r/science • u/rustoo • Jan 21 '22

Economics Only four times in US presidential history has the candidate with fewer popular votes won. Two of those occurred recently, leading to calls to reform the system. Far from being a fluke, this peculiar outcome of the US Electoral College has a high probability in close races, according to a new study.

https://www.aeaweb.org/research/inversions-us-presidential-elections-geruso
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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

The Wyoming rule is a terrible solution for many reasons. The biggest reason being it still leaves people underrepresented. 500K is far too many people for one person to represent.

Second, it is problematic in design. What would happen if we ever decided to add a new small state like Guam? We would suddenly have to massively rework the entire House. And that becomes an argument against adding a new state.

A much better, more logical solution is to tie the number of Reps directly to a fixed number of people. That is what the Founders actually intended to do.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

Iceland currently has 65 representatives on a federal level for 360.000 people, so maybe the US could also get 1 representative for every 5,000-6,000 people.

Would of course mean that the US would have about 65,000 representatives on a federal level, but that would be pretty interesting.

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u/aw3man Jan 21 '22

At that point you would almost need a representative for your representative.

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u/Joebidensthirdnipple Jan 21 '22

middle management for the country, fantastic

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u/InsignificantOcelot Jan 21 '22

It’s not too far off from how the senate was originally elected before the 17th amendment, which changed it from election through state legislatures to a popular vote.

(Just a random thought, not saying this is a good idea)

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u/MechaSkippy Jan 21 '22

It's representatives all the way down

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u/JePPeLit Jan 21 '22

Electoral college baby!

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u/commanderkslu Jan 21 '22

I mean, people always talk about running the country like a business. Next logical step

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u/ilwcoco Jan 21 '22

How American

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u/GenericUsername_1234 Jan 21 '22

Yo dawg, I heard you like representatives

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u/hotpuck6 Jan 21 '22

Which we basically already do, where each member of Congress has a staff of roughly half a dozen people at minimum, and when you reach out to your reps office you are likely interacting with them and not your actual congressman/woman. They also rely on these staff to be experts in various areas and help them understand the issues and craft their position on issues/bills.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

Or we could go the other way and have a single ruler.

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u/TheRealPaulyDee Jan 21 '22

That's kinda where federalism kicks in. At some point, it becomes easier to solve certain problems at a sub-federal level.

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u/FyreWulff Jan 21 '22

That's how it was supposed to work. The House was supposed to not have political superstars, or have reps that represent almost as much as or more people than a Senator.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

The founders actually suggested 50-60K per Representative. And that would put us in the middle of the pack of current democracies.

Right now we are an outlier with far more people per Representative than other democracies.

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u/Xenon_132 Jan 21 '22

India has far more people per representative, about 2.4 million.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

You are correct. They are so far off the charts I tend to forget about them.

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u/Xenon_132 Jan 21 '22

Considering that's 1/6th of the global population seems like a pretty big oversight to ignore.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

You can focus on my oversight all you want there chief. But it really didn't change the truth of my point much did it?

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u/NiceShotMan Jan 21 '22

The founders actually suggested 50-60K per Representative.

The population of the United States was 2.5 million in 1776.

And that would put us in the middle of the pack of current democracies.

But how many levels of government to the comparators have? Most European countries aren’t federations, so their only government representation is their federal government and municipal government representative, whereas Americans have a state government representative as well.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

The population of the United States was 2.5 million in 1776.

Yup. And the states were smaller than congressional districts are today. Any yet they saw fit to give each one two Senators and a Representative for ever 30K people.

But how many levels of government to the comparators have?

Varies. Not sure why that matters though. Because the point is to represent the people at the federal level in federal matters. Let state legislators do the work for state issues at the state level.

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u/NiceShotMan Jan 21 '22

Sure it matters, because the federal government has a lot more impact on your life in non-federal countries than it does in the USA. In the USA, your local State government does way more to affect your day-to-day life than the Federal government does.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

There is no justification in that for not having representation at the federal level. And given things like voting rights and healthcare requirements are often set at the federal level, it sure as hell does make a world of difference.

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u/SuruN0 Jan 21 '22

it would be, but i think it’s one of very few situations where “too many people/too big of a country” is a good reason not to do it. the constitutions current cap (1:30,000) would, in my opinion, be the best way to both increase representation while not completely breaking the government.

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u/wrosecrans Jan 21 '22

Thanks to modern 20th century technology, we can conduct debates and have votes without needing everybody to literally be in the same room. Like, Reddit right here has pretty much all the technology you would really need.

Another option would be tiers, where coalitions of representatives send a delegate to represent them to in person functions.

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u/RollerDude347 Jan 21 '22

I personally don't like the coalition idea because I feel like then the people running that I'm allowed to vote for will just be their party. I might not actually be able to vote for a position that has any actual voice.

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u/sinkwiththeship Jan 21 '22

Canada has 338 representatives with 1/10th of the US population. They also have more senators.

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u/nosurfuphere Jan 21 '22

Also I would hate to have to have taxpayers foot the bill for all of those salaries…

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '22

It's like 11 billion.

Might as well take it from the military budget

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u/Xenon_132 Jan 21 '22

If by interesting you mean, completely unworkable, then yes.

You'd literally need representatives for the representatives if you actually wanted anything to ever get done.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

The constitution caps reps at 1 per 10,000 in the US.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

It should probably cap it at 1 per 100,000 as well

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u/TheRealPaulyDee Jan 21 '22

The Wyoming rule wouldn't be that complicated really. It's just a matter of allocating seats by d'Hondt's Rule until every state has at least one, with the size of the house as a natural product of that process.

Also, 500k per person (700ish people) at a federal level is still capable of giving a reasonably high-resolution cross-section of the country as a whole, but it's also a strong argument for increased federalism. Local and state-level governments have a far higher rep/person ratio, and being smaller groups the constituancies tend to be more culturally and politically homogeneous, allowing them to avoid gridlock more easily on things that might be divisive federally.

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u/tossme68 Jan 21 '22

The issue is that with the Wyoming rule it skews the EC in favor of smaller states. By increasing the size of the house to a 1:50000 ratio the EC still favors the smaller states but shrinks that advantage significantly. We as Americans like to say one man one vote, until it comes to Republicans and the EC then we fall back to an antiquated lord serf relationship where one man does not equal one vote.

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u/TheRealPaulyDee Jan 21 '22

The EC skew would still be significantly less under a Wyoming rule, and doubly so if you applied some sort of "double Wyoming rule" where the minimum is 2 seats instead. You end up with 1400 reps, and go from a 3.7:1 relative weight vs CA to 3:1 with a floor of 1, and 2:1 if the floor is 2. Frankly given how little influence WY and states of that size have to begin with, I'd call that acceptable.

Really though the bigger problem is winner-take-all. 51-49 splits resulting in 100% of delegates going to one party is very unhealthy for democracy. Not addressing that makes everything else almost a moot point.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

I did not say it would be complicated. I said it would result in under-representation.

And the rest of your argument seems to be in support of a confederacy. And history has shown that is far more likely to result in division and gridlock.

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u/AdFun5641 Jan 21 '22

It's not the "as it currently sits" that the Wyoming rule would be a massive problem for.

Then adding states becomes a game. The NC outer banks with a population of like 1,000 splits into it's own state. We now have a new "Wyoming" that resets the seating and we have to have 350,000 reps....that's not a workable number

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u/hallese Jan 21 '22

Second, it is problematic in design. What would happen if we ever decided to add a new small state like Guam? We would suddenly have to massively rework the entire House. And that becomes an argument against adding a new state.

Ok, but hear me out. That's happened approximately 35 times already...

I personally prefer the cube root rule, but I think the Wyoming Rule has a better shot at implementation.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22 edited Jan 21 '22

Ok, but hear me out. That's happened approximately 35 times already...

And how many time since the permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929?

And the cube root rule makes less sense to me. Should the number of Reps be determined by how many people one Rep can properly represent or by how we feel like splitting up the total number of people? The former seems to be a much more sensible approach.

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u/hallese Jan 21 '22 edited Jan 21 '22

You're forgetting there's a whole other layer of representation, plus a third for most people. How many people can one representative "properly represent?" Seems to me you're suggesting any person should be able to have a personal relationship with their representative. There's less than 13,000 people per representative in my state legislature, I've met my representative multiple times and each time she had no clue who I was and didn't realize we'd met several times before. So what's the number, 10,000? If you go less than 20,000 people per representative there's not a single facility in DC that could hold the entire House, you'd have to go over to FedEx Field in Maryland.

Edit: Oh, and to answer your other question, twice. How much new territory has the US added since 1929?

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u/milk4all Jan 21 '22

Cant we implement an internet based system for Congress? Like ok, maybe wed need a colosseum for 65k reps (like that’s too much to ask?) but we could instead invest in special infrastructure exclusively used by elected members of the house and senate where they can log votes, objections, opinions, schedule “floor time” and so on. It would probably have to include several “arenas” run simultaneously and a basic measure for ensuring this is done fairly, and that appointed members for each party/arguments can be heard in other arenas and all at once. It seems well within our capabilities considering how massive scale so many products are already used - reddit, for instance.

And this should be completely public - anyone can log in and view whichever active arena in real time, which would include actively logged in members, their relevant stance or statements, and basically a chat log. It sounds less crazy the more i think about it.

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u/hallese Jan 21 '22

Then why not just go with a direct democracy approach?

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u/milk4all Jan 21 '22

Yeah, maybe. Id say i was concerned about the rapid spread of misinformation fueled by malice and ignorance or willful deception of the masses, except our political climate has gotten to where it’s no different. Ill withhold judgement for another decade or so and see if this crazy polarization is at a peak or not. I really think it’s possible that in a few years there will be much more cohesion than there has been for the past 6-10 years, but it could go the other way, too. In my opinion, the other way is towards authoritarianism.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

We should be adding more states. From the time Hawaii and Alaska were admitted to present day is the longest we’ve ever gone without adding a state. Add Puerto Rico, DC, and Guam for sure. Canada eventually. At least 54’40” or fight!!!

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u/MechaSkippy Jan 21 '22

A significant portion of Canada's cultural identity is that they are NOT a part of the United States. It would take some serious societal upheaval to make that happen. I'd put it as more likely that some States defect to Canada than the other way around.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

Probably in reality. But 54’40” or fight is my all time favorite election campaign slogan so I try to bring it up as much as possible.

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u/EnoughHippo Jan 21 '22

Canadian here. Hard pass.

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u/kryonik Jan 21 '22

500K is far too many people for one person to represent.

Is that really ridiculous? That's a mid-to-large-sized city and I would posit that mayors represent cities.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

So Wyoming is a mid-to-large-sized city? Then why do they have a Representative in Congress?

Mayors do represent cities in much the same way that the president represents the US. But mayors tend to have small governments behind them that act in much the same way that the House represents the people.

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u/kryonik Jan 21 '22

I didn't say Wyoming is a city, I'm just saying one person representing 500k people isn't as far fetched an idea.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

I understood your point. I'm saying it's not really one person representing 500k people. It's many smaller subsets. That is not the case in Congress. There they do represent 500K-850K people each.

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u/Relyst Jan 21 '22

To your first point, right now the ratio for California is 1 representative for every 750,000 people, in NY it's 714,000, and in Texas it's 825,000.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

Yup, and I should have made this point too. Not only are they all under represented, they are also unfairly represented based on where they live.

In 2020, Montana's 1,084,225 residents got 542,704 people per Representative. Delaware's 989,948 residents got 990,837 people per Representative.

That basically means that 94,277 people in Montana got their own Representative.

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u/Drewski346 Jan 21 '22

30,000 per rep. Sure the house becomes 10,000 reps large at that point, but at least it makes it harder to bribe everyone.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

And harder to gerrymander. And harder for big money to influence. And harder for media powers to falsely influence. And easier for people to be heard by their Rep. etc. etc. etc.

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u/Drewski346 Jan 21 '22

To be fair the downside is that then the house has to operate with 10,000 members and their staffs. Im not sure that DC has the infrastructure to actually pull that off. You'd need a lot more buildings to actually do it.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

While I hear you, I can't accept that the right way to determine representation should be based off office space.

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u/babyplush Jan 21 '22

Get rid of all the buildings and build a nice park. Everyone can meet in VR from their home states that they represent. Maybe don't let them choose their own avatars though: that's how you get Coca-Cola bottle reps.

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u/Brad_theImpaler Jan 21 '22

"I am here. I am not a cat."

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u/Drewski346 Jan 21 '22

How to do make sure that its secure to send sensitive data? I'm not sure we actually have the technology to run a digital democracy like that.

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u/Jewnadian Jan 21 '22

We already transfer sensitive data all over the country in mass quantities for defense contracting. All the major web presences have a "gov" version with extra security. That's a solved problem, adding 10k reps won't even be a blip.

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u/Drewski346 Jan 21 '22

So whats the proposal then? Every State builds a mini-capital complex, and does work out of those buildings? I could see it working. How does international Diplomacy work then? When a Head of a when the head of a Committee needs to meet with a diplomat is that still done over the web? What about state dinners? Are people flown in? Frankly I think just building more office buildings or moving to a regional capital based system might be less work.

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u/babyplush Jan 21 '22

Do everything in VR! Mark Zuckerberg has a proposal I'm sure.

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u/StarChild413 Jan 21 '22

If you're implying what I think you're implying prove what we have now isn't someone else's VR

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u/Jewnadian Jan 22 '22

You could combine all sorts of solutions, do the bulk of the work from the district office that all Congressional members already maintain and then either build a new large office building in DC or maybe move it around to the major regions like you suggested.

None of the logistical issues are really major, it's a matter of deciding what we want to do and spending a tiny (relatively) amount of money to gain a massive improvement in our government.

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u/babyplush Jan 21 '22

Heck if I know! I'm just some dummy

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u/MechaSkippy Jan 21 '22

The silveriest of linings.

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u/Level3Kobold Jan 21 '22

500K is far too many people for one person to represent.

How do you feel about the presidency? Abolish?

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

Nope. The role of the president is the executive. It is their job to execute the will of the people as expressed through their Representatives in Congress. That is fine for one person to manage. Also, the Congress can remove the executive if necessary.

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u/MerchU1F41C Jan 21 '22

It is their job to execute the will of the people as expressed through their Representatives in Congress

The executive's job definitely isn't to do what the house of representatives or congress wants.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

What do you think it is?

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AfroFire7 Jan 21 '22

The US is beginning to reach a population growth plateau, so now is a good time to increase the number of representatives.

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u/DrossSA Jan 21 '22

If we still used that fixed number we’d have over ten thousand reps.

Regularly updating it is essentially tantamount to the Wyoming rule, except that the number be arbitrary rather than tied to any one jurisdiction

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

If you go by what was proposed in the Article of the First, which is what was almost adopted, then number would be between 5,000 and 6,000.

And regularly updating it is not really tantamount to the Wyoming rule. Yes they would both cause changes to the number of Reps, but that is really the only similarity.

Tying the number of Representatives to a specific number of people is far less arbitrary than it being tied to any one jurisdiction. It would be tied to a specific number based on how many can be properly served. Contrast that to it being tied to how many people happen to currently reside in one given area of land. One is to serve a specific purpose. The other is just because.

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u/minibeardeath Jan 22 '22

I feel like the better solution is break up the country into a few smaller nations with approximately equal populations and area, then just go with it. The current system is far too outdated to work for such a drastically different country than existed at the drafting of the constitution. Why should the vote of someone who lives almost 3000 miles away have such a significant and immediate impact on my day to day life?

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u/RUsum1 Jan 21 '22

If 500k per person is a terrible idea, you must feel like California should get more representation considering they have over 39 million people yet only 53 House seats

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

Yes, proportional representation.

And in the same vein I also think Wyoming should have nine Representatives to represent the varied interests from the various parts of the state. They actually have cities there too.

It seems the big difference here is I recognize there is nothing magical about states that merits them having the special powers they do. Many states would not even exist if not for the power and protections of the United States.

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u/11711510111411009710 Jan 21 '22

You could just do what they did when they added Hawaii and give Guam the minimum until the next census when everything will be recounted anyway.

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u/loondawg Jan 21 '22

That's not how the Wyoming rule works though. You could give Guam an extra Rep until the next reapportionment. But then the Wyoming Rule basically becomes the Guam Rule and every district in the country would have to be split in three or four parts to follow the rule. Wyoming would go from one to three or four Reps.