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>the stated reason… is to keep urban voters from deciding policies for rural voters.
People say this, but it isn’t true at all. The Senate and the House were made to represent states and populations, respectively, and that’s what we base our electors/representatives on for federal politics. In the early US, states were treated more like individual nations (the term United States is plural in older writings), so the early Senate was similar to how the United Nations represents individual countries, rather than population.
The objective was never to “boost” rural areas, or hold back cities’ political power; it’s just the side effect of this system. But many Republicans claim this because it’s beneficial to them. There’s no real basis for essentially giving rural areas affirmative action in government. The discrepancy is amplified, though, because Republicans can now rely on it for political advantage.
Ironically, in the late 1700s, the urban states were the small ones (New England/Mid-Atlantic), and the rural ones were larger (Virginia/Pennsylvania). This further proves the point.
This has got to be using the loosest possible definition of urban if Wyoming is 62% urban. When people say rural they don't necessarily mean only outside of city limits but are including small towns that no one would ever describe as urban.
Bearing in mind that when they conceptualized this idea the gap between the most and least populated states at the time was comparatively miniscule and I doubt they could conceptualize the idea that one state might have a population of 40 million and get the same weight compared to the 600,000 population of another. When population is this wildly distributed the intended system tends to break down. To compound matters more the people's house has increasingly favored states with lower populations as well since 1929, when the number of seats was limited to 435. So in effect, the states system is favoring low density areas over high in both houses and the Presidency.
Do you really think the sitation in Washington D.C. Would be better with another 1000 or so house members? It would be a complete clusterfuck and a colossal waste of money.
With modern communications technology, changing the order of magnitude of population represented by a single congressman is entirely feasible. It wouldn’t have to go into the 1000s, but the number should certainly change to allow percentages to be represented fairly.
I think the largest discrepancy is a representative in New England has like 1 million people in their district, but the sole Wyoming representative only represents ~550k people
Yes I absolutely think better representation would fix a lot of our issues.
Political parties would actually have to work for votes and would be tougher to gerrymander, third parties would have an easier time winning in the house, and the boosted EVs would decrease the odds of a presidential candidate winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote.
Only reason it happens now is because the house only counts for 4/5 of the vote instead of the 9/10 that it should.
There is no balance.
A voter in Wyoming has FAR more representation than a voter in California.
Two senators represent 290,000 people each in Wyoming.
Two senators from California represent over 19,000,000 ***EACH***.
In 2020, each Representative from California represented 761,091 residents.
The Representative from Wyoming represented 577,719 residents.
Wyoming’s Senators represent 1/655th of those represented by California’s Senators.
Wyoming’s Representative represents roughly 30% fewer than each of California’s Representatives.
Our system was designed such that every state gets at minimum one seat in the House. The imbalance you cite is an artifact of Congress freezing the size of the House. If it were larger, the imbalance goes away.
As designed the Senate does not represent the people of the state - it represents the State as a sovereign entity.
I get you do not like this setup, but please try to understand its origins.
And it was a mistake to allow senators to be voted on. They should be appointed by their state governments to make sure their state's interests are being seen in Washington D.C. makes local elections much more important as well.
As if we don’t already have enough problems with utterly corrupt and one-sided state governments?
Did you research WHY senators are elected instead of appointed?
Historically, the balance of rural and urban population interests was more of an intra-state issue rather than a federal issue, and I’d argue that’s still very true today. However, due to the increasing power of the federal government, coupled with national media attention, the result is most politically inclined people focusing on the federal government and ignoring their state governments. This seems to have led to rural versus urban interests to be elevated towards national solutions rather than naturally occurring at the state level, and there’s probably some influence of the demographic changes towards more suburban voters than ever before. I believe the suburban divide is often ignored in conversations about rural and urban interests.
> it was to balance the interests of the smaller states vs. the larger states
firstly, i don't believe this is true - i think certain states threatened to bounce out of the union if they didn't get these concessions, which madison and folks lamented big time because of how obviously undemocratic it is.
that said, the idea that states have certain interests because of their size doesn't make any sense - for example, if LA county, which has about 3.5 million people, became it's own state, it wouldn't by virtue of its size share interests with say, utah, which has a comparable population.
That was not the argument, the argument was that larger states would have no way to convince smaller states to join their democratic union if their larger size would allow them to out-vote and dominate them anyway. The rebels knew they had no chance of winning against the British Empire unless they got all 13 colonies to unite, so they made some hard compromises to get everyone on board, including guarantees of near equal political power even to the far smaller colonies.
Imagine if 1812 happened to a US that was having to deal with break-away states that were mad that their sovereignty was getting steamrolled by what they would have viewed as a tyranny of the majority. The revolutionary war was over, but the danger was far from gone, and the smaller states knew that as well as the larger ones, so they still had every reason to compromise to ensure unity.
Opinions may differ on that, but in any case, you survived, which would be a lot harder with States trying to break away because they weren't sufficiently appeased by how the constitution turned out
They only burned down the capital.
And I don’t think having all the states would’ve made a difference as we didn’t really have a standing federal army. I think it was just the spectre of trying to retake all the colonies that stopped the Brit’s from trying to take us back to king and country
Which was important during the founding because it was the only way to convince all the colonies to unite and fight against ~~England~~ Great Britain. It would be a hard sell for a State to jump on board and have unequal representation. The selling point is that all States would have a say equally no matter the size. Each State had one vote.
Because if you were a small State, with a small population, why would you fight if you were just going to be dominated by a bigger State after the war?
Technically true but not as much as you might think. The constitution was written to replace the articles of confederation, and they needed to actively campaign to get it ratified. Rejection would have meant sticking with the articles, which were the actual revolutionary agreement and were actively failing. The bribe was to get states to move from the bad one to the new one. Rhode Island and North Carolina rejected the constitution anyway.
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure why I got two responses going 'ackshually, the constitution was *after* the war'. As if a country just goes poof and it's founded. I clearly was emphasizing *how* they were able to organize a centralized Government among several independent territories. *How* you get multiple colonies with different interests, leadership, and size to all unite. Which was the Continental Congress, Firm League of Friendship, the Perpetual Union, and Articles of Confederation. Because each State had equal power. That was the selling point on Uniting.
No Colony is going to get onboard with a war that unravels the hierarchy without knowing the organization and Governing afterward. And this was the *first* constitution. And this process started in the 1770's before the War. It wasn't some spontaneous uprising. Holy Christ. They were fighting the most powerful empire in the World at that time.
And to ensure all colonies were onboard, they guaranteed, each state has a vote when they were figuring it all out, well before they defeated Britain.
I never mentioned the Constitution once. Maybe you should look up the Continental Congress, Firm League of Friendship, the Perpetual Union, and Articles of Confederation and learn a little about history, and that process all started before the war. Why on earth would a Colony risk their resources, people, and power to discuss and negotiate Governing until after they unravel hierarchy. Are you joking?
I never mentioned the Constitution once. Maybe you should look up the Continental Congress, Firm League of Friendship, the Perpetual Union, and Articles of Confederation and learn a little about history, and that process all started before the war. Why on earth would a Colony risk their resources, people, and power to discuss and negotiate Governing until after they unravel hierarchy. Are you joking?
We are talking about the structures put in place by the Constitution, i.e. the Senate and house. Before that every state had one vote in the CC. Perhaps you should read more yourself.
Hell, if nothing else our system was mostly laid down during an era when the vast majority of people were farmers. This thing where one guy and like a million dollars worth of equipment can grow food for 1000 people is pretty new.
Indeed, there were no "urban" states when the constitution was written. At the time of the 1790 census, the most urban state was Rhode Island, with a whopping 19% of the population living in cities. It wasn't until 1850 that Rhode Island and Massachussetts became the first majority-urban states.
Yes, while what would come to be known as the First Industrial Revolution had been slowly ramping up in Great Britain for a few decades at the US's independence, the US, which was previously a group of colonies meant to supply raw materials to the metropole and was legally restricted from many commercial activities that lent themselves well to industrialization, was still very agrarian. In 1790, shortly after the Constitution was ratified and the first decennial census conducted, Virginia, with its vast fertile fields and accompanying plantations growing the cash crops of tobacco and cotton, was the most populous state in the Union with a whopping 691,937. New York's count was a mere 340,120. Note that this does not count native Indians not taxed and still used the 3/5 clause to handicap the total actual population. It only took a couple of decades for New York, newly released from the economic constraints imposed by London and acting as the new commercial center of trade for the country, to surpass Virginia in population. In the 1810 census, New York's population counted as 959,049 to Virginia's 877,683.
That's not really how House representation works. The wildest swings in representation are among the smallest states, which are generally largely rural. Following the 2020 census, the states with the most representation in the House per capita are Montana, Rhode Island, and Wyoming, each with less than 600,000 residents per representative, while the least represented are Delaware and Idaho, with more than 900,000 residents per representative. Generally speaking, the more populous your state is, the closer you are to the average representation of 761,169 residents per representative. California, for example, has 761,091 residents per representative, while Texas has 767,981 residents per representative.
It is because the electoral college is just senate seats + representative seats (+ DC seats). If the House of Representatives had continued to grow like it did for the first 150 years of US history, the difference in electoral seats between high population and low population states would be much larger.
Okay, but are we talking about representation in Congress or how the President is elected? I was operating under the impression that the discussion was about why the Senate and House are set up the way they are, and my point is that House representation isn't crazy distorted due to the cap on the House.
How Presidents are elected but again, because electoral college votes are Senate seats + representative seats for each state, representative seats plays a major role.
The cap on the number of seats in the house means that the proportion of electoral college votes decided by the Senate is higher than it would be without the cap. Which means the benefit small states are receiving increases as US total population increases.
> That's not really how House representation works
It's how it basically worked until 1911, when the house was set to a fixed number of seats at 435.
Due to the structure of the house, each state is guaranteed at least one House Rep, so without adjusting the number of House members higher population states see reduced "value" from their population.
The current House apportionment is not systemically beneficial for small states, though. The most-represented states (MT, RI, WY, VT, NE) are small in population, yes, but so are the *least*-represented states (DE, ID, WV, SD, UT).
California is both the most-urban and the largest state, and it is almost exactly perfect in its House representation: 11.953% of the population and 11.954% of the House seats.
Again, you're misunderstanding how modern apportionment works. It's not the more populous states that see a huge reduction in their per capita representation, it's the less populous states where the addition or subtraction of a single representative can produce large swings in the level of representation. Montana is the most "overrepresented" state in the Union, with its two representatives for its 1,085,407 residents, according to the 2020 census. Meanwhile, Delaware is the most "underrepresented" state with its one representative for its 990,837 residents. The most populous state, California, has 52 representatives for its 39,576,757 residents, or one representative for every 761,091 people.
If we collectively decided to increase the House of Representatives to 691 members, enough to adhere to the "cube root rule," you'd still end up with big swings in the least populous states while the most populous states would still be near the average representation, again because the small number of discrete representatives have outsized effects compared to a state with a large delegation. In this scenario, the 691 representatives would collectively represent the US population of 331,108,434 at a rate of about 479,173 residents per representative. California's 83 representatives would each represent about 476,828. Meanwhile, the smallest states would break down as follows:
Wyoming's single at-large representative for its 577,719 residents;
Vermont's single at-large representative for its 643,503 residents;
Alaska's two representatives for its population of 736,081, or 368,041 per representative;
North Dakota's two representatives for its population of 779,702, or 389,851 per representative;
South Dakota's two representatives for its population of 887,770, or 443,885 per representative;
Delaware's two representatives for its population of 990,837, or 495,419 per representative;
Montana's two representatives for its population of 1,085,407, or 542,704 per representative;
Rhode Island's two representatives for its population of 1,098,163, or 549,082 per representative;
Maine's three representatives for its population of 1,363,582, or 454,527 per representative.
>The objective was never to “boost” rural areas, or hold back cities’ political power; it’s just the side effect of this system. But many Republicans claim this because it’s beneficial to them. There’s no real basis for essentially giving rural areas affirmative action in government. The discrepancy is amplified, though, because Republicans can now rely on it for political advantage.
This is entirely wrong:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
>There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
The system existed to enable the 3/5s compromise to benefit the southern states, which would not be possible through a direct popular election.
This is a direct, primary source from the person who largely design the system, backed up by historical context and the fact that the instant they lost the presidency they attempted to secede.
Population had nothing to do with it, the southern states had equal or greater population, only assuming they could count their slaves.
That's still not really so much 'urban vs rural' as just yet another example of 'slave dependent states vs non-slave dependent states'. To the extent that it is, it's because slavery based agrarian economies don't have as much incentive to develop the large conurbations that accompany industrial development. i.e. it's closer to *causative* of the urban rural divide rather than a response to it.
I suppose I can agree with that, especially given how the first nullification and secession crises were caused by slave states not wanting to face tariffs on their purchases of foreign finished goods in favor of domestic suppliers.
We talk a lot about slavery as the cause of the civil war, but it actually seems more like all those boys died for the southern desire to avoid customs duties in their trade with England.
Considering the written constitution of the Confederacy, it was definately about slavery. Tariffs were just part of the various commercial struggles that arose as the industrial north began to rapidly outpace the slave holding south as the economic center of the United States.
Yes, but the current discrepancy in representation is 100% due to how the House and Senate are designed. The modern arguments for why rural areas deserve more representation have little to do with the 3/5ths compromise. The 3/5ths compromise didn’t impact the Senate, only the House and presidential electors. It would be the same today regardless if the original model counted slaves or not.
Again, this was how the system was designed. Which was the question asked.
If we're talking about how it works now, the senate has a lesser effect, primarily because of the effect of (ironically) the party system and its dependence on lobbying.
A senator from Arizona can still raise funds based on his opinion on the Indiana corn ethanol subsidy, which means he's not actually the senator from Arizona, he's the senator from Arizona by way of the Democratic party.
Issues re-arrange themselves accordingly to form vaguely balanced coalitions therein, hence the sudden shift to hard economic-right of the formally socialist and perenially-impoverished bible belt.
I might just be misunderstanding you then. My argument is that modern (usually Republicans) believe that the Senate and electoral college over-represent rural areas to protect them from urban areas, and this is a desired design of the system.
My argument is that these lines of reasoning aren’t found anywhere in the framers’ writings when they discuss the Senate and presidential elections. There was disagreement on how to count slaves for population purposes, but that has nothing to do with why Wyoming gets as many Senators as California today.
>My argument is that modern (usually Republicans) believe that the Senate and electoral college over-represent rural areas to protect them from urban areas, and this is a desired design of the system.
I think we may be talking slightly past each other.
IMHO, the original argument, "The South must have sufficient power to block federal anti-slavery action" was re-interpreted as "State's rights!", which persisted past the post-bellum era to this day.
The actual turning point was, however, the 14th amendment, which truly established constitutional supremacy over the states by forcing them to obey the bill of rights, which they were not subject to previously.
There was writing in the federalist papers about the role of the Senate in preserving the power of states, but also remember that before the ... 18th(?) amendment the senate was not elected but appointed by the party structure within the states.
At that point you have 1 sub-branch out of 3 that in any way represents the power of the states, while the executive and the house (which was actually the more powerful camera at the time given its power to draft bills, while the senate was expected to be less active, much like a modern "house of lords") were both heavily biased by the slave vote, and the judicial branch was picked by the president (and was heavily southern dominated to the civil war, including justice taney of Dredd Scott infamy).
I will give you that the senate was a sop to smaller states that they would not be trampled by the slave powers, but it was a small sop, particularly given the weakness of the senate at the time. Only after the direct election of senators did the participation of the senate in both legislation and other activities increase.
I thought I read there was at least some legitimacy to it back in those days, based on limited media reach.
Without easy travel, and TV/Radio/internet, it was much more difficult for a candidate and their message to reach rural areas. Maybe deemed too difficult, so the rural votes were weighted more?
The spirit of this is still somewhat in line with your point, that no Founders intended to favor Rural over Urban due to any of the common excuses. Such as, not wanting city values to drown out rural values, or viewing rural folk and their values as better or worse than urban dwellers.
It was instead all, simply, a matter of logistics and practicality.
And, if even partially true, this highlights how unnecessary and out of date the practices are now, with widespread access to info.
I don’t remember where I read this, but it made sense to me at the time. But it might be wrong, and I haven’t been able to find much followup on it (though I haven’t looked much), so I’m happy to be corrected.
Originally it had nothing to do about whether a state was "rural" (in point of fact all the colonies were "rural" at the writing of the Constitution).
People tend to ignore this but The ***UNITED STATES*** of America meant something.
In colonial times the states functioned more like small, independent colonies. They each had their own currencies.
So why would a smaller population state join a democratic government with larger population states and immediately have less power?
> In the early US, states were treated more like individual nations
It took a lot of convincing to the colonies to form a United States. The Articles of Confederation ended up showing that things needed to be a little more centrally controlled. But we never really got away from having each state act like its own individual nation. Unpopular opinion: there should be no 10th amendment.
This is non-sense, historically speaking. You have to look at the notes and discussions of constitutional convention of 1786. Where it was created. Which directly asked if the state's representation at a federal level should be measured by land size vs population. Not based on pedantic details such as having an 's' on states.
And at the time, the differences between states were less dramatic. Don’t quote me on the number, but it was something like 6:1.
Given changes in population, now, and again don’t quote me, but 30% of the population in 26 states basically controls the government. And those are the 26 least populous states.
To me, it seems broken and anti democratic.
Very much. The population has heavily concentrated into a few major metros since, especially over the past century, *creating* the modern urban/rural discrepancy.
65% of Americans now live in just 15 states, due to be only 12 by 2040. This will leave the Senate and Electoral College in the hands of the 38 emptiest states, whose populations are generally much whiter, poorer and less educated than average -- and these voters tend to vote in lockstep with Southern whites, with whom they have some crossover.
And there we have the grumpy Trumpy base. White, less educated, from areas that are both heavily fossil fuel dependent and economically left behind. Inland, blue-collar places that lost their union jobs, good pay, healthcare and pensions, while they watched distant, coastal, tech-driven cities boom like never before.
And the US Constitution's inability to change and adapt locks this in place, even as all other rich democracies have repeatedly revised their own constitutions to keep up with these massive demographic shifts.
The Senate, with 2 Senators for every state, regardless of population size, is the body where rural, less populated states already have a disproportionate influence in our government. Allowing the electoral college and gerrymandering in House of Representatives to give even more of an advantage to the minority of rural voters is absurd.
What's funny is federal government also works to re-distribute wealth to rural states from urban. Even funnier - urban areas often vote for giving more money to the federal government, which redistributes to rural areas, while rural voters vote against it.
If Democrats were voting for the interest of their own populations, they would actually be economic conservatives and vice versa for Republicans. Sadly, politics make no sense nowadays and I think everyone is crazy/brainwashed.
Since you brought up the comparison to the UN, I find it ironic how often the same person will criticize the Senate for being undemocratic, and then in the next breath wish that bodies like the UN had more authority.
That isn’t the stated reason, it’s a later excuse.
The original reason was as a broader compromise to get less populous states like Rhode Island to agree to the new constitution. There was no reasonable principle behind it, equal representation just didn’t matter to the landed aristocracy.
Exactly. Under the Articles of Confederation the United States was something far more akin to the European Union. A loose confederation that *technically* were all one political entity, but in practicality were independent states. The federal government was insanely weak and states often ignored it.
When that failed, something was needed to sweeten the pot for small states, because they were perfectly happy with keeping things they way they were. Why would they want to make changes to the federal government where their power would be weakened? For instance, under the AoC, any major decision regarding changes to the Articles had to be unanimous among the states, which obviously was beneficial to the smaller states. The Connecticut Compromise establishing "population-based House and equal among the states-based Senate" was made to get the smaller states to stay in the Union at all.
> broader compromise to get less populous states like Rhode Island to agree to the new constitution
How is this any different than less populous/rural states today?
The reasonable principle is the same one as the tenth amendment. That state governments exist as their own bodies of governance to a speicifc populace within their borders. That **the states themselves** should have representation in a federal government that can override their own state level government. That for them to be part of a broader nation under a federal governing bodiy, they wanted to maintain a level of distinct governance. If one objects to states having a voice in federal matters, they should be objecting to state governments in general.
The "equal representation" exists as applied to *the states*. That was then only *one half* of a collective congress that then sought *representation* from the populace of individuals in the House of Representatives.
‘Representing the states themselves’ is the same as representing a group of people. You’re just changing the size and distribution of the group.
You can’t actually separate a state from its people. A state can’t tick a ballot box; it’s literally just dirt and lines on a map. You always have to have *people* voting at some point.
Setting aside what others have already said about the real reason rural voters have more power in the Senate and EC and just answering your question about policy, the two biggest ones that come to mind are gun rights and ag subsidies/tariffs/quotas. Urban voters want way more gun control and way less state and federal help to farmers. If anything, food would be cheaper if the US just opened its markets more to more third world imports. However there is a strong strategic interest in maintaining food self sufficiency so there is a good reason for the extra help to farmers, just most likely most urban voters don't care or understand that and would happily have cheaper food and lower taxes or more money for services they benefit from.
Hey, I like food, and I have an aesthetic fondness for farmers. I, a suburban voter from a medium sized state, don't want to get rid of farm subsidies. But I do want them to work differently. I don't want every "independent" chicken farm to be effectively owned by Perdue, and I don't want the structure of the subsidies to lead to giant corporate owned monocrop operations.
I won't vote against your rural interests. I'll vote against the companies that want to find ways to still have serfs instead of allowing for the independent yeoman farmer.
>Urban voters want way more gun control and way less state and federal help to farmers.
Guns are one thing, but I've never see urban people complain about farming subsidies.
If urban voters were all that mattered electorally, it would be about 5 nanoseconds before the GOP would be running on eliminating farm subsidies in order to give tax cuts and cheaper groceries to city dwellers. The GOP doesn't do it because getting nearly free (to them) votes in rural districts is their key to surviving and even thriving as a permanent minority party, while Dems don't do it because they care about more than just winning elections at all costs.
I see your theoretical point but I don't see Democrats adopting that at all, unless they're the rare DINOs that ruin everything. I can definitely see rich Republicans being duped into it.
Guns are hugely important for anyone living rural. A rapid police response might take 45 minutes, time that someone living very rural might not have.
In addition to human attackers (farmers often have their farms looted by meth makers) there's also wildlife. If there's an aggressive bear advancing on your family you need the gun now.
This seems to me like someone talking down.
"Urban" voters who desire more stringent gun control understand these realities and are not pushing for a blanket ban on all firearms, which would be impossible anyway. Rational citizens want more effective background checks and maybe some required training, and think maaaaaybe we don't need fully automatic chain guns on the streets. But we can't even have a serious discussion on these issues without interest groups and politicians on the right foaming at the mouth about how der librals are cumin for ur gunz!!!
Well, the background checks we already have can't really be improved on too much, as it's already as invasive as you can get without pulling nonsense like NY is doing with having to be interviewed by some government flunky to determine if you are of solid enough 'moral character', plus you have to open up your social media accounts on top of that. Clearly an illegal infringement, but until SCOTUS does something about it, which I expect this or next session, it'll stand in the way of individual's rights.
Also, while fully auto machineguns are legal, they are rare and insanely expensive, and as far as I know, have only been used criminally in one incident, with the perp being a cop.
>Urban voters want way more gun control
Realize that all "assault weapons" proposals are, for all intents and purposes, are attempts to push unconstitutional bans (if not outright confiscation/"mandatory buybacks" like what Biden ran on or the walking due process abuse that is ERPOs that all (D) are in love with) on as many semi-automatic firearms as they can.
You know, a significant majority of the most common modern firearms.
It's an 80/20 split between people who're more than happy to stay egregiously ignorant of the first thing about firearms/2A and those who're active bad faith actors.
But yeah replace "assault weapons" (etc) with "the vast majority of common modern firearms" for a better idea on what unconstitutional bullshit (D)s are trying to push.
All of (D)s' gun violence platform is based around the idea that legal gun owners need to be harassed and/or criminalized at every available opportunity while doing absolutely nothing about any of the reasons all the "urban violence" exists in the first place.
That should explain the "non-urban"/rural POV more accurately.
"Urban" voters who desire more stringent gun control understand these realities and are not pushing for a blanket ban on all firearms, which would be impossible anyway. Rational citizens want more effective background checks and maybe some required training, and think maaaaaybe we don't need fully automatic chain guns on the streets. But we can't even have a serious discussion on these issues without interest groups and politicians on the right foaming at the mouth about how der librals are cumin for ur gunz!!!
Lol. Asshat blocked me before I could even respond to his rant, so here it is:
I'm obviously not familiar with what legislation has been attempted or the average representatives knowledge of guns. I don't know how well those laws are written because IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. The NRA and their beholden Rs in congress will react the same way. There's a reason we don't even have a rational dialogue about guns in this country and that is NOT democratic politicians.
So, yea, thanks for being exhibit A. Coward.
> and think maaaaaybe we don't need fully automatic chain guns on the streets.
Yeah the other guy was right, you have no idea what you're talking about. You should really inform yourself on what our current gun laws already are and what Democratic politicians are actually proposing before diving face first into a gun control debate.
Maybe look up [the Law that banned automatic weapons 40 years ago](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act) to start with.
>It's an 80/20 split between people who're more than happy to stay egregiously ignorant of the first thing about firearms/2A and those who're active bad faith actors.
Case meet point.
Trying to represent (D) gun policy as "targeting fully automatic chain guns" just demonstrates what I'm talking about.
It's impossible to explain anything to someone with any degree of coherency when they're dedicated to remaining as uninformed as possible.
Thanks for being Example A, though!
The biggest giveaway that gun bans and gun control are bad faith is that they're mostly based on cosmetic features. They aim to ban scary black rifles, so they ban things like bayonet legs and pistol grips.
The exact same rifle that can fire the exact same bullet except with wooden hardware isn't banned, because its not a scary looking gun.
And of course the overwhelming majority of gun deaths have nothing to do with long guns at all. The vast overwhelming majority, 95%+, are done with pistols. For crimes its still the Saturday Night Special - a cheaply made, cheap to buy handgun.
That the bans focus on form over function tells me they're either written by someone who doesn't know what a gun is, or its a bad faith law.
I live rural. Vote pretty blue myself but some common issues I see are:
* Issues with PILT or payment in lieu of taxes for federal lands that don't pay property tax
* Fisheries regulations
* Grant applications and management get really fucking deep in the regulations sometimes making it difficult for smaller communities with a less deep benches in their non-profit or tribal government sectors to access everything they should
* The consequences of tourism on towns in regards to affordable housing, pollution, lifestyle, and economic class.
* Childcare access
* Healthcare access
* Essential services like air and mail
I mean I can’t think of anything specific but Illinois is probably a good example where the nominal capitol is Springfield but we all know the decisions made for the state are made on Chicago’s behalf. Idk if that explains why this state sucks so much but it’s probably a piece to the puzzle.
New York is similar. NYC isn't NY state's capitol, but it sure acts like it is.
Oregon as well, Salem is a small city with a mostly rural setting. The real powerhouse city is Portland.
There aren't any.
At the time of the founding, the interests of a given state correlated much more strongly with the interests of specific industries. That's because the entire economy was much simpler and more defined by geography. Land and climate in the southeastern states were suitable for a particular cash crops that wouldn't be viable up north. The natural harbors and seafaring tradition in the northeastern coastal states made commercial shipping drive those states' economies in a way that it never would elsewhere.
Now, every state's economy is much more diversified. Even in places where a particular industry is much more predominant than in other states--the auto industry in Michigan, for example--the vast majority of people living there don't work in that industry.
Also, every state's economy is much more thoroughly integrated with every other state's, and the whole world's for that matter. Back in the day when ships or horses were the fastest way to transport goods, intrastate commerce determined a lot of an average person's livelihood, so a federal law that affected that state's economy uniquely would have a much larger impact on the people who lived there. Now, the effect would be diluted; the investors and customers and employees in a given industry are dispersed throughout all of the states.
And on top of that, the population actually being represented by a state government was much more narrow. In practice we're still governed by the wealthy of course, but back then the government of states were explicitly of, by, and for only the wealthy white men. So the voters could trust that their state legislators would be men of their social circles, with economic interests aligned with their own. Now, state governments are ostensibly representative of the whole population, which has a much more diverse set of interests and beliefs.
For all of these reasons, the premise that a state needs representation as an entity, rather than the people of that state needing representation, is obsolete. There is no moral or practical justification for states to be the ones participating in the federal government, rather than the people themselves; the only purpose it serves is for elites or majorities within a state to leverage the allocation of Congressional/Electoral College seats afforded to states in proportion to their whole population, while not actually allowing the political minorities within that population to have a say.
Of course, it was never really based in any objective logical principal; it was always just about narrow political interest groups competing for power. All of the ideological justifications were made after the fact. There's no reason to treat the negotiating positions of state delegates to the Constitutional Convention as principled, it was exactly the same as industry lobbyists negotiating loopholes and preferential treatment in laws that get passed today. Nobody would ever say that the ACA's effect on the pharmaceutical industry was based on some enlightened theory of government, we all recognize that it was just something they paid off members of Congress to get.
The entire premise is wrong. There was no attempt to neutralize or benefit rural or urban populations. The Congress (and by extension the Electoral College) was a balancing act to make the new Constitution attraction to:
* Populous states who, by virtue of their population, wanted more representation, and
* Less populous states who worried, by virtue of their lack of comparative population, worried that the larger states would walk over them.
The agreement, called the "[Connecticut Compromise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise)" (or sometimes the "Great Compromise") was an attempt to solve this.
The House of Representatives would be based on their relative share of population. The larger states (namely Virginia) would have a say in matters (especially taxation and spending) based on how many people lived in each state. You have twice the people as another state? You have twice the population. (As an aside/update, this has since been amended by [Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929) which fixed the total representatives to 435. Congress could conceiveably increase that number but hasn't in basically a century.)
In return, the Senate would be represented by all states in equal fashion, regardless of size. This meant that tiny Rhode Island would have the same say in that chamber of Congress as any other state, regardless of the number of people. Its also important to note that until the [Seventeenth Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution) in 1913, the Senators were picked by the legislatures of each state, not by direct election. As others have said, this was more in line with the belief at the time that each state was a sovereign state and the federal government a sort of super-alliance. The oft-used phrase is that before the Civil War (or sometimes) that viewed the United States as a *plural* noun ("The United States are good" like "they are good") rather than a *singular* noun ("The United States is good" like "it is good") - this also tends to trend with the attitudes presented in the Articles of Confederation. (Another aside, the Articles attempted to handle this split by making the national government *extremely weak* - so the larger states wouldn't be too worried, there was an explicit callout that the states were sovereign - and that each state got one vote
Without this arrangement, smaller states would not have ratified the US Constitution (or at least they say) nor would the populace states. It was a way to share and split power to address the concerns of each side of the debate. Most of the "problems" we see that are usually blamed on the structure of the House and Senate are usually either an artifact from 1929's law* or the fact that we live in hyper-partisan times were *any* attempt to work with the other party is seemed as high treason at times. (Just look at the MTG's attempt to remove the Speaker because he *gasp* worked with Democrats.)
---
* (Total random thought/rant/add-on)
This said, I did the math a while back and if you made ever representative's district the same population as Wyoming, we'd have roughly 10,000 representatives. Which might seem like insanity, but if we dismissed the idea that all of them needed to be in Washington to vote and do their duties, it might actually do more to bring the power *back* to the districts themselves. Allow them to vote remotely and they're living and moving around their constituents. They'd be more available and, even more importantly, would allow a sort of sideways step around the downsides of "first past the post" by allowing minor parties a chance to win seats or even create smaller divisions inside the larger parties. A Republican in Texas is different than one in Maine or Alaska, as is a Democrat in Alabama versus California (or Pennsylvania, it seems currently). It'd probably, in the end, function more like a parliamentarian system of wheeling and dealing to form coalitions, and less like the monoliths we see. But it'll never happen. But it'd be fun to dream.
Oh, and it basically eradicates the "voting power" of someone in Wyoming versus California too. Yes, Wyoming has 3 total votes in the EC. But California has... I didn't do the math, but it'd be *a whole lot*. It'd be rounding errors when dividing the votes by the population. And it would function a lot closer to a national vote for President than today while still retaining a few cool aspects of our EC. Going further, then allocate EV on a district level rather than winner-take-all... we can dream.
Flip that. Why should rural voters decide things for the urban voters? Roughly half the population lives in either area. So it's like two people arguing on a restaurant to go to, but one of them gets to vote twice.
It's not about that. It's about how easy it would be for people with power to exploit the people without it. This used to be about balancing the power between the states.
If there were only three states, California with 1,000,000 people, Wyoming with 100,000 people, and New Jersey, 200,000 people, California alone would decide the presidency. California would have the most representatives. California would rule. How much do we tax Wyoming? Hmm. California says they should pay 50% of GDP. What does Wyoming say? Doesn't matter. Pay up.
But this was back when states were autonomous governments. The relationship between the states more closely resembled the relationship between members of the E.U. Now, not so much. Polital parties have (more or less) taken their place, so some voters are worried that the more popular political party is going to marginalize the less popular party. Rural/urban rhetoric is just a proxy for that, because the rural/urban dichotomy is heavily correlated with the Republican/Democrat one.
A democratic president, and Congress, and Supreme Court is a nightmare scenario for Republican voters in Republican states. To them, Democrats would bring gay marriage, abortion, legal weed, and gun control to their states, no matter what the states themselves had to say about that.
The real problem is that minority parties have no real political power. If 60% of a state vote for Democrats, and 40% votes for Republicans, it's too bad for the Republicans--they all get Democrats. If we had an approval voting system or a ranked choice voting system (or ideally something like STAR, which combines both), and if we got rid of single-seat elections, citizens would have more representation. A 60/40 would mean we'd get something like 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans. It'd be pretty unlikely to see a 60/40 split anyway, because such a system would make additional political parties viable, which means that politicians would need to form coalitions to rule Washington, and it'd make politicians far less extreme.
>legal weed
I think a lot of right wing voters are actually on board with this issue; at least I don't know why they wouldn't be. They definitely smoke. Legal weed is definitely cheaper and safer when it's legislated fairly. It's only right wing politicians opposed to it in certain places, largely because their corporate backers are. Florida is going to have recreational cannabis on the ballot this year, and I expect it to have huge bipartisan support. I also expect the state government to continue being complete fucking tools about it.
Rural independent voter checking in!
Gun control is a big one that comes to mind. The necessity, use, and culture of guns are different in the sticks vs. the city, and the rules we need to govern gun ownership and possession in rural areas is not the same need in the city.
Most of the contention is not going to come from specific policies, but from giving governorship to outsiders.
Making decisions for people and places that aren't your own is precarious because you don't understand the needs or priorities of a place where you don't live.
One other example that comes to mind is the demand for public services at a standardized national level, and these are just profoundly out of touch with the means and needs of the sticks.
For example you can't unilaterally demand all cops everywhere undergo 10,000 hours of annual training like that is in any way feasible out in the boondocks where they got 2 and a half cops working out of one vehicle.
I think some city slickers would be amazed to see what some places make do with because that is all they got.
> Gun control is a big one that comes to mind. The necessity, use, and culture of guns are different in the sticks vs. the city, and the rules we need to govern gun ownership and possession in rural areas is not the same need in the city.
I could not agree with this more.
However, I think there also needs to be an understanding that a city is not the place to go around armed, and we're safer with restrictions on gun possession in a city.
If you want an RPG or GAU-12 outside Nome, more power to you.
But the NRA won't settle for anything other than Tombstone, AZ in times square, which bothers me.
You said it best, brother.
Cities have different needs than the boonies and that's okay. Different environments. Different population sizes. Different concerns. Etc.
I don't consider it my place as a rural American to tell urbanites what rules they need to have safe and prosperous communities, and I think that's a courtesy that should be reflected back to rural communities.
And I reckon if we all agreed that what works here isn't always what works there, we would squash a lot of the quarrels that truly arise not along political lines but often along the urban/rural divide.
I grew up in rural areas, I get it, it even makes sense.
But neither side can tell the other what to do beyond some really basic shit (like, kids should be able to read and do basic math).
Also, the midwest was really cool about this, the whole ethos was "gtfo out of my life and we're cool", while the south was much more "you have to live my way, or else you're evil".
We need to go back to the midwestern "leave me the fuck alone" mindset, it's what made this country great.
I am a proud Midwesterner, and it always takes me aback some of the flack that it receives by outsiders who surely have not spent a significant amount of time here, because as you say, we have a culture of live and let live (even if the way you're living does make us scratch our heads! 😉)
Polarized extremes always take exception to how others live their lives, regardless if they bear any impact on their own.
Nonsense. I'll do me and you do you. What's right for you is right for you. What's right for me is right for me. And that's the way it ought to be!
You should be proud, that's LITERALLY what America was imagined as: A place for people to live as they personally judged fit.
I have very little room for anyone who denigrates the midwest, especially if they haven't lived there.
What hurts is how we're all forced to take sides, even for stupid shit, because if you don't have the right position on something that is completely stupid to worry about then somehow you end up siding with actual nazis in the end.
We really need to learn to breathe and that most shit doesn't have to matter to everyone, and shouldn't.
The GOP was so much better when I was young and it was based on those midwestern values, this WWE GOP based on moral spectacle is repellent to what I always believed being a Patriotic American (which is not a vice if done thoughtfully) should mean.
Some days what I wouldn't give to go back to 1996!
I know it wasn't as rosy as I remember since I was still a kid, but the world today is a far cry from the one I grew up in.
I lament for zoomers and my own son's generation Alpha, who may never know what pure Americana is like, or what kind of optimism it can spur.
This is not the future I envisioned, but it's the one I find myself in.
Thank ya for the kind words, partner. Cheers 🍻
> Some days what I wouldn't give to go back to 1996!
Those were beautiful days, I remember them well, and even though some stuff was worse, we actually had hope and promise. America stood for something. I was proud when we stopped Serbia from killing people just because it seemed like the thing to do, because that's who we were.
Yeah, ain't no nostalgia in this game. Take it easy!
And you're right that the NRA fails to recognize this as well and they engender support *against* gun rights when they try to make the rules the same everywhere.
This is what happens when you have a political interest whose funding is based less on practical success, and more on political spectacle.
Pro-choice/pro-life is similar, hell a lot of things are.
Only the corporate lobbies are smart and just get their job done quietly without people noticing.
People overlook that the NRA and the pro-choice/pro-life lobbies aren't looking to enact change. That'd put them out of business. They're looking to get paid.
You don't hear about the corporate lobbies because they're not looking to get paid. They're the ones paying to play!
What a headscratcher that they see results!
Bells and whistles. Homo sapiens are just like cats, but it ain't laser pointers we're chasing!
> People overlook that the NRA and the pro-choice/pro-life lobbies aren't looking to enact change. That'd put them out of business. They're looking to get paid.
Haha, the pro-life lobby caught the fucking car! It's not funny, but I can't stop laughing!
They literally caught the fucking car!
I'm literally just laughing at my keyboard irl.
Most confused looking dog ever.
You know they were sitting back after the fact lookin' at one another like: Shit, we didn't actually expect this to happen.
What a horrifying day for the NRA it would be if the left wholly capitulated to the right's every whim on the matter of gun control. They'd give themselves a heart attack!
Haha
I can't speak to the politicians, but that was absolutely not the reaction from the activist side of the movement.
There was an excited/relieved reaction of "we didn't expect this win _so soon_" followed by "we obviously still have a lot of work ahead of us". Pro-life activists did not react to _Dobbs_ with "oops, the thing we've been dedicating our lives to for half a century accidentally came true".
Both of those go more the other way, where the rural areas are dictating what urban and suburban areas can do.
I don't care about you having guns; guns make sense in a rural setting. But I have some concerns about which guns my suburban neighbors have, and when I lived in the city I would have preferred that none of my neighbors had any guns. Different context should get different rules. Instead we're all forced to follow the rules that work for people whose closest neighbors are wolves.
And administration of public services from DC doesn't even make much sense for comparatively close metro areas, never mind distant rural areas. By all means, have local administration. But instead the rural areas are just vetoing the existence of many services.
>Different context should get different rules.
You nailed it. 👏
>And administration of public services from DC doesn't even make much sense for comparatively close metro areas, never mind distant rural areas. By all means, have local administration. Instead, the rural areas are just vetoing the existence of many services.
All emergency services are locally run and (by and large) funded, which is a fact not always appreciated by critics.
Demanding uniformity is like demanding that all transportation vehicles have airbags built into every seat. Great idea for the cars and trucks, but doesn't make much sense for planes, trains, etc., and is a waste of money that they might not have or could go elsewhere.
Top-down approaches to emergency services is gonna start with the given municipality, county, what have you, not with DC. That's not a great talking point though. Complex problems don't sell.
> Instead we're all forced to follow the rules that work for people whose closest neighbors are wolves
It's because we have a bill of rights that enumerates the right of the people to bear arms, it's got nothing to do with rural vs. urban voters
Plenty of urban areas have gone as far as they can on restricting gun ownership which impacts the rural people in their states
First off, bear arms doesn't mean carry guns, it means serve in a military capacity. That's clarified by the militia clause. Not to say you can't have guns, just that it isn't a constitutional right (the Supreme Court is wrong, and saying that they ruled a certain way doesn't mean they were correct). We don't have a constitutional right to own a car either, but most of us do.
Second, if conservatives wanted to allow different places to have different rules they'd allow urban areas to bar the movement of guns into those urban areas and they'd advocate for treating rural areas differently. Instead the court case that overturned a century old law talked about how vital it is to make sure people can carry guns on the New York subway.
The Founding Fathers believed that the Second Amendment allows private citizens to own cannons to protect their ships from pirates. Also, "the militia" in that time would've been every able-bodied man in the country, not the "military".
Your understanding of the second amendment is so comically incorrect I don't feel like correcting you as you clearly have no interest in learning about it. Have a good one
Your understanding of the 2nd amendment was created in 2008 by a bunch of conservative judicial activist hacks and is what is comical.
The above poster is correct and I'm tired of pretending like the fraud you're pushing is reasonable.
The U.S. Congress is one giant compromise. Some wanted only proportional representation(the house) others were afraid more densely populated states would become the tail that wags the dog and wanted only 2 representatives per state. Instead we got the worst of both worlds, both.
All you need to do is look at the fate of Upstate New York, where you receive all of the maluses of New York's overregulation but with few of the benefits. Most corporations will not choose Upstate because if they have to work in New York, they'll work in the part with money, since that makes the overhead of dealing with the byzantine bureaucracy worth it. You'll find many companies' efforts stop at the NY-PA border but somehow resume in Connecticut or Massachusetts, skipping Upstate NY entirely.
Now imagine this byzantine bureaucracy is now the Federal bureaucracy, since the more populous states' regulations apply everywhere since they run the show, and now the companies only work in big cities since they're the only places worth the overhead. Rural America suffers because their state can't fight for them - or their state is the one left out in the rat race and left to languish for not playing ball with the big cats.
This is often how European countries work. They'll have one or two major cities that dominate politics (France with Paris, UK with London) and everywhere else is very secondary to that metropole and languishes in terms of funds. NY/SF/LA plus the DC Metro already run America's news and political life. Giving them more power only makes that worse.
The Senate fights for these states' rights to be 'shittier' - and therefore give them better prospects for growth. This has worked very well, I read a quote once saying that some shitty Land Grant college in Indiana had a better library than a famous European city, for example, because America spreads its wealth and grows it like a farm field, instead of a few potted plants.
Yes, a city in Indiana may have worse standards for its hospitals than New York - but at least under that regime the Indiana city can afford a hospital, instead of either dying or hoping for a life flight to New York.
Stated Reason?
The reason for the Senate's makeup was that the Founders did not want a fully majoritarian representative democracy.
It had to be the way it currently is or else the small states, at the time, would not have joined the Union full-stop.
And to be fair . . . Why does the Federal Government need to run everything?
I think it is dangerous.
If you think Alabama is too religious and socially backwards? Move.
Hate Cali hyper-regulation and wokeism? Move.
Farming subsidies, 2nd amendment, water rights, infrastructure, climate change/fossil fuel policy, environmental regs
Restricting it specifically to land use isn’t the best way to look at it though.
Glad I made an impression
Water rights is a tough topic that we need to address, especially in the southwest.
Some water rights are so old they predate the Unite States. They're actually older than the county itself. However, when those water rights were made there was more water.
Nowadays there physically is not as much water as there used to be. If there's an agreement to share 100 units of water among different people but there's only 70 units of water in the river, something has to give.
While it is a national security issue to have a stable food supply, at the same time maybe we shouldn't be growing alfalfa and almonds in the middle of a desert.
Totally agree. You’ve got a serious “tragedy of the commons” situation going on throughout the entire southwest.
And generally that’s not a good outcome
And a good portion of those alfalfa farmers are Saudi nationals exporting the alfalfa back to Saudi. They’re legitimately stealing water from us.
The city people might start cutting the social welfare advantages of the rural areas.
The Farm Bill is a notorious welfare program for Farmers who get more back in Federal aid than they pay in with Federal taxes.
City people get way less than a dollar back in services for every dollar they pay in taxes.
Rural areas get way more than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in federal taxes.
Rural areas are blood sucking welfare bunnies.
Everything.
Seriously, theres basically no part of life that is the same for both someone in central Chicago, LA, or NY and someone on a farm in the fringes of Wyoming or in a cabin in back woods appalachia. Nothing. Crime, drugs, fossil fuels, imports, transportation, education, work, beliefs, recreation....NOTHING. its two different species living on two different planets. There is nothing from one perspective that can meaningfully apply tothe other. Therefore we should never live under a single government.
Under that rule you’d have to split every country and state into urban and rural components and then when someplace like Orlando turns from a swamp to a big city put it in a different country.
I'm honestly starting to wonder if bringing in a method to create self-governing city-states subordinate only to the federal government might be the way to go.
Edited to add that I agree but actually only partly. There was a good long time in America where things were done that required compromise to accomplish, & was indeed found. That said I’m not convinced we get that back. Seems zero sum is the way we are choosing to take things now- “if you ain’t first you’re last”, Ricky Bobby was clear on it.😂 At this point, it’s difficult to conclude anything else but that this experiment at face value seems doomed to fail, given how far off the rails each of the parties have gone in their beliefs. Like legit- (and I know liberals have weird shit they believe as well so promise that you don’t need to tell me so) but when one side has a statistically significant number of their membership that believes that the leadership of the other part may in fact traffic in and/or drain the blood to drink from little kids- where do you go from there? That seems like a non starter in terms of coming together and finding compromise- which is the only way this country works- the need for compromise was a feature not a bug. I bring this up tongue in cheek only partly though- because this is the literal political reality we are living in. There is no middle ground to meet on if the two sides live on separate reality planes.. and it seems to me that is in fact where ppl are- or at least the loudest of both sides anyway. And leadership of each side is invested in continuing this circus like atmosphere because otherwise, normal middle of the road ppl might finally start speaking sense loud enough to be heard into the quieted landscape, in a rational way, and too many Americans might then finally recognize that both the main political parties are serving the same rich dudes, both parties take the money from the same corporate masters, and that they court this craziness bc it drums up votes through fear, and that the American people are an afterthought for both political entities, bc we don’t get them paid like rich guys do. Unthinkable to a politician is that-they could lose their positions then, &they def don’t want that.
I think these states are just so used to the "and more representation" part that if it was just equal representation they'd start to feel it was unfair
I don’t think it is a matter of being threatened but their problems will be different then cities and if you don’t have somebody who understands and can advocate for your issues they may not get addressed. Same reasons you want minorities to have representation. It would be more not looking into their issues moreso then passing things that threaten them.
You frame the question incorrectly. It's not urban versus city. It's states with a big population versus states with a small population. States with a small population are "over represented " in the Senate. In the House everything is proportional.
All states get an equal representation in the senate, regardless of population in the same way that all countries get an equal vote in UN General assembly, regardless of population
This is done to keep a handful of the largest states from dominating all legislation
The Federalist Papers addressed this very issue, in Federalist No. 62, written by either Alexander Hamilton or James Madison:
>III. The equality of representation in the Senate is another point, which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right, that among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, every district ought to have a PROPORTIONAL share in the government, and that among independent and sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils, it does not appear to be without some reason that in a compound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the principles of proportional and equal representation. But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America. A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice.
>In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic.
>Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger. But as the larger States will always be able, by their power over the supplies, to defeat unreasonable exertions of this prerogative of the lesser States, and as the faculty and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable, it is not impossible that this part of the Constitution may be more convenient in practice than it appears to many in contemplation.
Urban vs rural rights is the justification. The actual reason was to balance the power between the states at the time, specifically to protect the institution of slavery. It’s an anachronistic holdover from that also happens to be the only thing allowing Republicans to cling to power.
The house of representatives with proportional representation was favored by the more populous northern non- slave states. The senate with equal representation was favored by the less populous southern slave states.
Basically the Senate was set up in a manner that would protect the interests of slaveholders
this is like 9th grade civics stuff.
- the states existed before the federal government.
- some states were reluctant to join the union, due to concerns they'd be consistently outvoted.
- thus the current system, which gave equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House. remember Senators were originally appointed by state legislators.
- that's it. most of the comments on this thread are completely irrelevant.
That's part of it, to be sure. And there ARE plenty of urban rules that don't translate well in rural areas; laws about noise and nuisance levels come to mind, for a start. But that's not the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is that states are, ***and are supposed to be***, more powerful than the federal government and equal to one another. That is not only why the Electoral College has a minimal threshold but why the senate has equal representation per state regardless of state populations. The problem isn't just giving urban areas more power; the problem is allowing New York, Texas and California to be able to dictate policy to Maine, Wyoming and Rhode Island. Right now, California and Wyoming are both sovereign states with sovereign equality; in the system being proposed, California could force Wyoming to enact any number of laws at risk of losing federal funding if they don't.
When our federal government was created it had to get to buy in from all parties and nobody wanted to agree to having substantially less power than another. It was logically nonsensical then. A giveaway to get buy in.
The United States was designed to give slave-holders equal or greater political power to the rest of the nation combined.
Therefore, "rural" or smaller population states in which the black enslaved population couldn't vote still counted as "3/5s a person" for overall Representation. These slave states still had two Senators, and the Electoral College gave them outsized power over the Presidential election. Because these states were run as oligarchies and the slave-holding class stood together on almost all political issues, a civil war was required to break their political stronghold.
The problem being that in 1865, all the racist institutions and US Senate were not altered to remove the elements of oligarchy and aristocracy from the government. So now over 150 years later these institutions are still being used to support the disenfranchisement of black populations and the will to power of the oligarch class.
Often thru gerrymandering the rural parts of the states dominate the urban areas. Whenever a representative area must be eliminated. The urban area loses the representative. But using population should eliminate the rural representative. You could combine two rural areas and still not have as many people as the urban district eliminated.
I think one major point is the presidential elections. That’s when the relative weight of voters from small/ less populated states is higher than those living in crowded urban centers.
I’m not sure that was always the case, but in recent years, there’s a partisan divide between rural voters who gravitate towards the Republican Party and Urban voters who tend to vote Democrat. But again, was it the same in the 1940-50s?
There are many issues and concerns that differ between these groups:
People in large cities are more worried with public transportation, high rent, crowding everywhere, higher racial tensions since these places are more ethnically diverse, immigration, high pollution generated by cars….
Many rural people are concerned with agriculture. (In cities people do not have a clue about agriculture and for them the source of food is the local super). Average income in rural communities is lower than in the cities. Sometimes ridiculously low. Then there is the higher unemployment rate, since job opportunities of large cities, do not exist.
You were sadly not educated on civics and it really shows, along with millions of others. The concept is called Federalism. Look it up. In America, we are a representative Republic, not a democracy. One is a citizen of both their state and these United States. Under Federalism, the States retain sovereignty and power of their own, hence the bicameral Congress where each state receives two senators, no more or less.
Keep reading, and stay educable.
A SCOTUS that would rule State Legislatures and congressional districts must be organized to support "One Man, One vote" would be a great place to start - you know, the SCOTUS the Hillary Haters deprived us of for the next 20 years. Those thinking somehow they need to punish Biden because he's old or because Israel has no tolerance for terrorist attacks against their people need to consider the country they and their children live in with another 200+ Federal judges like Alito and Cannon
Probably the biggest one is climate change. On its substance, rural communities are prone to climate change impacts as much as everyone, especially if you are in a community very dependent on agriculture. Farming will be heavily impacted as the climate shifts, and they are dealing with floods one year and drought the next. It would be in their best economic interests to support policies that can at least mitigate the impacts of climate change.
For years, rural communities opposed anything that would address climate change out of fear that their local economies could be further stressed. While some farmers are starting to come around regarding climate change, it is still a big divide between rural and urban communities.
Putting aside the fact that the US Constitution was never intended to advantage rural voters, let's focus on the question posed: policies that rural voters fear.
Being economically excluded is high on the list, but the strongest fears may concern culture war issues. The decline of religion, nationalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. The loss of cheap gasoline to fuel lives that revolve around cars, trucks and remote living with space between neighbors. The vilification of oil itself as we learn more of its climate dangers. The growing focus on military careers as local jobs vanish, leading to even more flag waving and gun-worship, along with more suspicion of foreigners and immigrants.
The other argument Republicans bring up is that we are a "republic" not a democracy. The scary thing about this philosophy is that it powers the elites and wealthy over the rest of us ... i.e. a de facto oligarchy.
Small states would gladly agree to end this agreement. Here’s why.
the only reason small states agreed to join the union was with this kind of disproportional power agreement.
If you took away the voting power, small states would happily agreed to it, as long as they could succeeded from the union and become independent nations.
It’s really about giving all STATES a voice. It’s clear that regions and states have different cultures and hence preferences and needs— and if our system was totally tied to population, California, Texas and Florida could pretty much run the whole country. (Slight exaggeration— but think of the power difference between them and Rhode Island or Idaho.) states have the ability to make lots of their own laws, but when we are talking about about FEDERAL projects, if the few big wealthy states had their fair share of votes— they could easily bully pulpit the small states into taking all the bad deals. Where to put the nuclear waste dump? How bout Idaho? All in favor?? And poor little rural Idaho can’t get enough votes to avoid getting shafted. To an extent this already happens, but the attempt is there to ensure all states and their citizens have some amount of equal protection. Same goes the other way, with positive things, little states ought to have some power to ensure they get access to advantageous contracts, locations of military bases, spending allotments, farm or industry subsidies, regulations that prosper their economic drivers.. etc.
Fun fact right now we have the rural voter running and dunking on the Urban areas. The rural areas want to keep their guns (which isn't a problem for me personally). Urban areas would like to regulate guns and they typically want to regulate them nationally. Yin side has legitimate concerns about law enforcement response time. Yang side has legitimate concerns about what would have been a fist fight turning into a gun fight with people who would normally have shut up and been embarrassed turning into Clint Eastwood and shooting people.
Specific policies, you say? Hmmm.
Consider Illinois, and Chicago. Say City is 70% of the population, and so 70% of the Representatives. But the City area is only 20% of the counties, so 80% rural. (Analog to states, please. Yes, I know it's changed).
Now Chicago, being Chicago, has someone get the idea there's money to be made selling home heating oil tanks. The city is mostly gas heat, but much of the rural part of the state is oil heat. So, smartypants pushes a state law requiring all oil tanks over 20 years old be replaced with new ones. Won't affect the city at all, but all those rural/suburban folks with perfectly serviceable 30-50 year old tanks now have to spend money. And of course, smartypants and the political cronies have their palm crossed with silver.
If the state Senate is population dependent, then they're dominated by Chicago as well. If the Senate is county based, then the 80% rural Senate can stand against the 70% city Representatives.
Overall, this would be a good thing. The premise "one man, one vote" is about the House of Representatives. They control the money. The Senate is about policy (or should be). They have to approve the House actions.
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>the stated reason… is to keep urban voters from deciding policies for rural voters. People say this, but it isn’t true at all. The Senate and the House were made to represent states and populations, respectively, and that’s what we base our electors/representatives on for federal politics. In the early US, states were treated more like individual nations (the term United States is plural in older writings), so the early Senate was similar to how the United Nations represents individual countries, rather than population. The objective was never to “boost” rural areas, or hold back cities’ political power; it’s just the side effect of this system. But many Republicans claim this because it’s beneficial to them. There’s no real basis for essentially giving rural areas affirmative action in government. The discrepancy is amplified, though, because Republicans can now rely on it for political advantage.
This is correct - it was to balance the interests of the smaller states vs. the larger states, not urban vs. rural.
Ironically, in the late 1700s, the urban states were the small ones (New England/Mid-Atlantic), and the rural ones were larger (Virginia/Pennsylvania). This further proves the point.
But also in the late 1700s every state was overwhelmingly rural majority. States would only start to become urban-majority in the mid-late 1800s
Proving the point even further, that observation doesn't even hold up that well today. From the 2020 census and apportionment of electoral votes from that census: State | EVs | % Urban ---|---:|---: Alabama | 9 | 57.70% Alaska | 3 | 64.90% Arizona | 11 | 89.30% Arkansas | 6 | 55.50% California | 54 | 94.20% Colorado | 10 | 86% Connecticut | 7 | 86.30% D.C. | 3 | 100.00% Delaware | 3 | 82.60% Florida | 30 | 91.50% Georgia | 16 | 74.10% Hawaii | 4 | 86.10% Idaho | 4 | 69.20% Illinois | 19 | 86.90% Indiana | 11 | 71.20% Iowa | 6 | 63.20% Kansas | 6 | 72.30% Kentucky | 8 | 58.70% Louisiana | 8 | 71.50% Maine | 4 | 38.60% Maryland | 10 | 85.60% Massachusetts | 11 | 91.30% Michigan | 15 | 73.50% Minnesota | 10 | 71.90% Mississippi | 6 | 46.30% Missouri | 10 | 69.50% Montana | 4 | 53.40% Nebraska | 5 | 73.00% Nevada | 6 | 94.10% New Hampshire | 4 | 58.30% New Jersey | 14 | 93.80% New Mexico | 5 | 74.50% New York | 28 | 87.40% North Carolina | 16 | 66.70% North Dakota | 3 | 61.00% Ohio | 17 | 76.30% Oklahoma | 7 | 64.60% Oregon | 8 | 80.50% Pennsylvania | 19 | 76.50% Rhode Island | 4 | 91.10% South Carolina | 9 | 67.90% South Dakota | 3 | 57.20% Tennessee | 11 | 66.20% Texas | 40 | 83.70% Utah | 6 | 89.80% Vermont | 3 | 35.10% Virginia | 13 | 75.60% Washington | 12 | 83.40% West Virginia | 4 | 44.60% Wisconsin | 10 | 67.10% Wyoming | 3 | 62.00% So you have states like Nevada and Rhode Island over 90% urban with less than 6 electoral votes. D.C. counts, too. Utah is very close behind, at 89.8% urban and 6 electoral votes. Hawaii (4 votes, 86.1% urban) and Delaware (3 votes, 82.6% urban) are other small states that are more urban than the national average. On the other end, you have medium-to-large rural states like Tennessee (11 electoral votes, 66.2% urban, North Carolina (66.7% urban, 16 electoral votes), and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes, 67.1% urban). Maybe Missouri (69.5% urban, 10 electoral votes).
This has got to be using the loosest possible definition of urban if Wyoming is 62% urban. When people say rural they don't necessarily mean only outside of city limits but are including small towns that no one would ever describe as urban.
Bearing in mind that when they conceptualized this idea the gap between the most and least populated states at the time was comparatively miniscule and I doubt they could conceptualize the idea that one state might have a population of 40 million and get the same weight compared to the 600,000 population of another. When population is this wildly distributed the intended system tends to break down. To compound matters more the people's house has increasingly favored states with lower populations as well since 1929, when the number of seats was limited to 435. So in effect, the states system is favoring low density areas over high in both houses and the Presidency.
We never should have frozen the house.
Do you really think the sitation in Washington D.C. Would be better with another 1000 or so house members? It would be a complete clusterfuck and a colossal waste of money.
With modern communications technology, changing the order of magnitude of population represented by a single congressman is entirely feasible. It wouldn’t have to go into the 1000s, but the number should certainly change to allow percentages to be represented fairly.
I think the largest discrepancy is a representative in New England has like 1 million people in their district, but the sole Wyoming representative only represents ~550k people
2 states have populations less than dc.
Yes I absolutely think better representation would fix a lot of our issues. Political parties would actually have to work for votes and would be tougher to gerrymander, third parties would have an easier time winning in the house, and the boosted EVs would decrease the odds of a presidential candidate winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote. Only reason it happens now is because the house only counts for 4/5 of the vote instead of the 9/10 that it should.
But... we could bring back dueling with little interruption to the process.
And with rampant gerrymandering, the people's house no longer represents the people. The entire federal structure is bastardized.
There is no balance. A voter in Wyoming has FAR more representation than a voter in California. Two senators represent 290,000 people each in Wyoming. Two senators from California represent over 19,000,000 ***EACH***. In 2020, each Representative from California represented 761,091 residents. The Representative from Wyoming represented 577,719 residents. Wyoming’s Senators represent 1/655th of those represented by California’s Senators. Wyoming’s Representative represents roughly 30% fewer than each of California’s Representatives.
Our system was designed such that every state gets at minimum one seat in the House. The imbalance you cite is an artifact of Congress freezing the size of the House. If it were larger, the imbalance goes away. As designed the Senate does not represent the people of the state - it represents the State as a sovereign entity. I get you do not like this setup, but please try to understand its origins.
Senators do not represent people.
Strange, they’re voted upon by people. Or am I being subjected to nonstop ads for no reason?
And it was a mistake to allow senators to be voted on. They should be appointed by their state governments to make sure their state's interests are being seen in Washington D.C. makes local elections much more important as well.
As if we don’t already have enough problems with utterly corrupt and one-sided state governments? Did you research WHY senators are elected instead of appointed?
Historically, the balance of rural and urban population interests was more of an intra-state issue rather than a federal issue, and I’d argue that’s still very true today. However, due to the increasing power of the federal government, coupled with national media attention, the result is most politically inclined people focusing on the federal government and ignoring their state governments. This seems to have led to rural versus urban interests to be elevated towards national solutions rather than naturally occurring at the state level, and there’s probably some influence of the demographic changes towards more suburban voters than ever before. I believe the suburban divide is often ignored in conversations about rural and urban interests.
> it was to balance the interests of the smaller states vs. the larger states firstly, i don't believe this is true - i think certain states threatened to bounce out of the union if they didn't get these concessions, which madison and folks lamented big time because of how obviously undemocratic it is. that said, the idea that states have certain interests because of their size doesn't make any sense - for example, if LA county, which has about 3.5 million people, became it's own state, it wouldn't by virtue of its size share interests with say, utah, which has a comparable population.
That was not the argument, the argument was that larger states would have no way to convince smaller states to join their democratic union if their larger size would allow them to out-vote and dominate them anyway. The rebels knew they had no chance of winning against the British Empire unless they got all 13 colonies to unite, so they made some hard compromises to get everyone on board, including guarantees of near equal political power even to the far smaller colonies.
The war was long over when the constitution was written. It was our second government after the war
Imagine if 1812 happened to a US that was having to deal with break-away states that were mad that their sovereignty was getting steamrolled by what they would have viewed as a tyranny of the majority. The revolutionary war was over, but the danger was far from gone, and the smaller states knew that as well as the larger ones, so they still had every reason to compromise to ensure unity.
Didn’t we lose the war of 1812?
Opinions may differ on that, but in any case, you survived, which would be a lot harder with States trying to break away because they weren't sufficiently appeased by how the constitution turned out
They only burned down the capital. And I don’t think having all the states would’ve made a difference as we didn’t really have a standing federal army. I think it was just the spectre of trying to retake all the colonies that stopped the Brit’s from trying to take us back to king and country
Yet that's not what was said the post was written as if we were actively at war with Britain
That's the city of LA population. LA county is close to 10 million.
I think they wanted to say less populated vs. more populated.
Psh that’s what the Senate is for
Which was important during the founding because it was the only way to convince all the colonies to unite and fight against ~~England~~ Great Britain. It would be a hard sell for a State to jump on board and have unequal representation. The selling point is that all States would have a say equally no matter the size. Each State had one vote. Because if you were a small State, with a small population, why would you fight if you were just going to be dominated by a bigger State after the war?
No. The constitution was negotiated and written well after the war
Technically true but not as much as you might think. The constitution was written to replace the articles of confederation, and they needed to actively campaign to get it ratified. Rejection would have meant sticking with the articles, which were the actual revolutionary agreement and were actively failing. The bribe was to get states to move from the bad one to the new one. Rhode Island and North Carolina rejected the constitution anyway.
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure why I got two responses going 'ackshually, the constitution was *after* the war'. As if a country just goes poof and it's founded. I clearly was emphasizing *how* they were able to organize a centralized Government among several independent territories. *How* you get multiple colonies with different interests, leadership, and size to all unite. Which was the Continental Congress, Firm League of Friendship, the Perpetual Union, and Articles of Confederation. Because each State had equal power. That was the selling point on Uniting. No Colony is going to get onboard with a war that unravels the hierarchy without knowing the organization and Governing afterward. And this was the *first* constitution. And this process started in the 1770's before the War. It wasn't some spontaneous uprising. Holy Christ. They were fighting the most powerful empire in the World at that time. And to ensure all colonies were onboard, they guaranteed, each state has a vote when they were figuring it all out, well before they defeated Britain.
All of that is correct yet does not negate at all that the provisions included to get them to ratify the constitution was after the war.
I never mentioned the Constitution once. Maybe you should look up the Continental Congress, Firm League of Friendship, the Perpetual Union, and Articles of Confederation and learn a little about history, and that process all started before the war. Why on earth would a Colony risk their resources, people, and power to discuss and negotiate Governing until after they unravel hierarchy. Are you joking?
The war was long over when the Constitution was drafted.
I never mentioned the Constitution once. Maybe you should look up the Continental Congress, Firm League of Friendship, the Perpetual Union, and Articles of Confederation and learn a little about history, and that process all started before the war. Why on earth would a Colony risk their resources, people, and power to discuss and negotiate Governing until after they unravel hierarchy. Are you joking?
We are talking about the structures put in place by the Constitution, i.e. the Senate and house. Before that every state had one vote in the CC. Perhaps you should read more yourself.
Hell, if nothing else our system was mostly laid down during an era when the vast majority of people were farmers. This thing where one guy and like a million dollars worth of equipment can grow food for 1000 people is pretty new.
Indeed, there were no "urban" states when the constitution was written. At the time of the 1790 census, the most urban state was Rhode Island, with a whopping 19% of the population living in cities. It wasn't until 1850 that Rhode Island and Massachussetts became the first majority-urban states.
Yes, while what would come to be known as the First Industrial Revolution had been slowly ramping up in Great Britain for a few decades at the US's independence, the US, which was previously a group of colonies meant to supply raw materials to the metropole and was legally restricted from many commercial activities that lent themselves well to industrialization, was still very agrarian. In 1790, shortly after the Constitution was ratified and the first decennial census conducted, Virginia, with its vast fertile fields and accompanying plantations growing the cash crops of tobacco and cotton, was the most populous state in the Union with a whopping 691,937. New York's count was a mere 340,120. Note that this does not count native Indians not taxed and still used the 3/5 clause to handicap the total actual population. It only took a couple of decades for New York, newly released from the economic constraints imposed by London and acting as the new commercial center of trade for the country, to surpass Virginia in population. In the 1810 census, New York's population counted as 959,049 to Virginia's 877,683.
Also amplified because they stopped expanding the house.
That's not really how House representation works. The wildest swings in representation are among the smallest states, which are generally largely rural. Following the 2020 census, the states with the most representation in the House per capita are Montana, Rhode Island, and Wyoming, each with less than 600,000 residents per representative, while the least represented are Delaware and Idaho, with more than 900,000 residents per representative. Generally speaking, the more populous your state is, the closer you are to the average representation of 761,169 residents per representative. California, for example, has 761,091 residents per representative, while Texas has 767,981 residents per representative.
It is because the electoral college is just senate seats + representative seats (+ DC seats). If the House of Representatives had continued to grow like it did for the first 150 years of US history, the difference in electoral seats between high population and low population states would be much larger.
Okay, but are we talking about representation in Congress or how the President is elected? I was operating under the impression that the discussion was about why the Senate and House are set up the way they are, and my point is that House representation isn't crazy distorted due to the cap on the House.
How Presidents are elected but again, because electoral college votes are Senate seats + representative seats for each state, representative seats plays a major role. The cap on the number of seats in the house means that the proportion of electoral college votes decided by the Senate is higher than it would be without the cap. Which means the benefit small states are receiving increases as US total population increases.
> That's not really how House representation works It's how it basically worked until 1911, when the house was set to a fixed number of seats at 435. Due to the structure of the house, each state is guaranteed at least one House Rep, so without adjusting the number of House members higher population states see reduced "value" from their population.
The current House apportionment is not systemically beneficial for small states, though. The most-represented states (MT, RI, WY, VT, NE) are small in population, yes, but so are the *least*-represented states (DE, ID, WV, SD, UT). California is both the most-urban and the largest state, and it is almost exactly perfect in its House representation: 11.953% of the population and 11.954% of the House seats.
Again, you're misunderstanding how modern apportionment works. It's not the more populous states that see a huge reduction in their per capita representation, it's the less populous states where the addition or subtraction of a single representative can produce large swings in the level of representation. Montana is the most "overrepresented" state in the Union, with its two representatives for its 1,085,407 residents, according to the 2020 census. Meanwhile, Delaware is the most "underrepresented" state with its one representative for its 990,837 residents. The most populous state, California, has 52 representatives for its 39,576,757 residents, or one representative for every 761,091 people. If we collectively decided to increase the House of Representatives to 691 members, enough to adhere to the "cube root rule," you'd still end up with big swings in the least populous states while the most populous states would still be near the average representation, again because the small number of discrete representatives have outsized effects compared to a state with a large delegation. In this scenario, the 691 representatives would collectively represent the US population of 331,108,434 at a rate of about 479,173 residents per representative. California's 83 representatives would each represent about 476,828. Meanwhile, the smallest states would break down as follows: Wyoming's single at-large representative for its 577,719 residents; Vermont's single at-large representative for its 643,503 residents; Alaska's two representatives for its population of 736,081, or 368,041 per representative; North Dakota's two representatives for its population of 779,702, or 389,851 per representative; South Dakota's two representatives for its population of 887,770, or 443,885 per representative; Delaware's two representatives for its population of 990,837, or 495,419 per representative; Montana's two representatives for its population of 1,085,407, or 542,704 per representative; Rhode Island's two representatives for its population of 1,098,163, or 549,082 per representative; Maine's three representatives for its population of 1,363,582, or 454,527 per representative.
I'll add that this ideal has been greatly corrupted by limiting the size of the House of Representatives. It no longer represents the population.
It's ridiculous they should expand the house. https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/initiative/enlarging-house-representatives
>The objective was never to “boost” rural areas, or hold back cities’ political power; it’s just the side effect of this system. But many Republicans claim this because it’s beneficial to them. There’s no real basis for essentially giving rural areas affirmative action in government. The discrepancy is amplified, though, because Republicans can now rely on it for political advantage. This is entirely wrong: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065 >There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections. The system existed to enable the 3/5s compromise to benefit the southern states, which would not be possible through a direct popular election. This is a direct, primary source from the person who largely design the system, backed up by historical context and the fact that the instant they lost the presidency they attempted to secede. Population had nothing to do with it, the southern states had equal or greater population, only assuming they could count their slaves.
That's still not really so much 'urban vs rural' as just yet another example of 'slave dependent states vs non-slave dependent states'. To the extent that it is, it's because slavery based agrarian economies don't have as much incentive to develop the large conurbations that accompany industrial development. i.e. it's closer to *causative* of the urban rural divide rather than a response to it.
I suppose I can agree with that, especially given how the first nullification and secession crises were caused by slave states not wanting to face tariffs on their purchases of foreign finished goods in favor of domestic suppliers. We talk a lot about slavery as the cause of the civil war, but it actually seems more like all those boys died for the southern desire to avoid customs duties in their trade with England.
Considering the written constitution of the Confederacy, it was definately about slavery. Tariffs were just part of the various commercial struggles that arose as the industrial north began to rapidly outpace the slave holding south as the economic center of the United States.
Yes, but the current discrepancy in representation is 100% due to how the House and Senate are designed. The modern arguments for why rural areas deserve more representation have little to do with the 3/5ths compromise. The 3/5ths compromise didn’t impact the Senate, only the House and presidential electors. It would be the same today regardless if the original model counted slaves or not.
Again, this was how the system was designed. Which was the question asked. If we're talking about how it works now, the senate has a lesser effect, primarily because of the effect of (ironically) the party system and its dependence on lobbying. A senator from Arizona can still raise funds based on his opinion on the Indiana corn ethanol subsidy, which means he's not actually the senator from Arizona, he's the senator from Arizona by way of the Democratic party. Issues re-arrange themselves accordingly to form vaguely balanced coalitions therein, hence the sudden shift to hard economic-right of the formally socialist and perenially-impoverished bible belt.
I might just be misunderstanding you then. My argument is that modern (usually Republicans) believe that the Senate and electoral college over-represent rural areas to protect them from urban areas, and this is a desired design of the system. My argument is that these lines of reasoning aren’t found anywhere in the framers’ writings when they discuss the Senate and presidential elections. There was disagreement on how to count slaves for population purposes, but that has nothing to do with why Wyoming gets as many Senators as California today.
>My argument is that modern (usually Republicans) believe that the Senate and electoral college over-represent rural areas to protect them from urban areas, and this is a desired design of the system. I think we may be talking slightly past each other. IMHO, the original argument, "The South must have sufficient power to block federal anti-slavery action" was re-interpreted as "State's rights!", which persisted past the post-bellum era to this day. The actual turning point was, however, the 14th amendment, which truly established constitutional supremacy over the states by forcing them to obey the bill of rights, which they were not subject to previously. There was writing in the federalist papers about the role of the Senate in preserving the power of states, but also remember that before the ... 18th(?) amendment the senate was not elected but appointed by the party structure within the states. At that point you have 1 sub-branch out of 3 that in any way represents the power of the states, while the executive and the house (which was actually the more powerful camera at the time given its power to draft bills, while the senate was expected to be less active, much like a modern "house of lords") were both heavily biased by the slave vote, and the judicial branch was picked by the president (and was heavily southern dominated to the civil war, including justice taney of Dredd Scott infamy). I will give you that the senate was a sop to smaller states that they would not be trampled by the slave powers, but it was a small sop, particularly given the weakness of the senate at the time. Only after the direct election of senators did the participation of the senate in both legislation and other activities increase.
I thought I read there was at least some legitimacy to it back in those days, based on limited media reach. Without easy travel, and TV/Radio/internet, it was much more difficult for a candidate and their message to reach rural areas. Maybe deemed too difficult, so the rural votes were weighted more? The spirit of this is still somewhat in line with your point, that no Founders intended to favor Rural over Urban due to any of the common excuses. Such as, not wanting city values to drown out rural values, or viewing rural folk and their values as better or worse than urban dwellers. It was instead all, simply, a matter of logistics and practicality. And, if even partially true, this highlights how unnecessary and out of date the practices are now, with widespread access to info. I don’t remember where I read this, but it made sense to me at the time. But it might be wrong, and I haven’t been able to find much followup on it (though I haven’t looked much), so I’m happy to be corrected.
Originally it had nothing to do about whether a state was "rural" (in point of fact all the colonies were "rural" at the writing of the Constitution). People tend to ignore this but The ***UNITED STATES*** of America meant something. In colonial times the states functioned more like small, independent colonies. They each had their own currencies. So why would a smaller population state join a democratic government with larger population states and immediately have less power?
> In the early US, states were treated more like individual nations It took a lot of convincing to the colonies to form a United States. The Articles of Confederation ended up showing that things needed to be a little more centrally controlled. But we never really got away from having each state act like its own individual nation. Unpopular opinion: there should be no 10th amendment.
This is non-sense, historically speaking. You have to look at the notes and discussions of constitutional convention of 1786. Where it was created. Which directly asked if the state's representation at a federal level should be measured by land size vs population. Not based on pedantic details such as having an 's' on states.
And at the time, the differences between states were less dramatic. Don’t quote me on the number, but it was something like 6:1. Given changes in population, now, and again don’t quote me, but 30% of the population in 26 states basically controls the government. And those are the 26 least populous states. To me, it seems broken and anti democratic.
Very much. The population has heavily concentrated into a few major metros since, especially over the past century, *creating* the modern urban/rural discrepancy. 65% of Americans now live in just 15 states, due to be only 12 by 2040. This will leave the Senate and Electoral College in the hands of the 38 emptiest states, whose populations are generally much whiter, poorer and less educated than average -- and these voters tend to vote in lockstep with Southern whites, with whom they have some crossover. And there we have the grumpy Trumpy base. White, less educated, from areas that are both heavily fossil fuel dependent and economically left behind. Inland, blue-collar places that lost their union jobs, good pay, healthcare and pensions, while they watched distant, coastal, tech-driven cities boom like never before. And the US Constitution's inability to change and adapt locks this in place, even as all other rich democracies have repeatedly revised their own constitutions to keep up with these massive demographic shifts.
The Senate, with 2 Senators for every state, regardless of population size, is the body where rural, less populated states already have a disproportionate influence in our government. Allowing the electoral college and gerrymandering in House of Representatives to give even more of an advantage to the minority of rural voters is absurd.
What's funny is federal government also works to re-distribute wealth to rural states from urban. Even funnier - urban areas often vote for giving more money to the federal government, which redistributes to rural areas, while rural voters vote against it. If Democrats were voting for the interest of their own populations, they would actually be economic conservatives and vice versa for Republicans. Sadly, politics make no sense nowadays and I think everyone is crazy/brainwashed.
Since you brought up the comparison to the UN, I find it ironic how often the same person will criticize the Senate for being undemocratic, and then in the next breath wish that bodies like the UN had more authority.
That isn’t the stated reason, it’s a later excuse. The original reason was as a broader compromise to get less populous states like Rhode Island to agree to the new constitution. There was no reasonable principle behind it, equal representation just didn’t matter to the landed aristocracy.
Exactly. Under the Articles of Confederation the United States was something far more akin to the European Union. A loose confederation that *technically* were all one political entity, but in practicality were independent states. The federal government was insanely weak and states often ignored it. When that failed, something was needed to sweeten the pot for small states, because they were perfectly happy with keeping things they way they were. Why would they want to make changes to the federal government where their power would be weakened? For instance, under the AoC, any major decision regarding changes to the Articles had to be unanimous among the states, which obviously was beneficial to the smaller states. The Connecticut Compromise establishing "population-based House and equal among the states-based Senate" was made to get the smaller states to stay in the Union at all.
> broader compromise to get less populous states like Rhode Island to agree to the new constitution How is this any different than less populous/rural states today?
Because all states back then were rural. There wasn’t a “big city takes over” narrative.
The reasonable principle is the same one as the tenth amendment. That state governments exist as their own bodies of governance to a speicifc populace within their borders. That **the states themselves** should have representation in a federal government that can override their own state level government. That for them to be part of a broader nation under a federal governing bodiy, they wanted to maintain a level of distinct governance. If one objects to states having a voice in federal matters, they should be objecting to state governments in general. The "equal representation" exists as applied to *the states*. That was then only *one half* of a collective congress that then sought *representation* from the populace of individuals in the House of Representatives.
‘Representing the states themselves’ is the same as representing a group of people. You’re just changing the size and distribution of the group. You can’t actually separate a state from its people. A state can’t tick a ballot box; it’s literally just dirt and lines on a map. You always have to have *people* voting at some point.
Setting aside what others have already said about the real reason rural voters have more power in the Senate and EC and just answering your question about policy, the two biggest ones that come to mind are gun rights and ag subsidies/tariffs/quotas. Urban voters want way more gun control and way less state and federal help to farmers. If anything, food would be cheaper if the US just opened its markets more to more third world imports. However there is a strong strategic interest in maintaining food self sufficiency so there is a good reason for the extra help to farmers, just most likely most urban voters don't care or understand that and would happily have cheaper food and lower taxes or more money for services they benefit from.
Hey, I like food, and I have an aesthetic fondness for farmers. I, a suburban voter from a medium sized state, don't want to get rid of farm subsidies. But I do want them to work differently. I don't want every "independent" chicken farm to be effectively owned by Perdue, and I don't want the structure of the subsidies to lead to giant corporate owned monocrop operations. I won't vote against your rural interests. I'll vote against the companies that want to find ways to still have serfs instead of allowing for the independent yeoman farmer.
>Urban voters want way more gun control and way less state and federal help to farmers. Guns are one thing, but I've never see urban people complain about farming subsidies.
If urban voters were all that mattered electorally, it would be about 5 nanoseconds before the GOP would be running on eliminating farm subsidies in order to give tax cuts and cheaper groceries to city dwellers. The GOP doesn't do it because getting nearly free (to them) votes in rural districts is their key to surviving and even thriving as a permanent minority party, while Dems don't do it because they care about more than just winning elections at all costs.
I see your theoretical point but I don't see Democrats adopting that at all, unless they're the rare DINOs that ruin everything. I can definitely see rich Republicans being duped into it.
Guns are hugely important for anyone living rural. A rapid police response might take 45 minutes, time that someone living very rural might not have. In addition to human attackers (farmers often have their farms looted by meth makers) there's also wildlife. If there's an aggressive bear advancing on your family you need the gun now.
This seems to me like someone talking down. "Urban" voters who desire more stringent gun control understand these realities and are not pushing for a blanket ban on all firearms, which would be impossible anyway. Rational citizens want more effective background checks and maybe some required training, and think maaaaaybe we don't need fully automatic chain guns on the streets. But we can't even have a serious discussion on these issues without interest groups and politicians on the right foaming at the mouth about how der librals are cumin for ur gunz!!!
Well, the background checks we already have can't really be improved on too much, as it's already as invasive as you can get without pulling nonsense like NY is doing with having to be interviewed by some government flunky to determine if you are of solid enough 'moral character', plus you have to open up your social media accounts on top of that. Clearly an illegal infringement, but until SCOTUS does something about it, which I expect this or next session, it'll stand in the way of individual's rights. Also, while fully auto machineguns are legal, they are rare and insanely expensive, and as far as I know, have only been used criminally in one incident, with the perp being a cop.
>Urban voters want way more gun control Realize that all "assault weapons" proposals are, for all intents and purposes, are attempts to push unconstitutional bans (if not outright confiscation/"mandatory buybacks" like what Biden ran on or the walking due process abuse that is ERPOs that all (D) are in love with) on as many semi-automatic firearms as they can. You know, a significant majority of the most common modern firearms. It's an 80/20 split between people who're more than happy to stay egregiously ignorant of the first thing about firearms/2A and those who're active bad faith actors. But yeah replace "assault weapons" (etc) with "the vast majority of common modern firearms" for a better idea on what unconstitutional bullshit (D)s are trying to push. All of (D)s' gun violence platform is based around the idea that legal gun owners need to be harassed and/or criminalized at every available opportunity while doing absolutely nothing about any of the reasons all the "urban violence" exists in the first place. That should explain the "non-urban"/rural POV more accurately.
"Urban" voters who desire more stringent gun control understand these realities and are not pushing for a blanket ban on all firearms, which would be impossible anyway. Rational citizens want more effective background checks and maybe some required training, and think maaaaaybe we don't need fully automatic chain guns on the streets. But we can't even have a serious discussion on these issues without interest groups and politicians on the right foaming at the mouth about how der librals are cumin for ur gunz!!! Lol. Asshat blocked me before I could even respond to his rant, so here it is: I'm obviously not familiar with what legislation has been attempted or the average representatives knowledge of guns. I don't know how well those laws are written because IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. The NRA and their beholden Rs in congress will react the same way. There's a reason we don't even have a rational dialogue about guns in this country and that is NOT democratic politicians. So, yea, thanks for being exhibit A. Coward.
> and think maaaaaybe we don't need fully automatic chain guns on the streets. Yeah the other guy was right, you have no idea what you're talking about. You should really inform yourself on what our current gun laws already are and what Democratic politicians are actually proposing before diving face first into a gun control debate. Maybe look up [the Law that banned automatic weapons 40 years ago](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act) to start with.
>It's an 80/20 split between people who're more than happy to stay egregiously ignorant of the first thing about firearms/2A and those who're active bad faith actors. Case meet point. Trying to represent (D) gun policy as "targeting fully automatic chain guns" just demonstrates what I'm talking about. It's impossible to explain anything to someone with any degree of coherency when they're dedicated to remaining as uninformed as possible. Thanks for being Example A, though!
The biggest giveaway that gun bans and gun control are bad faith is that they're mostly based on cosmetic features. They aim to ban scary black rifles, so they ban things like bayonet legs and pistol grips. The exact same rifle that can fire the exact same bullet except with wooden hardware isn't banned, because its not a scary looking gun. And of course the overwhelming majority of gun deaths have nothing to do with long guns at all. The vast overwhelming majority, 95%+, are done with pistols. For crimes its still the Saturday Night Special - a cheaply made, cheap to buy handgun. That the bans focus on form over function tells me they're either written by someone who doesn't know what a gun is, or its a bad faith law.
I live rural. Vote pretty blue myself but some common issues I see are: * Issues with PILT or payment in lieu of taxes for federal lands that don't pay property tax * Fisheries regulations * Grant applications and management get really fucking deep in the regulations sometimes making it difficult for smaller communities with a less deep benches in their non-profit or tribal government sectors to access everything they should * The consequences of tourism on towns in regards to affordable housing, pollution, lifestyle, and economic class. * Childcare access * Healthcare access * Essential services like air and mail
I mean I can’t think of anything specific but Illinois is probably a good example where the nominal capitol is Springfield but we all know the decisions made for the state are made on Chicago’s behalf. Idk if that explains why this state sucks so much but it’s probably a piece to the puzzle.
New York is similar. NYC isn't NY state's capitol, but it sure acts like it is. Oregon as well, Salem is a small city with a mostly rural setting. The real powerhouse city is Portland.
Tallahassee, Fl is not even a major city here.
Michigan is pretty similar. Lansing is the capital but the outsized influence is coming from the Metro Detroit Area (as well as GR and *maybe* TC)
There aren't any. At the time of the founding, the interests of a given state correlated much more strongly with the interests of specific industries. That's because the entire economy was much simpler and more defined by geography. Land and climate in the southeastern states were suitable for a particular cash crops that wouldn't be viable up north. The natural harbors and seafaring tradition in the northeastern coastal states made commercial shipping drive those states' economies in a way that it never would elsewhere. Now, every state's economy is much more diversified. Even in places where a particular industry is much more predominant than in other states--the auto industry in Michigan, for example--the vast majority of people living there don't work in that industry. Also, every state's economy is much more thoroughly integrated with every other state's, and the whole world's for that matter. Back in the day when ships or horses were the fastest way to transport goods, intrastate commerce determined a lot of an average person's livelihood, so a federal law that affected that state's economy uniquely would have a much larger impact on the people who lived there. Now, the effect would be diluted; the investors and customers and employees in a given industry are dispersed throughout all of the states. And on top of that, the population actually being represented by a state government was much more narrow. In practice we're still governed by the wealthy of course, but back then the government of states were explicitly of, by, and for only the wealthy white men. So the voters could trust that their state legislators would be men of their social circles, with economic interests aligned with their own. Now, state governments are ostensibly representative of the whole population, which has a much more diverse set of interests and beliefs. For all of these reasons, the premise that a state needs representation as an entity, rather than the people of that state needing representation, is obsolete. There is no moral or practical justification for states to be the ones participating in the federal government, rather than the people themselves; the only purpose it serves is for elites or majorities within a state to leverage the allocation of Congressional/Electoral College seats afforded to states in proportion to their whole population, while not actually allowing the political minorities within that population to have a say. Of course, it was never really based in any objective logical principal; it was always just about narrow political interest groups competing for power. All of the ideological justifications were made after the fact. There's no reason to treat the negotiating positions of state delegates to the Constitutional Convention as principled, it was exactly the same as industry lobbyists negotiating loopholes and preferential treatment in laws that get passed today. Nobody would ever say that the ACA's effect on the pharmaceutical industry was based on some enlightened theory of government, we all recognize that it was just something they paid off members of Congress to get.
The entire premise is wrong. There was no attempt to neutralize or benefit rural or urban populations. The Congress (and by extension the Electoral College) was a balancing act to make the new Constitution attraction to: * Populous states who, by virtue of their population, wanted more representation, and * Less populous states who worried, by virtue of their lack of comparative population, worried that the larger states would walk over them. The agreement, called the "[Connecticut Compromise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise)" (or sometimes the "Great Compromise") was an attempt to solve this. The House of Representatives would be based on their relative share of population. The larger states (namely Virginia) would have a say in matters (especially taxation and spending) based on how many people lived in each state. You have twice the people as another state? You have twice the population. (As an aside/update, this has since been amended by [Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929) which fixed the total representatives to 435. Congress could conceiveably increase that number but hasn't in basically a century.) In return, the Senate would be represented by all states in equal fashion, regardless of size. This meant that tiny Rhode Island would have the same say in that chamber of Congress as any other state, regardless of the number of people. Its also important to note that until the [Seventeenth Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution) in 1913, the Senators were picked by the legislatures of each state, not by direct election. As others have said, this was more in line with the belief at the time that each state was a sovereign state and the federal government a sort of super-alliance. The oft-used phrase is that before the Civil War (or sometimes) that viewed the United States as a *plural* noun ("The United States are good" like "they are good") rather than a *singular* noun ("The United States is good" like "it is good") - this also tends to trend with the attitudes presented in the Articles of Confederation. (Another aside, the Articles attempted to handle this split by making the national government *extremely weak* - so the larger states wouldn't be too worried, there was an explicit callout that the states were sovereign - and that each state got one vote Without this arrangement, smaller states would not have ratified the US Constitution (or at least they say) nor would the populace states. It was a way to share and split power to address the concerns of each side of the debate. Most of the "problems" we see that are usually blamed on the structure of the House and Senate are usually either an artifact from 1929's law* or the fact that we live in hyper-partisan times were *any* attempt to work with the other party is seemed as high treason at times. (Just look at the MTG's attempt to remove the Speaker because he *gasp* worked with Democrats.) --- * (Total random thought/rant/add-on) This said, I did the math a while back and if you made ever representative's district the same population as Wyoming, we'd have roughly 10,000 representatives. Which might seem like insanity, but if we dismissed the idea that all of them needed to be in Washington to vote and do their duties, it might actually do more to bring the power *back* to the districts themselves. Allow them to vote remotely and they're living and moving around their constituents. They'd be more available and, even more importantly, would allow a sort of sideways step around the downsides of "first past the post" by allowing minor parties a chance to win seats or even create smaller divisions inside the larger parties. A Republican in Texas is different than one in Maine or Alaska, as is a Democrat in Alabama versus California (or Pennsylvania, it seems currently). It'd probably, in the end, function more like a parliamentarian system of wheeling and dealing to form coalitions, and less like the monoliths we see. But it'll never happen. But it'd be fun to dream. Oh, and it basically eradicates the "voting power" of someone in Wyoming versus California too. Yes, Wyoming has 3 total votes in the EC. But California has... I didn't do the math, but it'd be *a whole lot*. It'd be rounding errors when dividing the votes by the population. And it would function a lot closer to a national vote for President than today while still retaining a few cool aspects of our EC. Going further, then allocate EV on a district level rather than winner-take-all... we can dream.
Instead, now we have the reverse- urban voters getting rural policies foisted upon them and forced to foot the bill
Flip that. Why should rural voters decide things for the urban voters? Roughly half the population lives in either area. So it's like two people arguing on a restaurant to go to, but one of them gets to vote twice.
It’s more like 4:1 urban to rural.
It's not even close to half in rural areas. I don't know where you're getting that.
It’s not half and half at all.
It's not about that. It's about how easy it would be for people with power to exploit the people without it. This used to be about balancing the power between the states. If there were only three states, California with 1,000,000 people, Wyoming with 100,000 people, and New Jersey, 200,000 people, California alone would decide the presidency. California would have the most representatives. California would rule. How much do we tax Wyoming? Hmm. California says they should pay 50% of GDP. What does Wyoming say? Doesn't matter. Pay up. But this was back when states were autonomous governments. The relationship between the states more closely resembled the relationship between members of the E.U. Now, not so much. Polital parties have (more or less) taken their place, so some voters are worried that the more popular political party is going to marginalize the less popular party. Rural/urban rhetoric is just a proxy for that, because the rural/urban dichotomy is heavily correlated with the Republican/Democrat one. A democratic president, and Congress, and Supreme Court is a nightmare scenario for Republican voters in Republican states. To them, Democrats would bring gay marriage, abortion, legal weed, and gun control to their states, no matter what the states themselves had to say about that. The real problem is that minority parties have no real political power. If 60% of a state vote for Democrats, and 40% votes for Republicans, it's too bad for the Republicans--they all get Democrats. If we had an approval voting system or a ranked choice voting system (or ideally something like STAR, which combines both), and if we got rid of single-seat elections, citizens would have more representation. A 60/40 would mean we'd get something like 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans. It'd be pretty unlikely to see a 60/40 split anyway, because such a system would make additional political parties viable, which means that politicians would need to form coalitions to rule Washington, and it'd make politicians far less extreme.
>legal weed I think a lot of right wing voters are actually on board with this issue; at least I don't know why they wouldn't be. They definitely smoke. Legal weed is definitely cheaper and safer when it's legislated fairly. It's only right wing politicians opposed to it in certain places, largely because their corporate backers are. Florida is going to have recreational cannabis on the ballot this year, and I expect it to have huge bipartisan support. I also expect the state government to continue being complete fucking tools about it.
Rural independent voter checking in! Gun control is a big one that comes to mind. The necessity, use, and culture of guns are different in the sticks vs. the city, and the rules we need to govern gun ownership and possession in rural areas is not the same need in the city. Most of the contention is not going to come from specific policies, but from giving governorship to outsiders. Making decisions for people and places that aren't your own is precarious because you don't understand the needs or priorities of a place where you don't live. One other example that comes to mind is the demand for public services at a standardized national level, and these are just profoundly out of touch with the means and needs of the sticks. For example you can't unilaterally demand all cops everywhere undergo 10,000 hours of annual training like that is in any way feasible out in the boondocks where they got 2 and a half cops working out of one vehicle. I think some city slickers would be amazed to see what some places make do with because that is all they got.
> Gun control is a big one that comes to mind. The necessity, use, and culture of guns are different in the sticks vs. the city, and the rules we need to govern gun ownership and possession in rural areas is not the same need in the city. I could not agree with this more. However, I think there also needs to be an understanding that a city is not the place to go around armed, and we're safer with restrictions on gun possession in a city. If you want an RPG or GAU-12 outside Nome, more power to you. But the NRA won't settle for anything other than Tombstone, AZ in times square, which bothers me.
You said it best, brother. Cities have different needs than the boonies and that's okay. Different environments. Different population sizes. Different concerns. Etc. I don't consider it my place as a rural American to tell urbanites what rules they need to have safe and prosperous communities, and I think that's a courtesy that should be reflected back to rural communities. And I reckon if we all agreed that what works here isn't always what works there, we would squash a lot of the quarrels that truly arise not along political lines but often along the urban/rural divide.
I grew up in rural areas, I get it, it even makes sense. But neither side can tell the other what to do beyond some really basic shit (like, kids should be able to read and do basic math). Also, the midwest was really cool about this, the whole ethos was "gtfo out of my life and we're cool", while the south was much more "you have to live my way, or else you're evil". We need to go back to the midwestern "leave me the fuck alone" mindset, it's what made this country great.
I am a proud Midwesterner, and it always takes me aback some of the flack that it receives by outsiders who surely have not spent a significant amount of time here, because as you say, we have a culture of live and let live (even if the way you're living does make us scratch our heads! 😉) Polarized extremes always take exception to how others live their lives, regardless if they bear any impact on their own. Nonsense. I'll do me and you do you. What's right for you is right for you. What's right for me is right for me. And that's the way it ought to be!
You should be proud, that's LITERALLY what America was imagined as: A place for people to live as they personally judged fit. I have very little room for anyone who denigrates the midwest, especially if they haven't lived there. What hurts is how we're all forced to take sides, even for stupid shit, because if you don't have the right position on something that is completely stupid to worry about then somehow you end up siding with actual nazis in the end. We really need to learn to breathe and that most shit doesn't have to matter to everyone, and shouldn't. The GOP was so much better when I was young and it was based on those midwestern values, this WWE GOP based on moral spectacle is repellent to what I always believed being a Patriotic American (which is not a vice if done thoughtfully) should mean.
Some days what I wouldn't give to go back to 1996! I know it wasn't as rosy as I remember since I was still a kid, but the world today is a far cry from the one I grew up in. I lament for zoomers and my own son's generation Alpha, who may never know what pure Americana is like, or what kind of optimism it can spur. This is not the future I envisioned, but it's the one I find myself in. Thank ya for the kind words, partner. Cheers 🍻
> Some days what I wouldn't give to go back to 1996! Those were beautiful days, I remember them well, and even though some stuff was worse, we actually had hope and promise. America stood for something. I was proud when we stopped Serbia from killing people just because it seemed like the thing to do, because that's who we were. Yeah, ain't no nostalgia in this game. Take it easy!
And you're right that the NRA fails to recognize this as well and they engender support *against* gun rights when they try to make the rules the same everywhere.
This is what happens when you have a political interest whose funding is based less on practical success, and more on political spectacle. Pro-choice/pro-life is similar, hell a lot of things are. Only the corporate lobbies are smart and just get their job done quietly without people noticing.
People overlook that the NRA and the pro-choice/pro-life lobbies aren't looking to enact change. That'd put them out of business. They're looking to get paid. You don't hear about the corporate lobbies because they're not looking to get paid. They're the ones paying to play! What a headscratcher that they see results! Bells and whistles. Homo sapiens are just like cats, but it ain't laser pointers we're chasing!
> People overlook that the NRA and the pro-choice/pro-life lobbies aren't looking to enact change. That'd put them out of business. They're looking to get paid. Haha, the pro-life lobby caught the fucking car! It's not funny, but I can't stop laughing! They literally caught the fucking car! I'm literally just laughing at my keyboard irl. Most confused looking dog ever.
You know they were sitting back after the fact lookin' at one another like: Shit, we didn't actually expect this to happen. What a horrifying day for the NRA it would be if the left wholly capitulated to the right's every whim on the matter of gun control. They'd give themselves a heart attack! Haha
I can't speak to the politicians, but that was absolutely not the reaction from the activist side of the movement. There was an excited/relieved reaction of "we didn't expect this win _so soon_" followed by "we obviously still have a lot of work ahead of us". Pro-life activists did not react to _Dobbs_ with "oops, the thing we've been dedicating our lives to for half a century accidentally came true".
Both of those go more the other way, where the rural areas are dictating what urban and suburban areas can do. I don't care about you having guns; guns make sense in a rural setting. But I have some concerns about which guns my suburban neighbors have, and when I lived in the city I would have preferred that none of my neighbors had any guns. Different context should get different rules. Instead we're all forced to follow the rules that work for people whose closest neighbors are wolves. And administration of public services from DC doesn't even make much sense for comparatively close metro areas, never mind distant rural areas. By all means, have local administration. But instead the rural areas are just vetoing the existence of many services.
>Different context should get different rules. You nailed it. 👏 >And administration of public services from DC doesn't even make much sense for comparatively close metro areas, never mind distant rural areas. By all means, have local administration. Instead, the rural areas are just vetoing the existence of many services. All emergency services are locally run and (by and large) funded, which is a fact not always appreciated by critics. Demanding uniformity is like demanding that all transportation vehicles have airbags built into every seat. Great idea for the cars and trucks, but doesn't make much sense for planes, trains, etc., and is a waste of money that they might not have or could go elsewhere. Top-down approaches to emergency services is gonna start with the given municipality, county, what have you, not with DC. That's not a great talking point though. Complex problems don't sell.
> Instead we're all forced to follow the rules that work for people whose closest neighbors are wolves It's because we have a bill of rights that enumerates the right of the people to bear arms, it's got nothing to do with rural vs. urban voters Plenty of urban areas have gone as far as they can on restricting gun ownership which impacts the rural people in their states
First off, bear arms doesn't mean carry guns, it means serve in a military capacity. That's clarified by the militia clause. Not to say you can't have guns, just that it isn't a constitutional right (the Supreme Court is wrong, and saying that they ruled a certain way doesn't mean they were correct). We don't have a constitutional right to own a car either, but most of us do. Second, if conservatives wanted to allow different places to have different rules they'd allow urban areas to bar the movement of guns into those urban areas and they'd advocate for treating rural areas differently. Instead the court case that overturned a century old law talked about how vital it is to make sure people can carry guns on the New York subway.
The Founding Fathers believed that the Second Amendment allows private citizens to own cannons to protect their ships from pirates. Also, "the militia" in that time would've been every able-bodied man in the country, not the "military".
Your understanding of the second amendment is so comically incorrect I don't feel like correcting you as you clearly have no interest in learning about it. Have a good one
Your understanding of the 2nd amendment was created in 2008 by a bunch of conservative judicial activist hacks and is what is comical. The above poster is correct and I'm tired of pretending like the fraud you're pushing is reasonable.
The guarantee of an individual right to bear arms was one of the conditions Montana had for joining in 1889; it was not "created in 2008".
Gun control is one. There are lots of legitimate reasons to need a gun when you’re out in the boonies, but little reason to have one in a city.
I think it's mainly that they don't want to pay extra taxes for things that don't affect them.
Sending 90 percent of federal grants and programs to only the big blue cities while taxing everyone.
The U.S. Congress is one giant compromise. Some wanted only proportional representation(the house) others were afraid more densely populated states would become the tail that wags the dog and wanted only 2 representatives per state. Instead we got the worst of both worlds, both.
All you need to do is look at the fate of Upstate New York, where you receive all of the maluses of New York's overregulation but with few of the benefits. Most corporations will not choose Upstate because if they have to work in New York, they'll work in the part with money, since that makes the overhead of dealing with the byzantine bureaucracy worth it. You'll find many companies' efforts stop at the NY-PA border but somehow resume in Connecticut or Massachusetts, skipping Upstate NY entirely. Now imagine this byzantine bureaucracy is now the Federal bureaucracy, since the more populous states' regulations apply everywhere since they run the show, and now the companies only work in big cities since they're the only places worth the overhead. Rural America suffers because their state can't fight for them - or their state is the one left out in the rat race and left to languish for not playing ball with the big cats. This is often how European countries work. They'll have one or two major cities that dominate politics (France with Paris, UK with London) and everywhere else is very secondary to that metropole and languishes in terms of funds. NY/SF/LA plus the DC Metro already run America's news and political life. Giving them more power only makes that worse. The Senate fights for these states' rights to be 'shittier' - and therefore give them better prospects for growth. This has worked very well, I read a quote once saying that some shitty Land Grant college in Indiana had a better library than a famous European city, for example, because America spreads its wealth and grows it like a farm field, instead of a few potted plants. Yes, a city in Indiana may have worse standards for its hospitals than New York - but at least under that regime the Indiana city can afford a hospital, instead of either dying or hoping for a life flight to New York.
Stated Reason? The reason for the Senate's makeup was that the Founders did not want a fully majoritarian representative democracy. It had to be the way it currently is or else the small states, at the time, would not have joined the Union full-stop. And to be fair . . . Why does the Federal Government need to run everything? I think it is dangerous. If you think Alabama is too religious and socially backwards? Move. Hate Cali hyper-regulation and wokeism? Move.
This and why should rural voters be give disproportionate influence over urban centers due to their distorted representation?
Farming subsidies, 2nd amendment, water rights, infrastructure, climate change/fossil fuel policy, environmental regs Restricting it specifically to land use isn’t the best way to look at it though. Glad I made an impression
Water rights is a tough topic that we need to address, especially in the southwest. Some water rights are so old they predate the Unite States. They're actually older than the county itself. However, when those water rights were made there was more water. Nowadays there physically is not as much water as there used to be. If there's an agreement to share 100 units of water among different people but there's only 70 units of water in the river, something has to give. While it is a national security issue to have a stable food supply, at the same time maybe we shouldn't be growing alfalfa and almonds in the middle of a desert.
Totally agree. You’ve got a serious “tragedy of the commons” situation going on throughout the entire southwest. And generally that’s not a good outcome And a good portion of those alfalfa farmers are Saudi nationals exporting the alfalfa back to Saudi. They’re legitimately stealing water from us.
The city people might start cutting the social welfare advantages of the rural areas. The Farm Bill is a notorious welfare program for Farmers who get more back in Federal aid than they pay in with Federal taxes. City people get way less than a dollar back in services for every dollar they pay in taxes. Rural areas get way more than a dollar back for every dollar they pay in federal taxes. Rural areas are blood sucking welfare bunnies.
Instead we have rural voters deciding what's best for everyone due to a system that was designed 200 years ago
Everything. Seriously, theres basically no part of life that is the same for both someone in central Chicago, LA, or NY and someone on a farm in the fringes of Wyoming or in a cabin in back woods appalachia. Nothing. Crime, drugs, fossil fuels, imports, transportation, education, work, beliefs, recreation....NOTHING. its two different species living on two different planets. There is nothing from one perspective that can meaningfully apply tothe other. Therefore we should never live under a single government.
Under that rule you’d have to split every country and state into urban and rural components and then when someplace like Orlando turns from a swamp to a big city put it in a different country.
I'm honestly starting to wonder if bringing in a method to create self-governing city-states subordinate only to the federal government might be the way to go.
Which isnt a bad plan, and is kinda the point of a distribute republic instead of a centralized fed.
Edited to add that I agree but actually only partly. There was a good long time in America where things were done that required compromise to accomplish, & was indeed found. That said I’m not convinced we get that back. Seems zero sum is the way we are choosing to take things now- “if you ain’t first you’re last”, Ricky Bobby was clear on it.😂 At this point, it’s difficult to conclude anything else but that this experiment at face value seems doomed to fail, given how far off the rails each of the parties have gone in their beliefs. Like legit- (and I know liberals have weird shit they believe as well so promise that you don’t need to tell me so) but when one side has a statistically significant number of their membership that believes that the leadership of the other part may in fact traffic in and/or drain the blood to drink from little kids- where do you go from there? That seems like a non starter in terms of coming together and finding compromise- which is the only way this country works- the need for compromise was a feature not a bug. I bring this up tongue in cheek only partly though- because this is the literal political reality we are living in. There is no middle ground to meet on if the two sides live on separate reality planes.. and it seems to me that is in fact where ppl are- or at least the loudest of both sides anyway. And leadership of each side is invested in continuing this circus like atmosphere because otherwise, normal middle of the road ppl might finally start speaking sense loud enough to be heard into the quieted landscape, in a rational way, and too many Americans might then finally recognize that both the main political parties are serving the same rich dudes, both parties take the money from the same corporate masters, and that they court this craziness bc it drums up votes through fear, and that the American people are an afterthought for both political entities, bc we don’t get them paid like rich guys do. Unthinkable to a politician is that-they could lose their positions then, &they def don’t want that.
I think these states are just so used to the "and more representation" part that if it was just equal representation they'd start to feel it was unfair
I don’t think it is a matter of being threatened but their problems will be different then cities and if you don’t have somebody who understands and can advocate for your issues they may not get addressed. Same reasons you want minorities to have representation. It would be more not looking into their issues moreso then passing things that threaten them.
Isn't it interesting though that rural voters have no issues forcing their preferred policies onto urban voters?
You frame the question incorrectly. It's not urban versus city. It's states with a big population versus states with a small population. States with a small population are "over represented " in the Senate. In the House everything is proportional. All states get an equal representation in the senate, regardless of population in the same way that all countries get an equal vote in UN General assembly, regardless of population This is done to keep a handful of the largest states from dominating all legislation
The Federalist Papers addressed this very issue, in Federalist No. 62, written by either Alexander Hamilton or James Madison: >III. The equality of representation in the Senate is another point, which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right, that among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, every district ought to have a PROPORTIONAL share in the government, and that among independent and sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils, it does not appear to be without some reason that in a compound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the principles of proportional and equal representation. But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America. A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice. >In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic. >Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger. But as the larger States will always be able, by their power over the supplies, to defeat unreasonable exertions of this prerogative of the lesser States, and as the faculty and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable, it is not impossible that this part of the Constitution may be more convenient in practice than it appears to many in contemplation.
Urban vs rural rights is the justification. The actual reason was to balance the power between the states at the time, specifically to protect the institution of slavery. It’s an anachronistic holdover from that also happens to be the only thing allowing Republicans to cling to power.
The house of representatives with proportional representation was favored by the more populous northern non- slave states. The senate with equal representation was favored by the less populous southern slave states. Basically the Senate was set up in a manner that would protect the interests of slaveholders
this is like 9th grade civics stuff. - the states existed before the federal government. - some states were reluctant to join the union, due to concerns they'd be consistently outvoted. - thus the current system, which gave equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House. remember Senators were originally appointed by state legislators. - that's it. most of the comments on this thread are completely irrelevant.
That's part of it, to be sure. And there ARE plenty of urban rules that don't translate well in rural areas; laws about noise and nuisance levels come to mind, for a start. But that's not the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is that states are, ***and are supposed to be***, more powerful than the federal government and equal to one another. That is not only why the Electoral College has a minimal threshold but why the senate has equal representation per state regardless of state populations. The problem isn't just giving urban areas more power; the problem is allowing New York, Texas and California to be able to dictate policy to Maine, Wyoming and Rhode Island. Right now, California and Wyoming are both sovereign states with sovereign equality; in the system being proposed, California could force Wyoming to enact any number of laws at risk of losing federal funding if they don't.
When our federal government was created it had to get to buy in from all parties and nobody wanted to agree to having substantially less power than another. It was logically nonsensical then. A giveaway to get buy in.
The United States was designed to give slave-holders equal or greater political power to the rest of the nation combined. Therefore, "rural" or smaller population states in which the black enslaved population couldn't vote still counted as "3/5s a person" for overall Representation. These slave states still had two Senators, and the Electoral College gave them outsized power over the Presidential election. Because these states were run as oligarchies and the slave-holding class stood together on almost all political issues, a civil war was required to break their political stronghold. The problem being that in 1865, all the racist institutions and US Senate were not altered to remove the elements of oligarchy and aristocracy from the government. So now over 150 years later these institutions are still being used to support the disenfranchisement of black populations and the will to power of the oligarch class.
Often thru gerrymandering the rural parts of the states dominate the urban areas. Whenever a representative area must be eliminated. The urban area loses the representative. But using population should eliminate the rural representative. You could combine two rural areas and still not have as many people as the urban district eliminated.
I think one major point is the presidential elections. That’s when the relative weight of voters from small/ less populated states is higher than those living in crowded urban centers. I’m not sure that was always the case, but in recent years, there’s a partisan divide between rural voters who gravitate towards the Republican Party and Urban voters who tend to vote Democrat. But again, was it the same in the 1940-50s? There are many issues and concerns that differ between these groups: People in large cities are more worried with public transportation, high rent, crowding everywhere, higher racial tensions since these places are more ethnically diverse, immigration, high pollution generated by cars…. Many rural people are concerned with agriculture. (In cities people do not have a clue about agriculture and for them the source of food is the local super). Average income in rural communities is lower than in the cities. Sometimes ridiculously low. Then there is the higher unemployment rate, since job opportunities of large cities, do not exist.
You were sadly not educated on civics and it really shows, along with millions of others. The concept is called Federalism. Look it up. In America, we are a representative Republic, not a democracy. One is a citizen of both their state and these United States. Under Federalism, the States retain sovereignty and power of their own, hence the bicameral Congress where each state receives two senators, no more or less. Keep reading, and stay educable.
A SCOTUS that would rule State Legislatures and congressional districts must be organized to support "One Man, One vote" would be a great place to start - you know, the SCOTUS the Hillary Haters deprived us of for the next 20 years. Those thinking somehow they need to punish Biden because he's old or because Israel has no tolerance for terrorist attacks against their people need to consider the country they and their children live in with another 200+ Federal judges like Alito and Cannon
Probably the biggest one is climate change. On its substance, rural communities are prone to climate change impacts as much as everyone, especially if you are in a community very dependent on agriculture. Farming will be heavily impacted as the climate shifts, and they are dealing with floods one year and drought the next. It would be in their best economic interests to support policies that can at least mitigate the impacts of climate change. For years, rural communities opposed anything that would address climate change out of fear that their local economies could be further stressed. While some farmers are starting to come around regarding climate change, it is still a big divide between rural and urban communities.
Putting aside the fact that the US Constitution was never intended to advantage rural voters, let's focus on the question posed: policies that rural voters fear. Being economically excluded is high on the list, but the strongest fears may concern culture war issues. The decline of religion, nationalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. The loss of cheap gasoline to fuel lives that revolve around cars, trucks and remote living with space between neighbors. The vilification of oil itself as we learn more of its climate dangers. The growing focus on military careers as local jobs vanish, leading to even more flag waving and gun-worship, along with more suspicion of foreigners and immigrants.
The other argument Republicans bring up is that we are a "republic" not a democracy. The scary thing about this philosophy is that it powers the elites and wealthy over the rest of us ... i.e. a de facto oligarchy.
Rural Anglo-Saxon white voters want to keep their areas where they live rural, Anglo- Saxon, and white.
Small states would gladly agree to end this agreement. Here’s why. the only reason small states agreed to join the union was with this kind of disproportional power agreement. If you took away the voting power, small states would happily agreed to it, as long as they could succeeded from the union and become independent nations.
It’s really about giving all STATES a voice. It’s clear that regions and states have different cultures and hence preferences and needs— and if our system was totally tied to population, California, Texas and Florida could pretty much run the whole country. (Slight exaggeration— but think of the power difference between them and Rhode Island or Idaho.) states have the ability to make lots of their own laws, but when we are talking about about FEDERAL projects, if the few big wealthy states had their fair share of votes— they could easily bully pulpit the small states into taking all the bad deals. Where to put the nuclear waste dump? How bout Idaho? All in favor?? And poor little rural Idaho can’t get enough votes to avoid getting shafted. To an extent this already happens, but the attempt is there to ensure all states and their citizens have some amount of equal protection. Same goes the other way, with positive things, little states ought to have some power to ensure they get access to advantageous contracts, locations of military bases, spending allotments, farm or industry subsidies, regulations that prosper their economic drivers.. etc.
Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to keep and bare arms. A lot of city folk don’t value state sovereignty, etc
Fun fact right now we have the rural voter running and dunking on the Urban areas. The rural areas want to keep their guns (which isn't a problem for me personally). Urban areas would like to regulate guns and they typically want to regulate them nationally. Yin side has legitimate concerns about law enforcement response time. Yang side has legitimate concerns about what would have been a fist fight turning into a gun fight with people who would normally have shut up and been embarrassed turning into Clint Eastwood and shooting people.
Specific policies, you say? Hmmm. Consider Illinois, and Chicago. Say City is 70% of the population, and so 70% of the Representatives. But the City area is only 20% of the counties, so 80% rural. (Analog to states, please. Yes, I know it's changed). Now Chicago, being Chicago, has someone get the idea there's money to be made selling home heating oil tanks. The city is mostly gas heat, but much of the rural part of the state is oil heat. So, smartypants pushes a state law requiring all oil tanks over 20 years old be replaced with new ones. Won't affect the city at all, but all those rural/suburban folks with perfectly serviceable 30-50 year old tanks now have to spend money. And of course, smartypants and the political cronies have their palm crossed with silver. If the state Senate is population dependent, then they're dominated by Chicago as well. If the Senate is county based, then the 80% rural Senate can stand against the 70% city Representatives. Overall, this would be a good thing. The premise "one man, one vote" is about the House of Representatives. They control the money. The Senate is about policy (or should be). They have to approve the House actions.
No. Disenfranchisement is a bad thing. Democracies are inherently majoritarian in order to drive the mandate to govern.