Quote:
Originally Posted by harrycrat
As we all know well,the difference in pop between the 4 biggest & the 8 smallest states is huge...
The Constitution regards the Senate as a mechanism of balance between the states,it did not anticipate such a huge differentiation in population.
Today we have 2 Sens for CA ( 38m citizens ) & 2 Sens for WY ( 700K citizens).
Such a discrepancy is completely antidemocratic.
We can retain the same number of Senators & the same Senate rules,if we divide the 4 biggest states,CA,NY,TX,FL in 8 new states,
say North & South for each...
& merge the 8 smallest ( it is boring to try to find exactly which ones are so...) in 4...
Thus the Senate would be more democratic,less undemocratic...
Even considering the balance of powers,between red & blue,it will roughly remain the same as today...
What do u think ..?
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We live in a
republic. A republic is a representational democracy, not a direct democracy. There is a huge difference between the two forms of the same thing.
The House of Representatives represents us all by our state population; the House is allowed to add the number of Representatives as a state grows, and Representatives can be lowered as the population shrinks in a once more highly populated state.
The House, by constitutional intention is supposed to be the chamber that is most responsive to the desires of a regional locality within any state, and is designed to keep all the Representatives directed to those desires by the short term they all have. 2 years allows the public to quickly vote out any Representative who does not reflect the majority of his voters.
This already creates the balance you seek, and also creates an equal voice for every state. large or small, in the Senate. The Senate is designed to be Congress' most deliberative body. Senators have the longest term of all, so that they are not overly swayed nor influenced by passing desires or short-term issues large and small. That's the House's job. The Senate controls matters of long-term importance, and acts as a counterbalance to all the daily action and hub-bub that the House undergoes.
This is not anti-democratic. It's a very practical set of checks and balances, the essentials for any republic.
Direct democracy only works at its best on much smaller levels, both of population and issues. A city council and a county commission are both examples of effective direct democracy. All state governments are designed to be republics on a lesser level, as every state has confilicting issue and desires within it that do not have much effect on another state, but are all very important the the citizens with a state.
If you can come up with a more balanced method of governance than this, have at it. What you want now would put us all in continual disarray, especially now, when many citizens move more frequently and farther than past generations ever did.
There is no guarantee whatsoever than any of the largest states will stay as highly populated forever as they are now. There is no guarantee that any of the lightly populated states will remain small forever, either.
Population booms and busts can happen very quickly. North Dakota is a very good recent example of this. Since the United States is a very large nation with many conflicting concerns and has a high population, your plan would essentially render our federal government useless, as it could not address all the nation's challenges at the same rate of speed.
Very important things like strategic defense take a long time to develop and a longer time to implement. Your plan cripples this and would make us very vulnerable in all kinds of ways. The same is true with our economic challenges and many other areas of our society.
At the same time, a federal government without balance could dump all the money that's available on one natural catastrophe, like a huge tornado outbreak, while leaving other longer-term catastrophes, like floods, with no funding at all when the floods follow the outbreak a month later.
That's just a couple of obvious examples. There are thousands more that rely on our essentially balanced system.
In addition, the states with the lowest populations do not all adjoin each other. Some would have very little in common with others, creating an even greater internal conflict.
The 8 least populated states are all in the west. They are all territorily larger on average than the 8 most highly populated states. One is Alaska.
All their populations are separated by hundreds to thousands of miles apart from each other. Driving from the northern border of Idaho, for example, to the eastern boundary of South Dakota, staying within the boundaries of all the other 6 neighboring states with low populations would require 2 long days of driving.
New Mexico, the 7th state with low population, is an island surrounded by states with higher populations, so there are no shared boundaries at all.
And Alaska is a week's drive away or more, with no boundaries that connect it to the rest of the United States.
In comparison, the most densely populated states are all much closer together, less than a day's drive away from each other, except for Florida, which would require a day and a half's drive.
Those physical distances are very important.
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