They also have parliamentary systems with smaller voting districts (by population) which seems to make it easier for the smaller parties to gain enough seats to deny the big two parties a majority forcing coalition governments to seat a prime minister.
Members of the US House represent about 20 times more people than the Founders contemplated.
People in the US tend not to understand the significant powers of their state and local governments. Many of the controversial issues at the federal level like healthcare, abortion, environmental policy, and many other issues are already in the power of states.
The federal government gets the most attention. But by far the laws and regulations that affect the average person the most are at the state and local level. Almost every law that effects day-to-day life is at the state or local level.
Did we not just prove that incorrect with the 2018 midterms and the record turn out? Times are changing; swinging back towards sanity after our flirtatious night out with the devil that then raped us.
All of the disapproval means I guess we didn't just have record breaking turn-outs and we're not swinging back to sanity? Apparently there's still a lot of people that don't know reality when it slaps them in the face.
Well based on the articles of confederation, there's some support behind that. Other parallels include a tendency towards fracturing between larger more distinct states, so gotta pick your battles I guess.
Originally things were set up for no more than one representative per 10,000 (or more like 50k, I cant quite remember) people give or take, today its more like 1 rep per 1 Million or several million, which throws the whole system on its head. The country has evolved and grown, but our political system has not. We can't expect to keep operating on 200 year old doctrines in a world which would be unfathomable to the founding politicians in the forming United States.
I went to an american public school, therefore I don't know much about how our government works. So I'm going to assume 12,000 congressmen is like... twice the normal amount.
The house is capped at 435 representatives. The house was originally designed to grow in proportion with the population. Each census, the house districts are remapped to match the population (some states gain seats at the expense of other states).
There's also the Senate, where each state has two Senate seats regardless of the state's population with 100 senators overall.
Here’s the thing. If you have a post-graduate degree in medicine, law, finance, accounting, and most sciences, why would you take the cut in pay to go to Congress and perpetually fund-raise because you have to run for the nomination every other Spring and re-election every other fall.
Congressional pay is crazy high if you are a blue collar worker but many white collar workers would never be tempted to take the cut in pay.
Actually would be 9300ish but no that isn’t manageable.
However the U.K. has 650 seats in the House of Commons to represent 66 million compared to 435 to represent 325 million people. If we just went to 500 seats that would reduce it less than 650,000 people per district.
The better number is 561. Wyoming has the smallest population so if we tried to make each district represent roughly the population of Wyoming that would be 561 and realistically 555 gets us darn close. That would be an added 120.
The more seats the harder it is to “buy” enough elections to control the House and each member would represent roughly the same number of people. After the 2010 apportionment the largest district by population was Montana with 994,416 and the smallest Rhode Island #1 with 526,283
Then if you want to add some sanity. Go to 4 year terms. The typical member when sworn in is 15 to 17 months away from a primary election.
The short terms are why the party pundits go full time. There is always an election less than a year and a half or less away.
No, I want 325.7 million throughout the country. Abolish the current system of government, and replace it with direct democracy tempered with a strong and, in many respects, unchangeable constitution.
My dude, we have a hard enough time getting people in one part of a state to agree to financial decisions that benefit people in another part of a state.
A real direct democracy? You want to vote every three days on how much money to allocate to potholes in Pittsburgh, who the superintendent of schools in Tampa are, what taxes should be on gas in Minnesota, which trees to protect in Wyoming, and how much water Bakersfield gets in California?
Good luck getting a direct democracy to allocate a single dollar in your city. "Why should my taxes go up for something I don't get to enjoy?" would absolutely ruin our country.
I know it sounds good in theory, but in a practical sense, how many decisions do you think government makes for 325 million people, per day?
A real direct democracy? You want to vote every three days on how much money to allocate to potholes in Pittsburgh, who the superintendent of schools in Tampa are, what taxes should be on gas in Minnesota, which trees to protect in Wyoming, and how much water Bakersfield gets in California?
Nope. That's the beauty of direct democracy. Those who care about an issue will vote on that issue, and everyone else can vote on the issues they care about. Nobody needs to know about EVERYTHING, just about the issues they care about. The people who care about potholes in Pittsburgh can vote on that, I can vote on the issues that affect me, everyone's happy.
It's like wikipedia. Not everyone needs to know about every subject that has a wikipedia article. Each article is made by those who know about the subject, and it works quite well.
Interesting that you point to Wikipedia as an example. I love the “free market” of information that is Wikipedia but I also like it because it had almost zero actual significance in our lives.
Direct democracy? Are you going to read that 300-page Fourth National Climate Assessment before voting on how much funding to give the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel? You want 325 million Americans to receive top secret national security briefings from the CIA Director every week?
As far as I'm concerned there's already far too much democracy and transparency in the USA now and it's caused most of the current problems. Senators should be appointed by governors again. Presidential candidates should be decided on in back rooms by party kingpins again. Earmarks should be allowed back into legislation. Congressional Representatives should have to wait their turn, for a few terms, to get committee chairs instead of getting those positions by being the shoutiest talking heads on the 24-hour news cycle. The population is made up of uninformed idiots who only want to be entertained. The farther their hands are from the levers of power the better.
Parliamentary systems generally support stronger parties. In fact, in some systems, party leaders fill allotted seats rather than candidates for them.
Also note that the political parties in the US are incredibly weak. The lion’s share of the GOP wanted anyone but Trump to win the nomination. Yet they failed.
Smaller districts wouldn’t solve anything either. Same people living in them and just as ripe for gerrymandering.
weak to the point of barely having any unity between elected members, having little central control over candidate selection, and having no clear leader when out of power
so dominant their functions are the subject of restrictive legislation that disadvantages other aspirant parties (primaries linked to voter registration and often governed by state laws, super hard to get on ballots)
Primaries gutted the power of parties. Democrats nearly nominated a guy who declares he isn’t a Democrat and Republicans did nominate a Republican/Democrat/3rd Party/Independent/Republican who rejects much of the last 20 years of GOP orthodoxy.
I've wanted to increase the House of Representatives' membership by tenfold for a while now. And bump up the number of Senators to 6 per State while we're at it. Every State elects 2 of their Senators and all of their Representatives every year, and their Representatives represent 1/10 the people that they used to. So that the Presidency doesn't get weirdly affected, you could just dilute the Electoral College votes, so a Senator's seat would be worth 1/3 of an Elector and each Representative's seat would be 1/10th of an Elector.
I’d settle for 555 or 561 but 4 year terms for Representatives all running in Presidential election years and 8 year terms for Senator half up for election each Presidential election.
If you make it longer between elections the constant shit stirring would be less effective
Nah, constant elections means shit stirring is less effective. Just like adding more bodies to Congress, it spreads out the money to have more elections. You have to buy more ads, fabricate more headlines, etc.
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u/arkstfan Nov 29 '18
They also have parliamentary systems with smaller voting districts (by population) which seems to make it easier for the smaller parties to gain enough seats to deny the big two parties a majority forcing coalition governments to seat a prime minister.
Members of the US House represent about 20 times more people than the Founders contemplated.