• @[email protected]
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    1110 hours ago

    That’s the point of the Senate: land gets equal votes

    The house is for population, but we fucked it by capping the total number of reps you can have there

    • @[email protected]
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      1010 hours ago

      Land doesn’t have rights. It’s just gerrymandering by another name. The problem works both ways. The rural fuckheads in California are also unrepresented. Harris County (where Houston is located) is larger than Rhode Island. Where is their representation? Why do the Dakotas (4 senators for virtually no population) get more political power than California or Texas? Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio get no representation despite a huge amount of population. Rural Californians get no representation despite outnumbering the Dakotas and Wyoming.

      • @[email protected]
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        510 hours ago

        Land doesn’t have rights

        I agree, but the point is to have a section of the government where the 50 disparate governments that make up our union have equal say. This tends to get simplified to “land gets 2 votes” because the other part of Congress is population based

        Where is their representation

        In the house, as I said already. Also, their 2 senators are part of their representation, they’re still part of the state

        Why do the Dakotas (4 senators for virtually no population) get more political power than California or Texas?

        Because the house has a limit on members. The senate is literally equal by design

        Your issue seems to be a lack of understanding of how our legislative branch works because your complaints are all root issues of the House of Representatives and not the senate

        • @[email protected]
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          710 hours ago

          I agree with your House argument, but I strongly believe that the design of the Senate was a major fuck-up. Senators are far more powerful than representatives, and I get none. A single house member cannot torpedo legislation the way a Senator can. North Dakota (population 780k) gets two. The 4.7M people in Harris County get none. That is a poor design.

          • @[email protected]
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            210 hours ago

            and I get none

            Only if you’re not an American or live in DC

            (population 780k) gets two. The 4.7M people in Harris County get none. That is a poor design

            Again the people in Harris county get 2 senators as their state senators represent them. And, again, senators do not represent based on population as that is the job of the house

            Senators are far more powerful than representatives

            Entirely irrelevant as they represent different things. Your representatives represent a portion of your population while your senators represent your state as a whole. The entire point of separating the state and population representation is to allow more perspectives when legislating: the house gives a perspective from closer to the people, the senate from a broader view

            Again, it seems you fundamentally don’t understand the split between house and Senate, why it exists and what it does to our governing system

            • @[email protected]
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              12 hours ago

              Their two senators don’t represent them at all though. That’s the rub. They’re punished because they live in a colossal state with a bunch of dumb fucks. If you get 260k votes in North Dakota, you are a Senator in a landslide. You get 260k votes in Texas and congrats you managed to lose to Henry the Porpoise who was a write-in candidate.

              North Dakotans have disproportionate political power because the system is inherently biased against large states. The result is tyranny of the minority.

              If we can’t have some equity in the rules, then we should consolidate the Dakotas, Wyoming,Montana, and Alaska down to one state. The lower 48 of that group especially largely have similar political views. They shouldn’t get 5 times the political power of California or Texas when together they don’t even have half the population.

            • Pennomi
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              68 hours ago

              It’s obvious why the Senate exists historically, and it’s also obvious that it’s inherently undemocratic.

              • @[email protected]
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                48 hours ago

                I mean historically it existed mostly because states had much more autonomy and power, much like a city state or country. Until at least Lincoln that part of the system had a good logic to it. If they only went off of proportional representation they could basically ignore small states needs. In order to get states to agree to join the union, they had to build a country that would give all states a serious seat at the table.

                The main reason people on the left hate it so much now is that it currently hurts us, but it’s very much an equity vs equality argument. The system was set up to be equitable even if it isn’t equal. Something the left typically supports and this meme touches on. I think the higher priority fix is the house, as it no longer even does what it was designed to do.

              • @[email protected]
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                08 hours ago

                it’s inherently undemocratic

                It’s exhausting trying to discuss shit online with people with such a terrible understanding of the topic at hand

                Senators are voted for and represent their entire state. They’re the representatives of the state’s general populace in a representative democracy

                • Pennomi
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                  18 hours ago

                  One human = one vote

                  Anything else is undemocratic and I think it’s morally reprehensible to support a system that values any one person above another for any reason.