
US 50 states redrawn as equal population (2012) - cryptozeus
http://fakeisthenewreal.org/reform/
======
sgillen
I feel like the bigger problem than the electoral college is the senate. I
think it’s pretty crazy California and Texas have the same number of senate
votes as Rhode Island. It made sense at the time and we do have a house to
nominally balance that out. But nowadays it just makes some people’s votes
count for a lot more than others.

~~~
jngreenlee
Remember as well that the Senate was intended as a sort of administrative
body, with each states senators being selected by the state government...not
via popular election. In my estimation, the removal of that aspect diluted the
original concept to some degree.

~~~
ddebernardy
It could be done like in Germany without the spirit of the Senate being lost.
Something like 2 representatives plus some number that depends on the
population.

~~~
axaxs
Neat idea. Maybe we could give it a name depicting its function, like say, a
house of representatives...

~~~
ddebernardy
It's not the same. The House of Representatives is intended to represent the
people. The point of the upper house is to represent the States. There's no
reason why there shouldn't be some weight thrown in based on some objective
criteria like population.

The way it works in Germany is every Lander has 3 seats; they then add up to 3
extra seats based on the population. This over-represents the smaller states
too, but not to the point where small states can block the whole country like
in the US Senate.

~~~
axaxs
So, of course my comment was tongue in cheek, but not completely. In order to
get states to agree to unify, they had to give them incentive in
representation. Remember that Germany is the size of a US state. It would be
more akin to trying to unify all of west Europe as a country. Would Denmark
join if they knew they'd get zero representation based of population?

~~~
ddebernardy
The European Parliament assigns seats to member states based on population,
but the European Council gives one vote per state. So the answer is kind of --
they basically did join, in spite of odd representation mechanics. And FWIW I
think the Council (and its majority voting rules) is as much in need for
reform in this respect as the US Senate.

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zhyder
The problem with the electoral college isn't unequal size of states, it's that
deeply blue or red states get hardly any attention from presidential
candidates, and any individual's vote in such states doesn't matter much.

Btw check out
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)
for an interesting hack: not likely to happen, but still 100x more likely than
redrawing all state lines

~~~
lotsofpulp
The problem is the very existence of the electoral college. If the president
was elected by totaling all the votes 1 per person in the nation, then there
would be no red state and blue state issues.

~~~
guelo
But in that case the real national divide, rural vs cities, would be won in
favor of the blues.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It would be won in favor of whoever wins the people's votes.

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Svip
It's kind of a shame that it doesn't include the US territories, since it does
say 'the United States', and not just 'the states of the United States' as the
headline.

Also, can we get (2012) added to the end of the headline?

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shadykiller
Love the state names. Far more varied and vivid than current state names.

~~~
umanwizard
The current state names are pretty diverse, tbh. My home state's name's
etymolygy (probably) comes from Basque!

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gremlinsinc
Wouldn't it be more fair, possibly if we divided each state into 6 roughly
equal districts by population and made each district have it's own senator?
This would still give each state equal representation but it would diversify
the voices by making each senator cover a smaller area, and each would have
less constituents to answer to, and presumably could listen to those in their
area more and deliver on what they value as priorities.

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forthwall
I think this person is mistaken on Orange. Orange County in New York is named
after Orange in the Netherlands. Orange County in California is named after
Oranges to sound tropical.

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Balgair
I like how this map shows the density of different areas, specifically SoCal,
as compared to state lines of today.

However, the map seems (possibly intentionally) to ignore geographical
boundaries that are super important. Like the Mississippi River.

I know you can modify Voronoi diagrams in multiple dimensions to account for
population _and_ geography. Does anyone know of a map that has done so?

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Gaelan
I'm curious how Rainier's capitol ended up as Tacoma, instead of Olympia
(current capitol of Washington) or Seattle (largest city)

~~~
yesenadam
It didn't. State capitals are underlined, the capital's still Olympia.

~~~
Gaelan
Ah. The key's a bit confusing.

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radagaisus
As an outsider, the easiest hack to me seems to break down states in your
team’s colors to multiple states. Fight fire with fire.

~~~
umanwizard
This idea is about as realistic as breaking up Germany into its constituent
Länder so they'd get more EU commissioners.

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dang
A thread from 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5220171)

A bit more here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217434)

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ngcc_hk
Not American just a student of its politics.

As you are free to move, the argument some get more influence due to
geographical distribution of vote seems a weak argument.

And the original intent is really to let the small state to come in as they
would not come (or fight against it). The 17th amendment is too complicated to
talk here.

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purplezooey
This is neato. I wonder where the name Firelands comes from. Is it from Lake
Erie catching fire in the 70s...

~~~
jmartinpetersen
There's links for most of the names at the bottom.

Firelands are much older than that:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firelands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firelands)

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ekianjo
> Ends the over-representation of small states and under-representation of
> large states in presidential voting and in the US Senate by eliminating
> small and large states.

States are not regions of a larger nation. In Federalism they have a different
history and different statuses, and the US has never been built as a direct
democratic system. It's a Republic. Not sure what this list of bullet points
is all about: changing everything about US politics?

~~~
netcan
I'm always confused by statements like " _a republic, not a democracy._ "
These words don't have clear, practical meanings.

Words like republicanism, democracy, liberal democracy, democratic republic,
etc are pretty abstract... and they were a lot more abstract 250 years ago.

No nation state today is a "direct democracy," afaik. All of them are
"representative democracies" with a congress/parliament. You can call that
system a democracy, republic or whatever.

Point taken about the historical (and current) reasons for federalism.

That said, I don't see how/why redrawing states, electorates, changing how
voting works, congress works or such has any bearing on a "democracy or
republic" question.

If you're into European history during the reformations/schisms, people of
that period were obsessed with extremely abstract, theology/epistemology.

Eucharistic metaphysics seemed important to them att, in retrospect it seems
(literally) meaningless.

~~~
smsm42
> These words don't have clear, practical meanings.

They do. They mean in the US, not everything is decided by simple majority of
votes of everybody living in the federated republic. Rather, there are more
complex power structures where different states (note they are named states,
not electoral districts or census areas) retain significant sovereignty not
subject to either federal control or that of other states. It is very
practical thing without which it is impossible to understand how US politics
works.

> All of them are "representative democracies" with a congress/parliament.

Yes, but the USA is not that either. Or, rather, not only that. People
thinking it's only that misunderstand how things are.

> has any bearing on a "democracy or republic" question.

Imagine there's a town where mayor decides to redistribute people between
families to optimize housing arrangement - so if you have too many kids, your
kid is going to me moved to a family with no kids, and if you live alone, you
may be assigned a partner to live with you. For efficiency. Let's even assume
this all done by proper vote of the city council and all legal formalities are
in place. Would you think it's an important change which totally changes your
opinion about what's going on in the city and how it is ruled, or it's a minor
adjustment that is of interest only to philosophy geeks dwelling on deep
meanings of abstractions? If you can appreciate answer to that question, you
probably also can appreciate why "democracy or republic" is not as abstract a
question as you think.

~~~
netcan
What "everything is decided by simple majority of votes" mean.

The only things that are usually decided by voting are the people elected to
various positions. Some systems (eg us electorates) elect by district,
political unit (eg us states), parties (eg netherlands), ethnic affiliation
(eg Lebanon)... All these are typically known as democratic voting,
democratically elected parliaments/governments, presidents, etc.

In The context of "spreading democracy" these systems are/were generally known
as "liberal democracies."

"More complex power structures" where different states/polities act as units
have their political powers reserved are generally called federalism. You can
have democracy/republic with or without federation. Nothing about republic
implies federalism, except that they both apply to the US.

Historically, "republic," has generally been used to mean kingless nation and
"liberal" to highlight mean that the people "are sovereign." Highly
overlapping. Republic means _something_ in this context, but not what people
mean when they contrast to democracy.

"Republic" or "democracy" are much more laden with ideal & philosophy
connotations than anything concrete enough to be part of a system of
government.

It's like the words "rational" and "logical."

Sure, you can say _" in a US context.. _" but that gets meaningless fast. You
can't derive any meaning from " _The US is republic "_ are synonyms. You could
just say "this is the US."

~~~
smsm42
> You could just say "this is the US."

I could. The best model of any thing is the thing itself. It's also the most
useless model because the point of modeling is reduction of complexity for
better understanding. Reducing US complexity to democracy, however, misses
important aspects, namely federated sovereignty and complex power sharing
arrangements between states and federal government. This gives people
misleading impression that the system was supposed to work as majoritarian
democracy and the fact it doesn't work that way is some kind of flaw that
needs to be fixed. On the contrary, the system was explicitly designed to
_include_ elements of majoritarian democracy, but only as a limited part of
it, counterbalanced by other arrangements as to protect from the deficiencies
of such model. Thus, saying "it's not a democracy" highlights the deficiency
of modeling the US as a simple majoritarian democracy.

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umanwizard
The idea of getting people from Tucson to accept living in a state called
"Phoenix" is hilarious to me.

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jquery
Pretty cool art project. I love the names given to the new states, lots of
care went into this.

~~~
jimmux
It's a fun thought exercise. I often wonder why Americans seem so set on
having 50 states, so this was a useful basis to mock up a what-if scenario of
fewer states.

E.g. if there were 10:
[https://imgur.com/a/gNvP9mC](https://imgur.com/a/gNvP9mC)

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ReptileMan
>The fundamental problem of the electoral college is that the states of the
United States are too disparate in size and influence.

No, that is the problem that the electoral college solves. In any federation
you must curb the power of the most powerful and boost the weakest for it to
work.

Instead of blaming with the institutions that are working as intended, start
the dialog to convert the US from federation to something else.

~~~
adamnemecek
> In any federation you must curb the power of the most powerful and boost the
> weakest for it to work.

This is a very Americocentric view. There is in fact no such requirement in
general.

The US in particular has a problem of being pulled by some small, fringe
groups.

~~~
umanwizard
Do you have any examples of federations that _don 't_ work that way, i.e.,
that have purely proportional representation of all the constituent entities?

~~~
satori99
Australia uses a highly proportional electoral process for its lower house.

The constitution requires that electorates be apportioned among the states in
proportion to their respective populations; provided that each original state
has at least 5 members in the House of Representatives.

Districts are decided and managed by a politically independent federal
commission (ie: not by politicians).

The Australian senate is still a state house modelled in the US fashion. And
is therefore not proportional to the population.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisions_of_the_Australian_Ho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisions_of_the_Australian_House_of_Representatives)

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anfilt
I am sorry every state changing their border every census would be insane as
proposed in the bullet points. States are more than voting bodies. They have
their own laws and locally governed territory with shared jurisdiction on some
things with the federal government.

Secondly, there is nothing wrong with electoral college it's working as
intended. It's like a lot people forget we have states for reason. For
instance a lot of the small states with a low population contain the vast
majority of federal land. So any federal policy regarding that land effects
them more than anyone else. How do think Nevada would react if the federal
government decided to start nuclear testing again and their say in politics is
reduced even more.

A lot of this I think boils down how you view the US. Are you citizen/resident
of your state which is a member of the united states or are you are citizen of
the unites states that happens to reside in a state? (A better/clearer way to
phrase this would be appreciated)

~~~
Aeolun
Seeing things from outside, US citizens generally refer to themselves as
coming from a city/state combination much more often than the country.

~~~
anfilt
I mean when they think of how US is the politically structured. Sadly, less
Americans vote in local elections than federal.

