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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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No you don't, because the House still favors small rural states after we froze the number.
If the House was proportional there'd be like 150 more representatives.
You take the population the smallest state because everyone gets at least 1, Wyoming at 580k, divide by population, 335 million.
And you get 578 Representatives.
Currently we have 435.
Leading to someone in Wyoming having like 9 times the House representation compared to a person in Cali if I'm remembering that right.
That is only partially accurate. Mathematically, the ideal congressional district will have 761,169 people.
States smaller than x=761,169 are overrepresented. Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska are the only states that meet this criteria. Wyoming has 584,057 people for its at-large district. Wyoming residents have about 1.3 times the house representation as a person in California.
You also need to consider that Single-district states between 761,170 and 1,522,338 (2x) are underrepresented. They have more than enough people for a single district, but not quite enough people to warrant a second district. These are North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware. South Dakota has 919,318 people. A South Dakota resident has 0.83 the representation in the house that a California resident has.
Similarly, 2-district states smaller than 1,522,338 are are overrepresented. These are Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, and Rhode Island.
2-district states larger than 1,522,338 are underrepresented. These are Idaho and West Virginia.
The way the math works out, the larger the state, the less the deviation between actual and optimal representation. Interestingly, California is slightly overrepresented relative to the ideal district size.
Trying to fix our original system of government and update it for modern day iis like trying to turn a race horse into a Formula 1 racecar...
If you spend enough money and take enough time you could conceivably say you did it.
But why the fuck wouldn't you just switch to a racecar when the racehorse couldn't run anymore?
Why put the horse thru all that when you're going to have to spend all that time with a freak combination as your only mode of transportation?
In this analogy it's not just weeks or months, we're talking decades and generations. Arguably centuries.
Hell, the first time universal healthcare was part of a presidential platform was Teddy Roosevelt literally a century ago.
We were born in the time of the geriatric racehorse pulling the racecar like a cart, and we need to decide if we're gonna keep going for slow change, or just get it over with.
Cuz damn near anything we could be doing right now would give us better results. Especially since our parents are in the driver's seat of the racecar since they can't walk on their own and keep slamming the brakes because they have dementia and think it's funny.
Replying here again to take the discussion a different direction... What if instead of each representative casting a single vote, they instead acted as a proxy, and cast one vote for each member of the district they represent? The Wyoming representative at large would cast 584,057 votes on every issue in the house. The Delaware representative would cast 989,948 votes. Vermont, 643,077 votes in the house.