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Copy/pasted from a Facebook post:
(This ended up being a much longer, more involved post than it was when I first started, where I had initially intended it to only be the first two paragraphs.)
For hypothetical purposes, if there was a mass exodus from, let's say, Wyoming, for whatever irrelevant reasons, leaving behind at most a total of only four or five people officially living there...
...would two of those people still be elected to the United States Senate and a third to the House of Representatives?
Okay, failing that, let's put it another way. From my scant amount of research on the topic, I've found that 60,000 is probably the minimum required population for a US state to be considered a US state. https://www.google.com/search?q=minimum+population+for+statehood
So, another, even less realistic scenario: the populations of every other state in the United States experience a mass exodus such that all but 60,000 people in each state move to, let's say, California. Ignoring the logistics of this, there's now roughly 324,000,000 people living in California, and a total of only around 3,000,000 living in all the other 49 states combined (i.e. 60,000 in each). Does California still only get 2 senators? Do all the other states still get 2 senators each? The law says this is indeed the case. As such, then about 1% of the total population of the United States would be represented by 98 senators whereas 99% of the population is represented by only 2 senators.
Now, granted, the make-up of the House of Representatives should radically change in this scenario, in that California should get 386 of the 435 representatives, whereas each other state should only get 1 each, but that's the House. I'm talking about the Senate.
(Though, even with that said, 60,000 / 1 representative in every other state is quite a bit different from ~324,000,000 / 386 ≅ 840,000. I.e. one representative in every other state would represent 60,000 people, but one representative in California would represent about 840,000 people, so it would still be kind of messed up. If one wanted to be actually fair as far as number of people represented, per representative, California should actually get around 5,400 representatives, in this scenario, instead of just 386, but since the total was arbitrarily set by law in 1929 to 435... *shrug*)
The Electoral College would be affected as well. I.e. California would get 388 electors and every other state would get 3 each [plus 3 for the District of Columbia]. So, in this scenario, at least, California alone absolutely would be determining who is the POTUS, even if every other state and DC voted for the opposite candidate (disregarding the possibility of faithless electors or whatever). Though, again, California's electors-per-population ratio would be significantly smaller than all the other states.
(To show the flip side of why the Electoral College is kind of bullshit, even if only 50.00001% of California's population voted for one candidate, in this scenario, and the other 49.99999% voted the opposite, all of California's 388 electoral votes would go to the 50.00001% candidate [again, barring any faithless electors and whatnot]. So even if half - 1 of California's population *plus* the almost 3,000,000 in the rest of the country voted for candidate B, candidate A would still win because half + 1 of California's population voted for candidate A. In other words, in the interests of simplicity, let's say that the population of California is exactly 324,000,000, in this scenario, and the population of the other states total is 3,000,000. As per the above, to restate, if 162,000,001 people vote for Candidate A, and 164,999,999 [i.e. 161,999,999 + 3,000,000] vote for Candidate B, Candidate A wins. [I also simplified things further and assumed that the entire population was eligible to vote and actually voted, including children and babies, which isn't the case in real life, of course, but the principle is still the same.] So, yeah, does that not sound rather familiar? *cough*2016*hack*Trump-got-3-million-less-votes-than-Clinton-but-Trump-still-won*sputter*)
But, again, I'm not talking about the House or the Electoral College, I'm talking about the Senate. Each and every state still gets 2 senators per state, no matter what.
So yeah, anyway, I just think it's a tiny bit weird that Wyoming's population (573,720) is just 1.5% of California's (39,776,830), yet Wyoming still gets the same 2 senators that California does. Basically, the Senate was created in a way such that each state is considered as an equal entity (as a whole, regardless of any other considerations). This might have made sense back in the 18th century, but maybe not so much now. Or, hell, maybe there's still ostensibly a good reason for it to remain the way it is now (I mean, even beyond the simple fact that it would be way too difficult to get enough people to agree to change it now). Hell if I know.
Well, whatever, I guess that's why the GOP dominates the Senate now. And given that, and given how the red state vs blue state break down goes these days, I'm not sure how the Democrats (or whoever) can ever hope to regain the Senate, unless either a bunch of non-Republicans move to a bunch of red states and vote accordingly (which would serve to further exacerbate the already eroded relations between RWNJs and non-RWNJs), or else a bunch of the Republicans already in those states finally come to their senses and start voting not-Republican (good luck with *that* ever happening, at least on a scale large enough to make a difference).
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The math, just in case I screwed up somewhere:
1) Total US population in 2018 = 326,766,748. https://www.google.com/search?q=US+population+2018 326,766,748 - (49 x 60,000) = 323,826,748. (We'll just say everyone in DC and the rest of the non-state territories moved to California, I guess?)
2) 49 x 60,000 = 2,940,000
3) 2,940,000 / 323,826,748 ≅ 0.009 or 0.9% ≅ 1%.
4) 435 - 49 = 386.
5) 60,000 / 1 is, of course, 60,000. But 323,826,748 / 386 = 838,929.4 ≅ 840,000. Conversely, to get 60,000 people per representative would be 323,826,748 / 60,000 = 5,397.1 ≅ 5,400.
6) Total electors = representatives + senators + 3 for DC = 435 + 100 + 3 = 538. California, in this hypothetical scenario, gets 386 + 2 electors. Every other state gets 1 + 2 electors, and DC gets 3 just because (23rd Amendment). 50 x 3 = 150 electors. So California, here, already has well over 270 electors, which is the minimum required to determine who becomes POTUS.
All of this, of course, assumes that I didn't miss some other detail (whether of law or math or whatever) that would alter the numbers from the above, but I'm tired of looking into this shit even as much as I have right now, so that'll have to do for now, assuming at least that much is correct.
(This ended up being a much longer, more involved post than it was when I first started, where I had initially intended it to only be the first two paragraphs.)
For hypothetical purposes, if there was a mass exodus from, let's say, Wyoming, for whatever irrelevant reasons, leaving behind at most a total of only four or five people officially living there...
...would two of those people still be elected to the United States Senate and a third to the House of Representatives?
Okay, failing that, let's put it another way. From my scant amount of research on the topic, I've found that 60,000 is probably the minimum required population for a US state to be considered a US state. https://www.google.com/search?q=minimum+population+for+statehood
So, another, even less realistic scenario: the populations of every other state in the United States experience a mass exodus such that all but 60,000 people in each state move to, let's say, California. Ignoring the logistics of this, there's now roughly 324,000,000 people living in California, and a total of only around 3,000,000 living in all the other 49 states combined (i.e. 60,000 in each). Does California still only get 2 senators? Do all the other states still get 2 senators each? The law says this is indeed the case. As such, then about 1% of the total population of the United States would be represented by 98 senators whereas 99% of the population is represented by only 2 senators.
Now, granted, the make-up of the House of Representatives should radically change in this scenario, in that California should get 386 of the 435 representatives, whereas each other state should only get 1 each, but that's the House. I'm talking about the Senate.
(Though, even with that said, 60,000 / 1 representative in every other state is quite a bit different from ~324,000,000 / 386 ≅ 840,000. I.e. one representative in every other state would represent 60,000 people, but one representative in California would represent about 840,000 people, so it would still be kind of messed up. If one wanted to be actually fair as far as number of people represented, per representative, California should actually get around 5,400 representatives, in this scenario, instead of just 386, but since the total was arbitrarily set by law in 1929 to 435... *shrug*)
The Electoral College would be affected as well. I.e. California would get 388 electors and every other state would get 3 each [plus 3 for the District of Columbia]. So, in this scenario, at least, California alone absolutely would be determining who is the POTUS, even if every other state and DC voted for the opposite candidate (disregarding the possibility of faithless electors or whatever). Though, again, California's electors-per-population ratio would be significantly smaller than all the other states.
(To show the flip side of why the Electoral College is kind of bullshit, even if only 50.00001% of California's population voted for one candidate, in this scenario, and the other 49.99999% voted the opposite, all of California's 388 electoral votes would go to the 50.00001% candidate [again, barring any faithless electors and whatnot]. So even if half - 1 of California's population *plus* the almost 3,000,000 in the rest of the country voted for candidate B, candidate A would still win because half + 1 of California's population voted for candidate A. In other words, in the interests of simplicity, let's say that the population of California is exactly 324,000,000, in this scenario, and the population of the other states total is 3,000,000. As per the above, to restate, if 162,000,001 people vote for Candidate A, and 164,999,999 [i.e. 161,999,999 + 3,000,000] vote for Candidate B, Candidate A wins. [I also simplified things further and assumed that the entire population was eligible to vote and actually voted, including children and babies, which isn't the case in real life, of course, but the principle is still the same.] So, yeah, does that not sound rather familiar? *cough*2016*hack*Trump-got-3-million-less-votes-than-Clinton-but-Trump-still-won*sputter*)
But, again, I'm not talking about the House or the Electoral College, I'm talking about the Senate. Each and every state still gets 2 senators per state, no matter what.
So yeah, anyway, I just think it's a tiny bit weird that Wyoming's population (573,720) is just 1.5% of California's (39,776,830), yet Wyoming still gets the same 2 senators that California does. Basically, the Senate was created in a way such that each state is considered as an equal entity (as a whole, regardless of any other considerations). This might have made sense back in the 18th century, but maybe not so much now. Or, hell, maybe there's still ostensibly a good reason for it to remain the way it is now (I mean, even beyond the simple fact that it would be way too difficult to get enough people to agree to change it now). Hell if I know.
Well, whatever, I guess that's why the GOP dominates the Senate now. And given that, and given how the red state vs blue state break down goes these days, I'm not sure how the Democrats (or whoever) can ever hope to regain the Senate, unless either a bunch of non-Republicans move to a bunch of red states and vote accordingly (which would serve to further exacerbate the already eroded relations between RWNJs and non-RWNJs), or else a bunch of the Republicans already in those states finally come to their senses and start voting not-Republican (good luck with *that* ever happening, at least on a scale large enough to make a difference).
-----
The math, just in case I screwed up somewhere:
1) Total US population in 2018 = 326,766,748. https://www.google.com/search?q=US+population+2018 326,766,748 - (49 x 60,000) = 323,826,748. (We'll just say everyone in DC and the rest of the non-state territories moved to California, I guess?)
2) 49 x 60,000 = 2,940,000
3) 2,940,000 / 323,826,748 ≅ 0.009 or 0.9% ≅ 1%.
4) 435 - 49 = 386.
5) 60,000 / 1 is, of course, 60,000. But 323,826,748 / 386 = 838,929.4 ≅ 840,000. Conversely, to get 60,000 people per representative would be 323,826,748 / 60,000 = 5,397.1 ≅ 5,400.
6) Total electors = representatives + senators + 3 for DC = 435 + 100 + 3 = 538. California, in this hypothetical scenario, gets 386 + 2 electors. Every other state gets 1 + 2 electors, and DC gets 3 just because (23rd Amendment). 50 x 3 = 150 electors. So California, here, already has well over 270 electors, which is the minimum required to determine who becomes POTUS.
All of this, of course, assumes that I didn't miss some other detail (whether of law or math or whatever) that would alter the numbers from the above, but I'm tired of looking into this shit even as much as I have right now, so that'll have to do for now, assuming at least that much is correct.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-12 01:21 am (UTC)From:I watched the vote tallies come in on the election earlier this week and one thing that quickly stood out is that virtually all of the republican seats that were retained were in places with low vote tallies - ie: low populations. Even then a lot of them had just barely won. If the voting was actually fair by population, it would be painfully obvious that republicans are in fact a minority of the population. They're just benefiting from a system set up ages ago - that and their voter manipulation that they engaged in big time this election. (See the reports of some states outright removing voters from ballots without following their own official procedure.)
And that's even more so when you realize that republicans are overall more engaged in voting - they know they have to be. If democratic citizens and even independents voted with the same determination I'd wonder if even the red states would stay that way for long. (Good luck with trying to get a reasonable percentage of (north) american voters to show up though.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-12 05:29 pm (UTC)From:Though I do fully believe that stupid, ignorant, gullible, hateful, willfully disinformation-consuming dumbshit asshole Trumpanzees do exist, because of course they exist and the evidence of their existence is impossible to avoid even if you wanted to (and believe me I want to), I do not believe that these fucking morons even remotely outnumber sane, observant, conscientious people in this country. And yet, their Trump-like candidates keep winning, somehow. Gee, I wonder why. *goes back and rereads the first paragraph again* Oh, right, that's why.
For what it's worth, the Democrats did take the majority in the House of Representatives in this election, which is (ostensibly) a good thing, but unless one of the very first things they do when they take office (which won't even be until January) is to begin the process of impeaching Donald Trump, I won't be holding my breath on how useful they will be in fixing everything. Or anything. Of course, since the GOP gained even more seats in their majority in the Senate, even if the House does impeach Trump, the Mitch McConnell-led Senate will obviously vote to clear him, because all of them are at least as vile and evil as Trump himself is, in their own, potentially even worse ways, especially Mitch fucking McConnell.
At the very least, the Dems leading the House now could try to fireproof Robert Mueller, but that assumes that Mueller is even still around by then, which is by no means certain. But, again, even if Mueller does manage to stick around, and even if Mueller does eventually blow the lid off the entire case of Trump's blatant malfeasance, even that won't matter if those in power choose to do nothing about it, and Trump is doing everything he can to stack the deck in his favor.
Honestly, at this point, I can think of no (legitimate, non-violent) ways for any of this mess to even begin to be fixed.