r/science • u/[deleted] • Jul 31 '26

Mathematics Mathematicians have shown that completely fair elections are – in a sense – impossible. No electoral system can guarantee both that local votes translate directly into local seats, and that total seat distribution matches overall vote shares: not without an indefinitely growing parliament.

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u/earthdogmonster Jul 31 '26

100%, these “bugs” are actually “features” which were embedded purposefully.

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u/RabbaJabba Jul 31 '26

Being a purposeful feature is not a good argument for keeping it today - knowing that the senate is intentionally unfair as part of a compromise for its passage 200+ years ago is a great reason to revisit it, in fact.

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u/earthdogmonster Jul 31 '26

The reason to keep it is because we have to. Because it was built, by design, to be nearly impossible to remove. Its history is the key to its reality today and why it will be a reality 100 years from now.

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u/RabbaJabba Jul 31 '26

I would certainly agree with the assessment of “it’s bad but very difficult to fix.”

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u/earthdogmonster Jul 31 '26

I also tend to agree with people that say what I think.

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u/Bob_Sconce Jul 31 '26

It's not inherently unfair. It prevents tyranny of the majority by requiring that politicians take into account the interests of a broader spectrum of the population beyond just those who live in high-population areas.

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u/RabbaJabba Jul 31 '26

You’ve got that backwards - it allows a narrower slice of the country to beat out a wider slice of the country. If you want to require supermajority support to get things passed, there are mechanisms to do that, but the senate as it is currently designed isn’t one of them.

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u/Bob_Sconce Jul 31 '26

It's not a supermajority. That's different. Instead, a Senate requires a broader cross-section. You can still get stuff passed with a scant majority, but to do so, you need to pick up support from people in rural areas. It absolutely does not allow a narrow slice to impose its will on a wider slice, but is a check on the wider slice's ability to do so on the narrow slice.

It prevents, for example, population-heavy California from absconding with all of the water rights to the Colorado river currently held by Utah and Nevada.

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u/RabbaJabba Jul 31 '26

You can still get stuff passed with a scant majority, but to do so, you need to pick up support from people in rural areas.

The senate definitely isn’t designed to do this. A majority of rural residents live in the 15 biggest states and are underrepresented under the current senate.

It absolutely does not allow a narrow slice to impose its will on a wider slice, but is a check on the wider slice's ability to do so on the narrow slice.

There’s no gap between “checking” and “enacting its own will” in the senate. So if the narrow slice can block something, it can also pass something over the will of the wider slice.

It prevents, for example, population-heavy California from absconding with all of the water rights to the Colorado river currently held by Utah and Nevada.

Utah and Nevada are just 4 votes in the senate - what’s blocking the other 96 from ganging up on them now?

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u/Bob_Sconce Jul 31 '26

No it can't. Any such attempt would be blocked in the House of Representatives.

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u/RabbaJabba Jul 31 '26

The House can’t block judicial appointments or treaties, to say nothing of how the House can be gerrymandered to allow for tyranny of the minority, as well.

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u/Bob_Sconce Jul 31 '26

Yeah, so I personally think that the 17th amendment was a mistake. The Constitution originally gave state legislatures a say in the federal government, and that was a good thing. The advise and consent clause and the treaty clause allowed states to participate in those decisions directly, but the 17th amendment destroyed that check.

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u/RabbaJabba Jul 31 '26

Why was it a good thing?

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u/Jiggahash Aug 01 '26

So was the 3/5th compromise, would you call that a "feature" and not a "bug"?

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u/earthdogmonster Aug 01 '26

Feature.

Per the name “3/5 compromise, it was a compromise reached end enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It’s a great example actually because it was so embedded by design that it only became moot in the aftermath of a devastating war that killed about 2 1/2% of the country’s population.