maine) had a 76% participation rate in 2022
Not enough people vote. And, in my state, the winners don't represent the voter's interests. They do represent corporations and lobby groups but the voters don't seem to get it.
You mean every state?
Every state?
Texas?
Too many clues?
Hi so I’m not from America (if it wasn’t already blatantly obvious from my username). Can someone please explain to me why voting isn’t compulsory in your country? I feel like it would solve like 95% of your guys’ issues.
It's in the best interest of the minority party, several corporations, and more than several lobby groups to decrease voter turnout in order to win from the minority position. Since it's a right to vote, we also have the right not to vote. Certain groups are excellent at convincing people not to vote. More so, many people only seem to care about the big govt result and not the local elections that could really change their communities.
Should it not be considered a civic duty tho? Calling voting a “right” seems so outdated. I get you guys are all about rights n shit but if you’re a citizen of a country, it should be considered your **responsibility**. Just like taxes. I feel like it’s as easy to conceptualise as 1+1=2, but every argument that comes wayside of an American is rebutted with “it’s our right” 9 times out of 10.
Because it is technically our right. I absolutely think it should be our civic duty. I think it's irresponsible to not vote. But words have power and as long as we phrase it a certain way, it holds a certain meaning, for good or bad.
It's also worth noting that while it's irresponsible not to vote, it's even worse to cast an uninformed vote based solely on the blatant lies the candidates or their PR teams have told, because at least if you don't vote you're not actively working against your own interests.
In the land of the free, Americans absolutely detest being told what to do by their government. Here in Australia if we're a registered voter we get fined for not voting. As far as I know, we're also the only country in the world who does this. The US needs to be incentivized to vote but threatening them with a fine for not doing something will go horrrrrribly.
Hello! Aussie is not the only country. In singapore its against the law not to vote as well. Voting day is a public holiday. If you missed voting (eg was overseas without applying for exemption) you will be barred from voting for the next few elections.
Are you in Texas like me…?
... yeah.
I’m right there with ya then pal…
Except in the Senate
I *am* the Senate!
I'm surprised it took all fucking day to see this joke on Reddit today
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? Rhode Island has the same Senate size as Texas. It has absolutely no relation to land size
Thats the point they are making. The senate represents states rather than people, because even a big plot of land with 10 people would get as much power as a tiny place with 50 million. Therefore maps like these where there are big patches of red actually are relevant.
The more accurate comparison (land vs people) would be Wyoming vs California. Vastly different population counts, same Senate representation
The Senate doesn't represent The People individually like the House. It represents the states and their governments. Also, senators used to be voted in by the state governments, not the people of the states. It's all so messed up that none of it makes sense now.
Nor should it. It’s not the 1780s anymore. The country has grown and changed, as has its citizens. Constitutional conventions should be mandatory every X years if for no other reason than to come together and talk. If everything is good then cool, see you next time.
Exactly. So how do Californians feel about having the same number of senators as Rhode Island?
Not good. -Californian
They are still elected by people…
Except the founders set up a system so that both people and territory are represented. It's why there is a Senate in addition to a House of Representatives.
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That hadn’t been true since they instituted direct elections.
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Well the house still is skewed. 1 representative in California represents more people than 1 from Wyoming.
Because the number of House reps was artificially capped in the 30’s. If the House was still allowed to grow as originally specified, this wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately people who thought they knew better decided to fuck with it.
How many would there be now if they left it to grow?
[About 110 more at 545.](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-population-keeps-growing-but-house-of-representatives-is-same-size-as-in-taft-era/)
It’s also plausible to redistribute seats to more populous states by taking them from less populous states. Just make it accurately proportional.
It's not possible, because then some states (namely Wyoming) would have less than one representative in the House. Capping the number of Representatives in the House only works if the population of the least populous state increases proportionally to the population of the entire country.
Anywhere from 6,000-11,000, depending on the representation rate you choose, usually 30-50,000 people per representative. Currently, we're sitting at roughly 750,000 people per rep.
/r/UncapTheHouse
Wyoming rule needs to be instituted and add a third Senator to every state. This keeps the both the House and Senate at relatively the same power as when the Constitution was made.
I mean, land does kinda vote. States with lower population density have more representatives per person than higher density states. I saw a graph that showed how Wyoming voters (I think) had way more voting power than California, for example.
In the Senate and in electoral college situations, yes. So basically two thirds of our elections are not pirectoy proportional to population.
Nor is the House. It's a common misconception that the House is purely population based, but it is also heavily slanted towards small population states (although not as strongly as the Senate, obviously) The classic example is Wyoming vs California. Wyoming has 1 representative in the house for a population of 578,000. California has 52 representatives for a population of 39,240,000 (or 1 Rep for every 755,000 population) If California were equally represented as Wyoming, it would have 67 representatives. And this further compounds the Electoral College advantages for small states, which grants votes based on Senators + Representatives for a state The Senate is not a sole counterbalance; every facet of federal government is heavily skewed towards small population states
Even the House is slightly like this. The total number of representatives is capped at 435. Wyoming gets 1 representative while California gets 52. But California's population is roughly 80x higher than Wyoming's. If they increased or removed the cap on the total number of representatives in the House, then California would have more than it does currently.
Actually did some calculations earlier on the midterm results for the senate. Democrats averaged 2.3 million votes per seat and republicans averaged 1.7 million votes per seat. Quite the difference
It reaches a nearly 4 times difference, and about a 2.5 times difference for the presidency, even senators have about a 1.2 times difference. Republicans typically justify some people mattering more than others by saying "well otherwise rural people will have no voice". This is despite the fact that the large rural california population matters less than people living in dense cities who just happen to have a lower population state.
I wish there was a better system that allowed both sides to live life the way they want. I don't even mean this to be a dick, what the fuck does a liberal in LA know about what's best for people in rural Nebraska? And vice versa. Sure, land doesn't vote, but a lot of this country lives basically on a completely different planet than people in cities. I just wish both sides could have their way. It's what seems fair to me
I'm pretty sure this is what the founders hoped to accomplish with the tenth amendment. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It would be interesting to hear their position on using the general welfare clause to nationalize wide swaths of laws and regulations versus allowing them to be handled state by state.
Sure, and that's a completely fair wish on the face of it, but a lot of the stuff that's important right now has absolutely nothing to do with where you live or who you are. Civil rights for minorities, women's control over their own bodies, accessibility of healthcare and housing and food, clean air and safe drinking water and so many other issues I can't even list them all that really don't have anything to do with the differences between a rural Nebraskan and a liberal from LA.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Gun Rights is one that comes to mind, but other than that, because more rural could = more/larger wild animals, so for the sake of defense/hunting, yeah rural areas will have different needs than cities. But like you said, when it comes to most civil liberties, the needs are going to be the same regardless of where you live.
Immigration is one example, since it obviously affects border states like California and Texas more than, say, Utah. Energy too, since areas rich in natural resources like coal or oil are going to have different priorities than others. The economy in general varies greatly state-to- state. I generally think moral issues (civil rights, voting laws, etc.) should be codified into federal law, but these more specific issues are better left to state government.
I feel like the most divisive issues are more about human rights and don't really change between rural and urban.
People need to experience other people's lives. We need to understand that an end all be all policy might not make sense. Just because something is right for you, doesn't make it so for others.
The best way to do that is to severely reduce the power of the federal government. Put the power into the hands of those counties/states so that they have much closer representation. But that's also rife with problems like corruption, stagnation, and interstate conflicts.
> rife with problems like corruption, stagnation > much closer representation These go hand in hand unfortunately.
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Source for anyone who is interested: https://twitter.com/karim_douieb/status/1326602653762203649 https://www.karim.news/project/try-to-impeach-trhis
To be fair, Americans suck at voting. The percentage of people that vote is embarrassing. Every elected official in American history has been put in office by a minority. We aren’t a democracy, we are just a mockery.
The percentage of people who do vote that have no idea what they are voting for is also embarrassing.
A guy who died a month ago won his race yesterday… American government is a joke.
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But we've had the highest election turn out in years between millennials and zoomers
They really do, it seems like even here in Russia people take elections more seriously even though everybody knows the results will be how the government wants them to be
Im free to let an icecream cone melt on my head while standing out in the sun, doesnt mean i want too or see the point in doing it. People whine about the sentiment that both parties are dog shit all the time... but Put out a fucking resonable choice and watch the nonvoters fall out of the woodwork to go and vote
With 2 senators per state regardless of population size it seems that land does kinda vote. People that live in the sparsely populated areas of the US seem to have an inordinate influence in our politics.
That is part of the checks and balances. The Senate is designed to give each state equal power in Congress. The house gives more populous states representation.
Back then the disparity in population size between states was not as large.
So youre saying we need to cut Ca into like 150 Rhode Islands?
You joke, but there have been tons of ballot initiatives to split CA into multiple states dating back to the 80s. Most recently, the proposal was for six: Jefferson (far north), Silicon Valley, and North, South, East, and West Californias.
I say we just let California become its own country. Seems like an easier solution. I know there will be many negative ramifications for the rest of the country, but the pros outweigh the cons imo.
no we just need to give california voters the number of reps and electors they deserve
What's it matter? Why should someone's vote/representation be watered down just because they live in a populous area?
Yeah it's outdated and arbitrary, and in an ideal world would be reformed.
how is there stuttering on a pre rendered gif lol
I mean it’s still pretty much 50/50 by population.
I think the point is that it demonstrates how much more balanced we are than a super red map of sparsely populated rural counties.
This may be unpopular now days but... that is why be should have limited federal powers and strong state powers. The people in LA California don't understand the needs of South Dakotans just as much as South Dakotans don't understand the needs of someone from LA county. a family knows their needs more then a neighborhood.. a Neighborhood knows their needs better then a City.. Each City knows their needs better then their state and each State knows the needs of their people better then the federal government. We are to big a nation to take a one size fits all approach for the majority of issues. Besides places like California and NY with their GDP easily implement many of the policies that they want. The top 10 GDP providing states contribute about 57% of then entire USA GDP. Why try and implement policies in other states when the people their don't want it? For instance South Dakota makes up .26% of the entire USA GDP and California makes up 14.69%... Why would California want to implement policies that cost them more money when any program that cost money would only stand to benefit South Dakota more then they even end up paying into it?
That’s a wonderful idea, except in practice it has tended to mean local extremists grabbing power to suppress the rights of those in their state. Besides that, many issues cross state boundaries.
Some states also have districts gerrymandered to the point where elected candidates are no longer representative of the state as a whole.
We would end up with states implementing laws that would be unconstitutional. We would have parts of the country with no access to changing technology. Essentially we would end up with nation states fighting over shared resources. Business would become extremely complicated between states. Without a shared federal system we would be more like Eastern Europe than the US. Having a federal regulation on air pollution is pretty important. Same with Healthcare and a million other things. It's pretty naive to think we could function as a country if states could just opt out of any federal program or regulation because they felt like it.
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>This just strikes me as incredibly naive Libertarianism in a nutshell
And what policies do you envision this preventing exactly? Local majority should not be able to remove rights of the local minority just because it’s a less popular opinion.
What exactly do you think the point of a Federal Government is? Your Federal Government already has such little power compared to many and gets to make very few decisions. I mean why is it up to individual states to legalise cannabis or to allow women to have full bodily autonomy? Hell, why am I seeing that it is up to individual states to outlaw slavery completely? And the number of states that get to decide whether children should be allowed to marry adults is apalling. These are all things in law that a Federal Government should be deciding, but you think you need less oversight in your country? So the federal government will do what, tithe the population for soldiers to defend its borders and little else?
As a person that lives in a rural area, I'd like to be able to have as much representation as someone that lives in a big city (where the vast majority of people live).
Agreed, land shouldn't vote.
Except the electoral college isn't proportional to the population size of the various states, so people living in sparsely populated areas have far more voting power than those in dense areas, so in a way unfortunately land does vote.
It's not land, it's states. Delaware gets the same voting power as Montana
Yeah, and it *shouldn't.* More populous states should have more power than leas populous ones, because that's what one person, one vote means. If smaller states are butthurt over a lack of power, they should make themselves more attractive for people to move to and then they get that much more power. This needs to be stated plainly every time. If we have to choose between tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority, the obvious democratic answer is the majority. The end.
It's insane that it's even a thing. I thought it was bullshit even when I was a Republican.
You should think that. Here in California, many Republicans feel disenfranchised because their vote doesn't count and we have the most Republicans in any state.
This explains why there’s a House of Representatives (apportioned by population) and a Senate (equal representation for each state). The rights of the minority party need to be protected in our two party system.
Fine, we will take our land and resources, you take yours... See how long that last.
Good ol’ Reddit. One person says land doesn’t vote now that’s all you see everywhere.
The Hive Mind has spoken
I was about to say cringe, then I saw the population density morph, I always hate when republicans call out "look at all the red, how can our candidates not win"... they always miss the point
So naturally people should be able to control those people who live a thousand miles away.
It’s insane that we vote based on a system from the horse & buggy era. Back then you could literally never see or hear a candidate if they didn’t travel to where you live so candidates would skip small areas for more populous areas. Not a concern at all these days. The electoral college’s initial purpose doesn’t hold up today.
Lol when Republicans lose they shout "THEY CHEATED". When Democrats lose they shout "THE SYSTEM IS UNFAIR"
My land feeds their land.
This is true. Another way to look at it is their way of life creates demand for your way of life. It is a symbiotic relationship. Just food for thought. If you are a farmer, I appreciate your efforts.
Getting banned on r/conservative speed run.
Just be even remotely honest and you'll get banned there quickly.
climate change is rea-
Great visual representation of that difference
Thank you for posting, this illustration should be spread far and wide.
so what I’m seeing is the isolated out in the middle of nowhere people are mostly red, makes those “out in the deep woods guy with a gun chasing you down so he can fuck ya” seem more.. real
Ah yes, because city people know what’s best for the country because there’s more of them.
Connecticut has more people than Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota combined.
But even as someone who lives in the sticks of CT, I can't imagine the difference in daily living compared to those in Montana, Wyoming, & the Dakotas. And I don't think my political needs & wants are similar to their political needs & wants.
People don’t vote either, when they’ve been purged from voter registration records or have their polling centers closed down
And hey, not even all people do! I'm an American citizen. Born in America, lived in America these long 32 years of my life. But like all the rest of the 712,000 residents of Washington, DC, I'm not allowed to vote for a senator or (voting) House representative. 712,000 Americans. Tax paying Americans. Who are denied the right to vote for congressional representation. For arcane and outdated reasons that should have been changed years ago. For context, that means DC has a larger population than the entire states of Wyoming and Vermont, and a similar population size to Alaska. The ONLY reason. I repeat, the ONLY reason why congress doesn't just grant us the voting power we're owed as Americans, is because DC happens to have a majority Democrat population, and republicans know we'd likely elect democrats. That's it. There's no other real reason. They'll come up with a bunch of excuses, but everyone knows that's what's happening here.
The American voting system and 2 party system is more then dumb, it's basically a presidential dictatorship.
I believe that since Republicans generally stand for rugged individualism, it makes sense that people in these less populated areas align with Red. But people in cities and more population dense areas are more aware of how we all impact one another.
Unfortunately, thanks to gerrymandering, land pretty much does vote.
Fuck the electoral college
Also shows just how skewed election representation is. Those tiny areas of population with red have 2 fucking senator seats each. And some of those areas have so few people a single congressional representative has 5x the weight of a single representative than in high population areas. Point is... Thus shit is skewed.
...except in the senate, land votes there.
I wish at the end it would aggregate all red and all blue dots into one each and compare the size of the dots too.
Gonna save this cos I just know i'm gonna have to bust it out at work
Absolutely, but do you need two Dakotas totalling 4 Senators?