416
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
416 points (98.6% liked)
News
23659 readers
3563 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Huh? Could you explain further?
Here, our districts will adhere to provincial boundaries, but they aim to have equal population, with redistribution every 10 years. Less populated provinces will have fewer seats.
I’m assuming it’s not that way?
US Congress is broken into bodies. The Senate and the House of Representatives.
Senate is 2 people per state. So Wyoming’s 0.6m people get the same representation as California’s 40m people.
The House is proportional to population size. There are 435 seats in the House, and those seats get allocated to states based on their population size. Bigger states get more seats. They’re allocated using this formula:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%E2%80%93Hill_method
Big states often get grumpy that the senate allows a minority to obstruct what the majority in the nation wants. That said, the senate allocation rules were established this way to encourage smaller states join the union. It was a way to ensure that small states didn’t get completely steamrolled by states that has different populations and needs.
The Congressional districts also aren't evenly distributed, meaning if you live in a densely populated city, your vote means less than if you live in a rural area. I haven't bothered looking at actual population stats, so maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
You're not wrong. I think districts have to be roughly equal population within a state. But California needs like 17 more spots for their votes to equal Wyoming's votes for the House. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule
You are correct, and it is exacerbated by the cap on representatives. You will never really get it 100% perfect due to the land mass of the US, but uncapping it and making it proportional would go a long way.
Minor correction: the Senate is 2 per state, so Wyoming's 1 state has the same representation as California's 1 state. The Senate is (supposed to be) the voice of the States in the Federal Government. The Senate wasn't even supposed to be elected by popular vote, they were appointed/elected by their state governments until the 17th amendment. The change made senators into super-representatives, which changed power dynamics. Arguments can be made here for whether this was ultimately better or worse.
The House of Representatives IS the voice of the people, and should be proportional to population size (but was artificially capped because the Feds complained it was getting too big so now Wyoming has more representational power per person than California). This needs to change because it's only going to get worse going forward.
With this breakdown, the Federal Government's interests, State's interests, and the People's interests balance each other. These three bodies have vastly different focuses.