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Alex Pretti's fatal killing was recorded on body-worn camera video, DHS says (www.nbcnews.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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[–] -5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Not really. The political entity of a state gets to vote yes, and that does lead to different ratios of senators per person/electoral college votes per person (house representation is divided by population but minimum representation still skews it).

For example Alaska is the largest state, but in terms of population it ranks 48th. Meaning per person in the Senate it has more power per person than say California. However then you have a state like Vermont that is the 49th most populous state and ranks at 45th in size. Lower land area and population than Alaska. And yet it does have more representation per person in the Senate than Alaska. So it's not land that votes, it's states. Ironically the Senate was set up so "smaller" states like Rhode Island wouldn't get outvoted by larger states like "Virginia". Then since population densities were so much lower the larger a state was generally correlated with a larger population (more space to farm means it can support more people). Then the American west happened.

This of course also effects the electoral college, but that is divided up by population per state. The issue is each state must have a minimum number once again leading to lower population states getting more say per person.

And while yes this seems like it needs to reformed, the current events unfolding with ICE does make me want individual states to be stronger and have more authority to push back against the government. Then again if we voted strictly by population we likely wouldn't be in this mess either

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Funny to hear "voting by population" as phrase that appears to be intended to obfuscate the fact that it means "just counting the votes" like literally every other democracy does.

    Also, Vermont actually has exactly the same representation in the senate and house despite a higher population than Alaska, this example supports my statement, not yours.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    That wasn't my intention. I wasn't trying to obfuscate anything. I said it that way to directly point to the reality that it is not done the way every other democratic county does it. Honestly jumping to "he's trying to deceive me!" is aggressive and doesn't give me hope this will be a productive conversation

    Anyway, this is why I said senate representation per person. Since every state gets 2 Senators per state, regardless of population or land area, this means states with lower populations get the same level of representation. Without doing a ton of math this late in the evening let's say in California it's 1 senator per 15 million people. In Vermont its 1 senator per 300,000 people. That in effect is more representation per person. Same thing applies to the electoral college since states get a minimum number of electoral college votes.

    And yeah the same representation for Vermont and Alaska proves my point actually. It's not based on size its based on state. It's not land voting its the state that votes. If land voted Alaska would have more representatives than Vermont.

    Honestly this isn't even a disagreement to your main point. Electoral power in the US is not distributed by population. This is 100% true. It's just that it's divided up by state, not by land mass.

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