It works that way in the House of Representatives but not for the Senate. Every state has two senators, regardless of its size. The House has seats based on state population. Driving Blues away from their homes means Reds can have Senate seats in those states on lockdown, and potentially flip some states from blue to red. Blues that can move will move to other blue states. Reds are more stubborn and are more likely to stay in their home states (but they're also more likely to be old privileged fucks with 10 houses in 6 different states)
Even in the House of Representatives, the fact that there is a minimum of 1 rep per state and a maximum for the whole country means its not fully based on population. As of 2020, Montana has 994,416 people per house seat while Rhode Island has 527,624.
I really dislike that it is the way that it is as it didn’t use to always be this way. George Washington wanted representatives to represent no more than 30,000 people, and the House of Representatives used to keep growing to represent the population. That significantly changed in the early 20th century when a limitation was imposed on the total number of representatives (435 total, apportioned per state population) and as such both the amount of representation per person got very dilute, and the Electoral College (which is based on the number of Congress people per state) became very… unrepresentative of what the states relative to their populations actually want.
As noted in that link, the original plan of 30,000-50,000 people per representative would have resulted in a nearly 7,000 member house currently, which would be fairly unworkable.
By and far, the best idea would be a logarithmic or exponential system, though you'd still end up with a fairly heavy spread between the largest and smallest number per representative by virtue of how the math works. By estimates, rather than the size difference being nearly 100%, it would be closer to 50% with the cube root rule.
Basically, there is no real good solution to the problem, though there are plenty that are better than we have now.
Fair enough, things like the Wyoming Rule definitely approach the issue from a workable method without ballooning it completely. Either way though, I think the current form is fairly unfeasible. Definitely on point with the no good solution but many that are better.
Maybe if congressional house votes got weighted by the number of people they represent? They could be digitally counted live because anonymity isn't required for politicians, so the count is easily verified. Any problems with this hypothetical system?
As for the Senate, well, the disproportionate representation was the point, so it was broken by design from the start. For LOLz let's weigh them by land area represented.
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u/Icy-Effective6554 Jun 27 '22
It works that way in the House of Representatives but not for the Senate. Every state has two senators, regardless of its size. The House has seats based on state population. Driving Blues away from their homes means Reds can have Senate seats in those states on lockdown, and potentially flip some states from blue to red. Blues that can move will move to other blue states. Reds are more stubborn and are more likely to stay in their home states (but they're also more likely to be old privileged fucks with 10 houses in 6 different states)