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Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
(www.pewresearch.org)
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Instead of tilting at the windmill that is removing the EC how about we do something much easier and simpler and simply expand the House of Representatives? Not only would this add votes to the EC and make the Presidential Elections more representative it would also, you know, make the HoR more Representative! For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.
All we need is a change to the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929. There is no good reason that the size of the HoR is fixed at 435. None.
you should lead with this
In 1929, each representative represented about 283k Americans. Now each representative represent about 762k Americans. That's almost a 300% increase. This means each American's voice is only about 1/3rd as powerful as it was in 1929. To have as much political power as they did in 1929, we'd need about 1200 Representatives.
I don't see a problem with that.
And yet, having more representatives fundamentally reduces the power of each as well. Your vote is fundamentally worth less as the population increases. Something you're just gonna have to come to terms with.
I'm ok with my vote meaning more or less as long as it's the same vote everyone else gets...that's not the case with the current system.
Would there be any way to have everyone keep the same voting power while the population tripled?
Sure, you just define the problem differently. Instead of saying that there are X representatives in total, you just say there should be 1 representative for every 283K citizens. In this way the number of representatives naturally scales with the population.
This is basically what the Wyoming Rule does. It sets the ratio in the lowest population State, currently Wyoming, as the ratio for everywhere. Wyoming currently has 500,000 people and 1 Representative. That means the HoR would expand to something like 580 Seats.
We could change the math, and the name, to the "1929 Rule" and set the ratio 280,000 to 1. I'm actually fine with an HoR that has 1,200 people in it but either way the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929 needs changed and the HoR needs expanded.
Good point - it's not about power because everyone else also gets that extra power up. It's about equity.
And we can achieve now that through fairness in redistricting.
That's a long way around to get to fair representation. It amounts to a distraction from the real issue.
We can achieve that now through fairness in redistricting.
No you can't.
Your way doesn't return the ratio of EC votes between the HoR and the Senate to what it should be. It keeps it stuck in 1929 and every year that goes by makes it worse.
Your way doesn't scale the number of total EC votes as our population grows.
Your way ALSO doesn't return the ratio of Citizens to Representatives to anything resembling sanity. Ratios of nearly 800,000 to 1, and growing, are irrational and break Democracy.
You could redistrict the ever loving hell out of the other 49 States but Wyoming would keep it's 3 EC votes and its outsized vote for President. It would keep it's outsized influence in the HoR and it would keep it's ranking as #1 in the Citizen to Representative Ratio.
So much of what everyone hates about our Federal Government today is DIRECTLY tied to a vastly undersized HoR. The body is simply too small to adequately represent a population of over 300,000,000 people.
There are only so many ways to divide 435 seats while still guaranteeing at least 1 seat per state.