politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Because we capped the House and it has a right lean as a result. Even when the Dems are in charge, they are hampered by the centrists.
In the US system capping the house makes no sense. If the lower chamber represents the population, and the upper the states, capping the house just forces the house to more reflect the states more and dilutes the individual power of people in more populated states. The result is a right lean, since right leaning states are less populated overall. Gross.
We're letting the design of buildings determine the design of our government. House and SCOTUS, in varying ways.
We can say it's more politics and... That's fair, but it's time to build bigger. 13 SCOTUS justices and enough room for many, many more representatives and room to grow.
It's too bad no one has figured out how to hold a meeting without everyone needing to be in the same place.
It made sense... in 1919. But mysteriously what worked 105 years ago doesn't necessarily work today.
That's simply not correct. Every state is guaranteed at least one house rep, but aside from that it's population based. That's why the census is such a big deal; it reapportions representatives. The less-populated states that lean heavily to the right get very, very few representatives, while much more heavily populated states get many, many more representatives. California currently has 53 house representatives; South Dakota has one.
A much bigger issue is partisan gerrymandering. Even after representatives are apportioned, the state creates the districts. If the state legislature is controlled by Republicans, they'll create voting districts that limits the ability of Democratic--largely urban--voters to select representatives of their choice. The result is that a state like mine has very few Democratic representatives for the state, despite being very purple.
And, BTW, this goes both ways. The rural parts of California skew very conservative, and yet Republicans get very few house seats (and are a superminority in the California legislature). In Texas, major metro areas like Austin, Dallas, and Ft. Worth all skew Democratic, and yet Texas has very, very few Democratic house seats. If redistricting was done by an expert system based solely on number of voters and compact, contiguous districts--with no other information given to the program so that it couldn't account for demographics like race, wealth, partisan lean, etc.---you'd likely see very, very different results in the house of representatives.
That's a problem but I don't think it's the reason the House is full of clowns. The allocation of Senate seats gives it a right-wing bias as well, but people tend to elect adults, even if they're evil adults. I think it's mostly because crazies have a harder time winning a statewide election than they do a single district.