
State Borders Were Drawn in the Distant Past. Time to Reimagine the Map? (2014) - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/10/if_every_u_s_state_had_the_same_population_what_would_the_map_of_america.html
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hprotagonist
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_United_States)

January was "the distant past"? Granted, that modified state line affected 19
properties, but it's not trivial _to them_.

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KGIII
Right? I'd have to check but I might be older than one State. Distant past? To
whom?

There's quite a bit of neat history and a silly series called How The Stats
Got Their Shapes is worth watching. It was on the History Channel, about a
decade ago.

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vacri
The transfer of a few acres of land does not a state shape make - sellers of
state-shaped fridge magnets don't have to go get their stock remade as a
result. The last significant transfer of land in the mainland US was michigan
and wisconsin's quarrel almost a century ago.

Saying that state shapes are still in flux because 19 properties were shifted
from state X to state Y earlier this year is a bit like saying you've got a
new computer because you replaced your mouse.

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KGIII
You base your State shapes on magnets and not cartographers?

Ah well, at least the map makers got some work to do. There's also a number of
other examples besides what they mentioned. It's a nice documentary series, of
you're interested.

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vacri
> _You base your State shapes on magnets and not cartographers?_

You can see the transfer of a few square miles on a continent-scale map like
the ones in the article?

The North/South Carolina border change represents about 700 sq miles changed
over. The smallest state in the US is Rhode Island, with 1.2M sq miles - four
orders of magnitude more. South and North Carolina are 30M and 50M sq miles
respectively - five orders of magnitude more than this parcel of land.

Do you think that miniscule _corrections_ every few decades are really enough
to counter the author's claim that the state shapes were 'drawn in the distant
past'? Seems excessively pedantic to me - especially since the shapes involved
didn't change all that much.

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KGIII
Yes, yes I do. Not to mention I'm older than the most recent State. So, yeah,
I think distant past is quite an exaggeration. You're not required to agree,
of course.

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vacri
Hawaii has no state borders, drawn now or in the past, so I'm not sure why
that's relevant here, given we're talking about the article's byline. Alaska
also has no state borders, though it does have national borders.

In any case, if you were born several generations ago and still don't consider
your childhood to be in the distant past, remind me not to get on your bad
side :)

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KGIII
Oh, it's all good. My lawn has plenty of room. You're more than welcome on it.

But, less than sixty years hadly seems like the distant past. However, that's
mostly an addendum. You may not have clicked the Wikipedia link but, if you
do, you'll see quite a few changes.

It turns out that I'm older than the State of Alaska and Hawaii. I'm am pretty
old, but, damn it! That's not the distant past. Dinosaurs roamed in the
distant past. I am not a dinosaur. Well, I'm not a fossil.

Edit: By the way, not all of the Hawaii territory is part of the State of
Hawaii. And some islands are changing their borders all the time.

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everdev
Or just direct representation? Why am I represented by someone the majority of
my neighbors elect instead of who I choose?

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thaumasiotes
A congress consisting of half the population might be a little too large to
work well.

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rabidrat
I think how it works is that you take the top N.

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jachee
I still believe that Legislative Duty should be compulsory, like Jury Duty.
538 citizens, selected randomly per state in the same ratios as today's house
and Senate. Tele-commute, and make/update laws for the good of all with
minimal direct outside influence.

I'm not sure how long a session would last, but it sure would be interesting.

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abakker
3rd house of Congress?

My persona; hope is that they just double or triple the number of senators and
representatives to allow greater specialization.

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jachee
No, _instead_ of both current houses.

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jdonaldson
Powell's watershed map lays out administration zones based on the major flows
of water.

[http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2003/aug/water/part...](http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2003/aug/water/part1.html)

It gets my vote, watersheds are the strongest constant we have next to
continents. Technology, language, rivers, and coastlines all shift.

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Glyptodon
I'm much more on board with equal area boundaries than equal population.

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notacoward
Why? Acres don't vote. People do. Dividing by area will just keep "one person,
one vote" from being true, as long as we assign two senators (and thus two
extra electors) per state. What's the benefit, other than giving each rural
voter more power than each urban one?

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Glyptodon
To me your view of "one person, one vote" sounds more like a new kind of
colonialism - a way of making it so that the concerns of less population-dense
areas are ignored and population-dense areas basically exert hegemony over
them. Even if not a single person lived in Alaska it would deserve
representation. Likewise, if just native tribes lived in Alaska it would not
be appropriate for everything in the whole area be dictated by non-natives
somewhere else just because more people lived there.

While I view our current situation and system as imperfect, I do think one of
its redeeming characteristics is the attempt (not really successful) to create
a system that can both protect from the tyranny of the majority and the
tyranny of locality.

Equal population redefinition seems likely to merely exacerbate urban/rural
tensions and vast geographic differences and create more conflicts.

On the other hand, equal area represents a cleaning up of our current system -
Senators would now clearly represent something: land/area, apportioned
equally, as a more appropriate check on a hypothetical population-only
apportionment of a house of Reps, which should have its size uncapped so as to
have the proper granularity for purely population based representation.

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notacoward
> concerns of less population-dense areas are ignored

As I said, areas don't vote. People do. Why should ten people living on a
hundred acres get more representation than ten people living on one? Painting
"one person one vote" as colonialist is flat-out dishonest. It's the
alternative that's discriminatory, treating some people as more deserving than
others because they own more land.

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galaxyLogic
[https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/liquid-democracy-
true-d...](https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/liquid-democracy-true-
democracy-for-the-21st-century-7c66f5e53b6f)

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EADGBE
Never understood cities split by two states. Born and bred in one. Being on
one side of the state or the other tends to complicate simple things. At least
they're not independently operating countries, I guess.

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d3sandoval
Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1902/](https://xkcd.com/1902/)

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peterburkimsher
Please can someone add (2014) to the title?

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dang
Ah yes. Thanks!

