loquitur

Has there been any comparison to other countries with smaller districts? Again, to use the UK as an example, the House of Commons has over 600 "ridings" represented, in a population roughly 20% of the US. Are the people in those ridings better represented than people in congressional districts? Are there studies of such things? How would you measure the quality of representation?

ratbastid

Well that's really the nut of the thing, isn't it? I don't see any way beyond subjective feedback from the represented, which I can't fathom would be any more objectively accurate than what we get now.

loquitur

Right. And the anecdotal evidence I have seen (for whatever that's worth) is that most MPs are pretty much nonentities. Not that members of congress are giants, of course.

JEQuidam

Please don't go all politician on me. It's difficult for me to address all the other points you raise without knowing where you stand on the population size of congressional districts.

Should they be smaller? Bigger? Don't know?

How should the ideal size be determined? By the ruling class? Or by some other standard?

Do you think it is an important factor, or irrelevant?

Do you think the citizen's would have more contact with his/her Representatives as the district became smaller.

You may regard those as rhetorical questions. I'm just trying to figure out where you stand. When people set about to oppose my position I assume that they already know their own.

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It was supposed to be our House.

loquitur

JEQ, the constitution provides a MINIMUM but not maximum size for a congressional district. IIRC it's 50,000 per representative.

JEQuidam

That is an excellent question!

"Are there studies of such things?" -- I believe the answer is no, but at a later time I should research this some more.

I believe that one problem with such an analysis is the subjective (normative) aspect of it with respect to evaluating who is "better represented". That is, it would be difficult to do this without bringing one's ideology into the evaluation. It would probably have to be based upon citizen surveys, but then, on what basis would a citizen make such a judgement if they have not lived (as a voting citizen) in a different country.

Anyway, if you want to see some related data, scroll down to the "doughnut chart" chart on this page:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/section_III.htm
which compares the population per Rep of lower houses (there's also a link to additional data). I suppose everyone will have to draw their own conclusions.

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It was supposed to be our House.

roachboy

uh...what? i assume the italics were meant to indicate some snarkiness in the use of the term.

so are you an anarchist?

to answer your question: i don't have a particular position on the re-scaling question because i can't figure out how to take a position on it in the abstract--it seems to me tied to many other things and i can't seem to get you to address them.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

JEQuidam

Apparently you are not aware that the term "politician" is popularly used as a pejorative. If you do not know why, then that is probably why you oppose the change.

No. Opposite of.

OK, to summarize: you may or may not be in favor of reducing district sizes (and increasing the number of Representatives) based on your other questions which I have failed to answer.

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It was supposed to be our House.

roachboy

that's where we stand, so far as i can tell.
i really think that the central questions are procedural---i don't see any advantage to making the house so big that debate is impossible and relegating legislation to committees to the exclusion of debate does not seem a good idea.
to my mind, there are several problems left dangling here.
one of them is transparency.
in a complex legislative process, transparency seems to me fundamental--a guarantee of legitimacy no less.
i assume that for you, increased availability of representatives to, say, talk with you on the phone IS transparency-is that correct?


btw: what is the opposite of an anarchist?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

JEQuidam

Yes, but not just talking on the phone. I don't need my Representative to be in DC. I am happy to have him/her in my district, with an open door, answering questions.


Me.

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It was supposed to be our House.

Willravel

I just asked my co-worker's 6 year old daughter this question. She replied "an architect".

roachboy

procedure, procedure...are you then proposing a kind of virtual house, a videoconference house that would not require folk being in one place--or are you talking about something even more decentralized, which would in basic ways not be a house at all?

uh...tautology is not informative.
how would you characterise yourself politically, as the opposite of an anarchist, but in other terms?
authoritarian?
just wondering...
i'll play too, if you like, but at the moment, it's your move.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

JEQuidam

Those are certainly appropriate questions, and I have given this a lot of thought. However, I do not want to try to solution this thing out in its entire implementation. I can see several different ways to implement it, but I don't want to speculate on those now. If there were a committee to identify and evaluate the solutions, then you should be on it.

I did provide one possible arrangment on the TTO home page:
Q10: How do all those Representatives fit into one building?

...but I thought it was amusing. I actually couldn't think of an antonym for "anarchist" (architect was suggested above by a clever young lady). Perhaps you could describe me as a small r republican; i.e., I am committed to the republican form of government.

You're raising a point that is far more interesting than you may realize. No maximum district size was ever set.

The very first amendment inscribed on our Bill of Rights was never ratified to our Constitution. Very few people know anything about the history of this amendment, the fact that it contains an inexplicable mathematical error, or that all the states but one affirmed it before being it was completely forgotten by history. Here is a short article I wrote about this:
http://enlargethehouse.blogtownhall.com/

Here is the text of "Article the first" (along with the additional 11 amendments proposed in the BoR):
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/BoR_text.htm

Here is an interesting story about how 30,000 came to be the minimum size specified in the Constitution:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages...Washington.htm

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It was supposed to be our House.

dc_dux

I think you would probably agree that a change in the size of the House is not likely to occur through legislation or a Constitutional amendment proposed in Congress but would require an Article V Constitutional Convention.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof...

So.....how would you word your proposed amendment?

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

JEQuidam

You are entirely correct!

The amendment that I favor was drafted by the first congress in 1789. Their formulation set a maximum district size of 50,000. The Senate's counterproposal was to set the district size equal to 60,000. It then went to a joint committee (in the haste of a closing Congress) at which time a mathematical defect was inexplicably inserted into the amendment; that version became the first amendment inscribed on our Bill of Rights.

To read how it was proposed by the House in 1789, read the left hand side of the table at:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages...analysis.htm#b

If this subject interests you, a comprehensive report (PDF) is available from this page:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/QHA-04.htm

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It was supposed to be our House.

roachboy

jeq: i saw that proposal, but it didn't seem adequately detailed given the nature of the change you're proposing.

it seems to me that you have to be clear about the immediate practical implications of this and what would have to be done to deal with them (if that was required) or what advantage they pose (if there are any beyond making a representative physically closer to the constituency)...the tack that you've adopted to advance the case is interesting intially, but the more the discussion plays out the more suspicious i get about what's up with it simply because of the way you frame questions in and out of consideration for yourself rather than simply addressing them--it's not obvious that this interaction is part of the advancement of the plan, and could be a space to think it out in ways that you might not otherwise do. or not: it's of course your choice.

personally, i remain skeptical.

on the anarchist thing again: still pulling on your coat about this one...so if you're a republican in a---what----platonic sense? i wonder about this because the notion of legislation being carried out entirely by committees, particularly if they are in no particular place, reminds me a little of the "night committees" in plato's "the laws"---which is also a form of republic, but not the one that typically gets referred to. it's the other one, the authoritarian one, in which an invisible state operates in secret while the population busily goes about stratifying itself.

that's make some sense of your hostility to the political--but even so, it's a problem, because anarchists are hostile to the political, but on the right there's a really quite unhappy lineage of folk who also declare themselves hostile to the political, and these folk often also think in terms of natural social hierarchies and it's just not a good space to work from, that, if you know what i mean.

so a republican who is hostile to politics: is that correct?
care to be more precise about that please?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dc_dux

JEQ....thats what I was afraid of.

If it were to be ratified tomorrow, we would have a House of 6,000 members.

I think you will need to be far more flexible (maybe 1 per 500,000)to generate wide spread support (and my support)....or it aint gonna happen. But thats just my opinion

But as an aside, I can see some state legislators voting for your amendment for self-serving reasons....particularly those in (most) states with part-time legislatures and very low pay......career advancement!

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Yakk

Huh? Are the people in Utah, Nevada or Alaska individually more important than the people in Manhattan?

Just because you can paint them with a brush of "being from Manhattan", doesn't mean that they each aren't individually as important as each Alaskan.

With 1 rep per 50,000, each demographic sub-region of Manhattan would have it's own say. As would each 50,000 people in Alaska.

...

A benefit of a 6000 person house is that they could actually have time to read some of their bills that they pass. (Not all of them -- but some of them)

You could even have a system whereby you need to be sponsored by, say, 10 or 20 congresscritters to be allowed on the floor of the house, and then you'd vote withe power of everyone who sponsored you. A simple change that keeps the population of the house fixed, while increasing the size of congress. (This should be well within the power of congress itself to determine).

Smaller sized districts also generates a "pseudo-rep-by-pop" effect, better than huge districts. If you can lobby a mere 30,000 people to agree with you you can get a single vote in the house.

Those same single-issue people do have the power to decide policy issues.

On the other hand, I don't agree with JEQuidam. Such a change at this point would be disasterous, simply due to the raw magnitude of the change.

PS: It is considered good form here to quote external links "in-line", and to cite external links to a limited extent that is required by the discussion.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

Cynthetiq

No that wasn't what I was trying to state. What I was trying to state was that the disparity grows larger as the states with more populations have "more" representatives to vote with.

I decided to actually look and see which states would "gain" from such an increase

EDIT: I miscalculated and used 60,000 as the disctrict size. I am recalculated it.

My local community board affects my life much more than any other government body. They directly affect my quality of life. After that is the State representation. I'm fortunate to live in an area protected by Sheldon Silver the Speaker of the NYS Assembly. (If it weren't for him we'd have new Westside Jets Stadium and congestion pricing in Manhattan.) I don't see the same effects from the Federal government.

Okay, here it is with 50,000 as suggested by TTO bringing the total representatives to 6,114.

With 50,000 as the number you have 9 states that if voting as a bloc will create a majority. It didn't change much either from the current system. Those same 9 can still vote as blocs and still dictate what the other 41 states will live with. While I don't know of the votes actually being solid unanimous votes, I will look to see just how often something like this does happen.



While I may be "better" represented, I don't think that my voice gets better heard when 9 states can dictate what the other 41 have to live with.

There is also some idea placed here that you currently aren't represented by you representative. Have you tried contacting them? Have they been too busy to meet or speak with you?

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JEQuidam

Yakk, I greatly appreciate all of your comments.

I have actually never discussed the transition. I believe that this will be implemented over two or three decades. For example, the 2020 apportionment would increase the size of the House to 3,000; then to 6,000 in 2030; and then achieve 1:50,000 by 2040.

OK, that's hypothetical, but I agree that the transition to a truly representative House should not be implemented too rapidly. The important thing is that this be implemented, without equivocation, according to a firm schedule which is not subject to subsequent political shenanigans.

Cynthetiq, States voting as a block??? That is a phoney argument. It's extremely unlikely that all the Representatives within any single state will ever vote as a block, let alone across a "block" of states. The representaties will be urban, rural, industrial, conservative, liberal, libertarian, green, etc., etc.,

__________________
It was supposed to be our House.

Cynthetiq

I didn't say it was a legitimate argument. It is the reasoning from what I recall that there is the Senate since that's the very rationale that it was designed to prohibit.

But I still don't see there being much difference especially with your statements of "urban, rural, industrial, conservative, liberal, libertarian, green, etc., etc." that the current 435 don't represent adequately.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JEQuidam

No.

You asked me to describe my political views. My reply was small r republican (as a opposed to a Republican). My point is that I ardently support our republican form of government.

Regarding "politics", I was only making a distinction between politicians and representatives. I am using "politician" in the pejorative sense (which is how the term is most commonly used these days). Or, to be more specific, see definition #2 from dictionary.com: "a seeker or holder of public office, who is more concerned about winning favor or retaining power than about maintaining principles."

I have no doubt that we can replace 435 politicians with 6,000 representatives.

__________________
It was supposed to be our House.

Cynthetiq

You also don't believe that within the 20 years of transition those same representatives, would not turn into politicians????

It is one of the problems that I see is that our current state is that we have professional politicians, people who have been basically politicians all their entire careers.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JEQuidam

Really? OK.

How many Greens do we have in Congress?

How many asians, blacks and women? Is it the same percentages as can be found in the population?

How many devout Christians? How many Jews? How many atheists?

How many farmers?

How many professors?

How many are from the middle class?

...and so forth.

Those are rhetorical questions and anyone reading them understands my point. The federal House is a country club that is largely controlled by elites and special interests. Instead, it should look much more like the citizenry.

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It was supposed to be our House.

Cynthetiq

I do understand your point, but I don't agree that it will add value.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JEQuidam

Cynthetiq, you need to think about how differently things would be with districts of 50,000. The Representatives would no longer be assured of 90%++ reelection rates. High reelection rates are due to the fact that it costs tens of millions of dollars for a challenger to try to unseat an incumbent in a super-sized district.

OK. so you are opposed to smaller congressional districts. And it is fine with you that they grow to 1,300,000 people by 2100. Maybe most people will agree with you.

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It was supposed to be our House.

ASU2003

Would all these congress men & women get the same benefits and salary as curren members?

I would go for this is we had proportional voting. If the Libertarians got 5% of the vote, they get 5% of the representatives from that state. You would also have to vote for specific people though within each party.

Cynthetiq

No I'm not opposed to smaller congressional districts. I just don't see the added value that you're envisioning. I don't see the same value you do based on what I've read of your website I am not drawing those same conclusions.

I don't disagree with your rehortical questions, but quite honestly, I don't see value in some gangsta kickin' it old school from South Bronx adding value to the representation, nor do I see someone who is elected because he's the head Hassidic of the neighborhood in Brooklyn. I don't see how it adds value at all to be represented by race or religion since those aren't really any bearing to political ideologies when it comes to voting.

In fact, I believe that when I call my representative or senator they are listening to me and my point of view for that few minutes. They shouldn't be voting their own agendas, meaning that Christians voting for anti-abortion legislation, but voting in a manner a majority of their constiuents want them to vote.

Your average person IMO doesn't give a crap about their representatives for all intrinsic purposes. As stated before, they can't name them now, why do you think that they would be able to name them if they were only limited to a smaller district?

You can't force people to care any more than they are already willing to do so.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JEQuidam

I believe that having a lot more diversity in the federal House would be a good thing. You don't. That's where we disagree.

If a representative is elected who is disruptive to the process, he/she will be censored out of the House, as has been done for over two centuries (but not so much during the modern country club era of the House).

HOWEVER, your one statement quoted above is somewhat contradictory. If you do NOT see any value to reducing the size of the congressional districts, then you appear to be opposed to it. Or, at least, you clearly are not in favor of it.

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It was supposed to be our House.

Cynthetiq

I am undecided. I don't see any compelling evidence you've presented on your website to push me in the direction of it.

ratbastid got close to showing that it's compelling, but again, I don't see it being a slam dunk in the same way that you do.

I am not opposed to it, nor am I for it. You've made the posit, and I'm looking for compelling evidence to change it from the current standard.

In a strictly numbers game, statisitical samples aren't too far off the mark. Yes, there is a margin for error which is dually noted, but for the most part statistical sampling is an acceptable method of finding a balance.

So far, you're biggest compelling and most cited arguments are where you representative of TTO feel it should be with a few citations to back up the historical perspective, but little to nothing to back up the current ideological changes you are touting.

In the 4 years your site has been around it hasn't seen any outside contributors of grad students, political pundits, something, anything, anyone else but your own constructs?

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

echo5delta

Drug addicts? GED holders? Criminal sexual devia---

Wait, don't answer that last one.

How many were homeschooled? How many have children that are serving in the US military? How many were raised by single parents?

Some small amount of parity with the diversity of the US population in many - but not all - respects, would be added just statistically by upping the size of the House. But based on the items I just mentioned (and a few I quoted), you'll never see a truly Representative Congress in our lifetimes.

And at the end of the day I doubt "the country club" would change much. Perhaps without a college degree and making <$75k per year as head of household with three kids, you could get elected. In, say, North Dakota. In Manhattan, not so much. It's still going to go right back to who has privilege and advantage, and who doesn't.

The faces and backgrounds might shift slightly, but other serious reforms - not just term limitations - would have to take place in conjunction with or prior to scaling back to 50k per district. Something completely off-the-wall batshit crazy like, I dunno, very low spending caps on any election campaign.

But really, here's my $64,000 question:

How would the resizing districts and realigning the house address the issue of roughly 10 to 12 million undocumented/illegal alien residents of the US?


I'll fully concede that I'm not the sharpest bulb in the shed when discussing politics; I also haven't (yet) read up at TTO.org. So if this was addressed there, bear with me.

__________________
"Peace" is when nobody's shooting. A "Just Peace" is when we get what we want. - Bill Mauldin

Yakk

Huh? I mean, if you have representation by population in a house, a block consisting of the majority of the population can get a majority in that house.

Adding more members has the advantage that it makes accurate representation by population a bit easier, due to quantization problems with unpopulated states.

As it stands, citizens in some states are first class, while citizens of other states aren't, simply because they have far more power to elect federal representatives -- even in the house, which is supposed to be "representation by population" based.

Sure. But now you have just labeled half the population of the nation and implied that "sure, they are a majority, but they don't deserve to be a majority!"

I'm well aware that there is an evil belief that citizens who can claim a more unique label should have more power per person. I'm sorry -- I consider the citizens of the Bronx to be just as important as the citizens of Wyoming, and the citizen in the Bronx's vote should matter just as much.

Sure, you can label the citizens of the Bronx, of LA, of Florida using fewer labels, and then pull out a big pile of labels to label all of the low-population states, and claim there is unfairness -- but the proper response to that is "California should split into 20 states". What makes California not worthy of being 20 different states, other than an accident of history?

And I don't think that a system that grants people who happen to live in low-population states 3 to 5 times as much say as people who happen to live in high-population states in the representation by population house.

Those 9 states? Don't they have more human beings in them than the other 41 states combined? So, why the hell shouldn't they have a majority in the representation by population assembly?

The only alternative is that you believe that the representation by population assembly should treat people from more populated states as second class citizens.

So are you serious, or just blowing smoke?

Because neither congress nor the senate can pass a law that binds a future congress or senate. The only way to have a rule that cannot be overruled by the assembly is via constitutional amendment.

And honestly, the cost of a constitutional amendment are pretty damn high.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

JEQuidam

Cynthetiq, certainly not as much as I would like. But here is a list of articles and reports (NOT from me):
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Why_435.htm
(See the list at the bottom of the page.)

echo5delta, you bring up a serious problem, but one that should probably be the subject of a different thread. We should absolutely know who enters our country and where they are.

I do believe that the vast majority of Americans, of all political stripes, want to stop undocumented immigration. I believe that a much larger House would far better reflect the will of the people.

If, for example, the majority of Americans wanted significant tax reform (e.g., a flat tax or the "fair tax"), then it would happen if the House were large enough to reflect the popular will. As it stands now, those types of changes will never happen.

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It was supposed to be our House.

Cynthetiq

Yakk, no I don't think that anyone is less than the other, which is what I'm trying to explalin. I may not be explaining it well, and I'm not extremely versed in our system other than the indoctrinations of schooling way back whenever I don't recall any longer.

Again, the population is reflected representatives 435 or 6,000, and it is balanced by the senate which is 2 per state.

So because there is the balance and the reflection of number 435, I cannot see a huge jump in value by adding another 5,000 people into the mix.

If the a majority of 300M Americans right now don't care so much as to how the 435 representives are getting things done how are the 600M going to care about 6,000 representatives?

If people aren't interested in talking to their representatives and senators now, what makes that going to happen more if there are smaller districts and more representatives?

It makes sense in a goods and services model wherein the closer you can deliver the goods and services you'll saturate more and gain more marketshare, but how does that translate to people being more interested?

Voter turnouts are abysmally low. There are many instances where in districts for local elections are nonraces because no one wishes to participate in the process.

JEQ you state that "they'll change..." you don't have any statistics to show that they've declined because the population increased or anything but just voter apathy.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JEQuidam

Yakk, yes, this would require a Constitutional Amendment.

My belief is that the cost of NOT returning the federal House to the people (through smaller congressional districts) is far greater than the cost of securing the amendment.

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It was supposed to be our House.

Cynthetiq

thanks i'll try to read them throughout today.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JEQuidam

Cynthetiq, I believe you do not understand the problem that is out there. The people who are interested in "talking to their representatives" usually are not able to. Others have given up.

Moreover, if the districts were considerably smaller the overall dynamics would certainly change. We could debate what that change would be. In my opinion, one of the biggest changes is that many more citizens would get involved. If I were the Rep of a district of 50,000, you can be certain that I would be out talking to the people, explaining legislation, issues, etc. I believe that most Representatives would then be doing that. In a district of 700,000++, it is simply NOT possible to do that even if you wanted to.

I don't know to which of my statements you refer.

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It was supposed to be our House.

Yakk

This has to do with social interaction.

A human being cannot interact socially with 1 million people, not even remotely.
50,000 people? That's ~12,000 households. If the congresscritter spent 2 nights a week meeting a 5 households at a time at a sit-down dinner, in a mere 4 years that congresscritter could have met every single human that they represent. And broken bread with them.

50,000 people is a lot of people, but it isn't completely beyond the scale of social interaction. The congresscritter can afford to have a human relationship with the constituents.

At half a million to a million? There isn't a hope. The congresscritter has no choice but to deal with the people they represent as a statistical glob, and not as human beings.

The only reason any senator or congresscritter should spend time with someone is for image purposes. In any interaction you have with them, they have no reason to be honest, or to even take your opinions into account beyond the most superficial level. Their job is to represent 500,000 to 1 million people -- and spending time with any one of them is a fundamentally poor way to do it. Interaction with individual humans must be a photo op, not a way to understand what is going on.

This is the mathematics of fame. A Hollywood star cannot afford to be friends with everyone who wants to be friends with them, because there just isn't enough time to do it mathematically. So that Hollywood star must withdraw from casual friendship with people who want to be friends with them. That means that trying to become friends with a hollywood star is pointless -- and attempting to engage your senator in a discussion about political issues you care about, as a typical citizen, is equally pointless.


Yes, that might be because your ballots cover everything from dog catcher on up. Directly electing non-legislative and non-executive positions always seemed to be strange to me.

/shrug, that seems (to me) to be an example of not knowing how high the cost is, or overestimating the benefit.

If you want to demonstrate the benefit, I'd advise doing it on a smaller scale than "the entire USA". One of the benefits of the USA's state design is that you can experiment with such changes at the state level, and see if they work well.

Instead of changing the rules at the Federal level first, do it in an individual state. This isn't the kind of thing where somebody else not doing it makes it not work here.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

JEQuidam

Yakk, the smaller-scale analysis you describe could probably be effectively simulated by comparing among the states. For example, comparing New Hampshire, with its very small state districts, to California with its mega-districts. Of course, that analysis would have to adjust for numerous local variables, but it could possibly be very informative.

TTO (Thirty-Thousand.org) is not going to undertake such an analysis, but perhaps someone else in the political studies field might.

BTW, there are several states with super-sized state legislative districts. California is the most obvious example. Someone in California is leading an effort to increase the size of its legislature; story:
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=327153

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It was supposed to be our House.