The Senate is not subject to garrymandering and if we fixed the issues with the House (literally via any mechanism) the Senate would immediately go back to being the vehicle used to prevent the will of the people (see the Senate under Mitch McConnell any time the House was under Democrat control)
Until the Dem party fixes their brand and wins back some of the Senate seats they used to control in the 90s and early 2000s there will be no positive progress.
The Senate is in a permanent state of gerrymandering.
There were only 13 states when the Constitution was ratified. It was never envisioned to be as disproportionate as it is today, with California's two Senators representing 40 million people vs. Wyoming's 0.6 million.
Gerrymandering is particular powerful because Congress has refused to reapportion representatives for over a century. They just decided to stop following that part of the Constitution back in 1929. We still have the same number of representatives as we did when we were less than a third our current population. Each representative now covers 20 times more people than when the Constitution was ratified.
Yes and: our first-past-the-post form of elections begets gerrymandering.
My future perfect world:
proportional representation for assemblies (eg US House),
some arbitrarily low number of reps per citizens (200k - 400k?),
no upper assembly (eg US Senate),
approval voting for executive positions (eg Mayor, Sheriff, President),
only public financing of campaigns,
limit campaign season to maybe 6 weeks.
Friendly amendments to my wishlist cheerfully accepted.
There's so many reasonable, impactful reforms which could be done. And my wishlist is based on my (imperfect) understanding of best available (political) science. And I'm all ears about SCOTUS reforms. And I doubt any reforms will stick, so long as our gini coefficient is so out of whack (wealth vs democracy, the timeless struggle).
nullocator|4 months ago
Until the Dem party fixes their brand and wins back some of the Senate seats they used to control in the 90s and early 2000s there will be no positive progress.
JauntTrooper|4 months ago
There were only 13 states when the Constitution was ratified. It was never envisioned to be as disproportionate as it is today, with California's two Senators representing 40 million people vs. Wyoming's 0.6 million.
moron4hire|4 months ago
specialist|4 months ago
My future perfect world:
Friendly amendments to my wishlist cheerfully accepted.There's so many reasonable, impactful reforms which could be done. And my wishlist is based on my (imperfect) understanding of best available (political) science. And I'm all ears about SCOTUS reforms. And I doubt any reforms will stick, so long as our gini coefficient is so out of whack (wealth vs democracy, the timeless struggle).
otikik|4 months ago
SaltyBackendGuy|4 months ago