Comment by saubeidl
2 days ago
I mean sure. But that's how most democratic systems work?
A Californian did not vote for the Senator from North Carolina.
A Londoner did not vote for the MP from Edinburgh.
A Berliner did not vote for the Bavarian Bundesrat member.
At least the Berliner gets an additional vote for the party so they can get both local and representative national representation.
The Londoner is completely out of luck if their seat is a safe seat but not their party.
Not that German politics isn't pretty hosed too.
The USA senate is another example of something that is not democratic. 2 people per state regardless of population is kinda questionable.
It's federalistic. It's a bit drastic - but I guess no one could imagine one state having 66 times the population as another in 1789. Other federal states compensate for that - for example, in the German Bundesrat, each state gets 3 to 6 seats according to population.
A problem for the US is that /both/ chambers of parliament are skewed that way.
That's why it's balanced with the house of representatives, which is proportional.
The House is neither proportional (structurally represents parties roughly in proportion to their vote share) nor, what I expect you mean, divided into districts of equal population. The size difference between the smallest and largest districts—RI district 2 and Montana’s at large district—is 1:2 in population. It’s less unequal than the Senate, but its still not equal representation.
And, despite certain bills having to originate in the House, the Senate is more powerful since all Congressional powers either require both houses in concert or the Senate alone (except for electing the President when there is an electoral tie, which the House does but with a voting rule of one-vote-per-state-delegation which gives it the same undemocratic weighting as the Senate has normally.)
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The House of Representatives has not been proportional since the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.
The entire nation is held hostage by very few people basically.