The Gaming Den

shadzar wrote:politicians get elected into office by their state..then do whatever the fuck they want to do when there, without caring what the people who elected them want.

I don't think that the existence of states is solely to blame for this. The biggest culprit of this is easily the influence of money in elections. Just getting rid of that would be an enormous improvement, to the extent that extensive campaign finance reform + overturning of Citizens United would make the government function better than a strictly population-proportionate system without eliminating the corrupting influence of money.

However, I don't believe that it's the sole problem with 'representatives doing whatever the fuck they want'. I think that it's a combination of several factors:

[*] The division of national government is not population-proportionate. This allows a minority to enrich themselves at the expense of the majority. But that also increases overall dissatisfaction with the government. For example, the residents of Delaware are pretty tickled pink that their lax incorporation rules (especially with WRT to credit cards) brings in a lot of money to the state, but the rest of the country gets to suffer while getting none of the benfits.
[*] The trustee model of government. That is, you're not voting for a political philosophy so much as an individual person. The wisdom of the individual will never be as strong as the wisdom of the group but more importantly it allows and creates incentives for representatives to abuse any spillover popularity to push policies that anger the group; after all, you vote on the individuals overall record. This is what allows the Huey Longs and Rod Blagoviches of the world to prey upon people.
[*] First past-the-post representation. Which leads to parties converging on the same overall political philosophies with only modest differences unless a political paradigm shift is underway. Now unlike the previous two problems, I'm much more ambivalent of this feature and I'm not quite convinced that it's a problem. While it alienates new and fringe viewpoints, it also maximizes consent. But a lot of people say that they're tired of the two-party system and if you want to get rid of it you have to get rid of the 'winner takes all' method of organizing government.

shadzar wrote:why dont the governors of the states replace the house and the senate all together?

Because in many (nearly all) states, the state and Congressional subdistricts tend to have different concerns from the rest of the subdistricts within the state.

I think that it's impossible for a governor of Wyoming, let alone Texas, to have knowledge of what's going on in all parts of their states. In order for them to govern intelligently after getting rid of the state legislative system, you would have to have many, many more states than we have right now. Like more than ten times the amount. Of course, that's what I propose pretty much. Split the country into about 1000 different population-proportionate Congressional districts whose gestalt shapes still more-or-less into the boundaries of states (which will have a strictly ceremonial role) and make the Congressional representatives the old 'governors'.

I'd like to add another reason to the list:

[*] States have a much harder time resisting outside influence. And are also much juicier prizes, too. Not just in the U.S. Senate, either. See: Louisiana, Wyoming.


That said, can anyone think of a convoluted Scooby Doo plan that would break the back of 'states' while still convincing the American public/legislature/USSC to go along with it? The first thought that comes to mind is that the U.S. House of Representatives needs to be more than tripled in size. That would at least allow people to preserve the borders of states (and preserve their crybaby nostalgia) and at least keep districts roughly equal in size. Still need to do something about the Senate, though; nothing comes to mind other than first awarding seats by party and then randomly filling the seats with people who belong to the party and are from the state.

Or I guess you could do some weird Constitutional amendment thing where the House of Representatives also gets assigned all of the unique powers of the Senate and can override Senate bills with a simple majority vote. Sort of like the House of Lords.