Three Californias?

[lokisnow]

1 hour ago, Vin said:

Preserves the union and protects smaller states from the tyranny of larger states.

Currently the actual problem we have is that the larger states suffer painfully from the tyranny of smaller states, I would very much love to end the tyranny of smaller states and still preserve he union.

but the smaller states are not being tyrannized and never have been, the smaller states are right now the tyrannical ones. And they wield the electoral college like a tyrants fist. 

[Kalbear]

I also like the notion that the suppression of larger states WON'T lead to a splitting of the union despite those larger states being more than able to exist on their own fairly well, but the suppression of smaller states which are heavily dependent on the largess of the larger, more affluent states WILL lead to a split.

I mean, which is more likely - that California or Nebraska secedes? That Texas or Vermont secedes?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

It would be hilariously ironic if states started to secede and the union collapsed under the government of a man who ran on Make America Great Again.  

[Yukle]

10 hours ago, DMBouazizi said:

First, two out of the past five elections (and none before that except 1876 which..isn't something to celebrate) does not qualify as "continuous." 

The Democrats have won all Presidential Elections since 1992 except one. Yet they've not had a president three of those times. That's 26 years, which is certainly long enough to qualify as a continuous trend.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

731 members of the house is hardly the horrifying apocalypse of representation you’re afraid of.

I just said I'd be fine with an 870 member house.

2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

but is that 3087 members really the worst thing in the world?

Obviously I can't disprove a counterfactual, but the notion a thousands member legislature would severely hamper its ability to govern is rooted in the logic that large groups have a harder time with decision making than smaller groups - and as shown it's been a concern for a very long time.

5 minutes ago, Yukle said:

The Democrats have won all Presidential Elections since 1992 except one. Yet they've not had a president three of those times. That's 26 years, which is certainly long enough to qualify as a continuous trend.

You said "As shown by their continuous winning the popular vote but not the elections."  That's plainly not true - they won both in 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012.  I don't think something happening twice in even the limited sample of seven qualifies as a continuous trend, it just seems hyperbolic.

[Yukle]

3 hours ago, Vin said:

Preserves the union and protects smaller states from the tyranny of larger ones .

That is not - and was not ever - the intention of the EC. That's revisionists putting that perspective on the founding fathers. At the time the EC was made, there weren't the same enormous population differences between the states.

The EC was made so that a college of extra special smart men could override the popular will if, after the election in November, they arrived at Washington in January and realised that the winning candidate was someone they'd not tolerate. They were meant to be an aristocratic override to the popular will (and even then, only the popular will of enfranchised wealthy white men).

You know how to prove the EC is a completely shit idea?

California and Texas, both massive geographic areas with large rural populations and huge cities don't use the EC to elect their governor. In fact, not a single other state - of any kind - has adopted the same system anywhere in the world. Even the constituent states of the USA recognise it's a stupid idea.

[Yukle]

19 minutes ago, DMBouazizi said:

I just said I'd be fine with an 870 member house.

Obviously I can't disprove a counterfactual, but the notion a thousands member legislature would severely hamper its ability to govern is rooted in the logic that large groups have a harder time with decision making than smaller groups - and as shown it's been a concern for a very long time.

You said "As shown by their continuous winning the popular vote but not the elections."  That's plainly not true - they won both in 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012.  I don't think something happening twice in even the limited sample of seven qualifies as a continuous trend, it just seems hyperbolic.

It's not hyperbolic because the magnitude of the error is so enormously profound. How many times should America's elections go against the popular will before it becomes an issue? Isn't, like, once too many?

Each term is four years, so that's 28 years of time (by the end of Drumpf's first of presumably five terms) of which 8 were ruled by the losing party.

"Oh yay! In the past 26 years we've had 7 elections and only 2 were ruined! Only 8 of the 28 years were therefore run by someone who shouldn't have won! Yay for us!" That's a very high failure rate.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

36 minutes ago, Yukle said:

The Democrats have won all Presidential Elections since 1992 except one. Yet they've not had a president three of those times. That's 26 years, which is certainly long enough to qualify as a continuous trend.

You're really covering Croatia with glory over the last half hour. You should have gotten a proper English education. 

Cheerio 

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Yukle said:

Isn't, like, once too many?

That's certainly what I've thought for the past 18 years.

11 minutes ago, Yukle said:

"Oh yay! In the past 26 years we've had 7 elections and only 2 were ruined! Only 8 of the 28 years were therefore run by someone who shouldn't have won! Yay for us!" That's a very high failure rate.

You could even say 4 out of 56 is very high failure rate.  I agree, say that!  ...But I still wouldn't describe it as a "continuous" trend. 

[Yukle]

Just now, DMBouazizi said:

That's certainly what I've thought for the past 18 years.

You could even say 4 out of 56 is very high failure rate.  I agree, say that!  ...But I still wouldn't describe it as a "continuous" trend. 

Oh. That's fair enough.

[Yukle]

8 minutes ago, chiKanery et al. said:

You're really covering Croatia with glory over the last half hour. You should have gotten a proper English education. 

Cheerio 

Oops, mistype. Too many tabs open at once, it's a lot to organise in my head.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Yukle,

FYI no candidate won a majority of the popular vote in 1992.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1992

[Yukle]

2 hours ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

Yukle,

FYI no candidate won a majority of the popular vote in 1992.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1992

That's true. I'm using majority and plurality interchangeably when I shouldn't be.

Preferential voting would help alleviate this issue.

[lokisnow]

On 6/14/2018 at 2:59 PM, DMBouazizi said:

I just said I'd be fine with an 870 member house.

Obviously I can't disprove a counterfactual, but the notion a thousands member legislature would severely hamper its ability to govern is rooted in the logic that large groups have a harder time with decision making than smaller groups - and as shown it's been a concern for a very long time.

You said "As shown by their continuous winning the popular vote but not the elections."  That's plainly not true - they won both in 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012.  I don't think something happening twice in even the limited sample of seven qualifies as a continuous trend, it just seems hyperbolic.

Yeah my post was typed before I saw the 870 exchange.

 

as regards large legislative bodies, partisanship and outside forces like Alec matter more to the policy written up as law more than the people elected anyways, most of whom probably have never read anything they’ve voted on in their careers anyways. so with 400 reps or 3000 reps they’re still going to do what they’re bribed to do by donations from coordinating outside forces that are writing the laws for them already, so I imagine a larger legislative body would be operationally indistinguishable from our current HOR, run pretty much exactly the same, with about the same level of efficiency and more people staffed at the actual places on K street that write every law these days  (since congesss doesn’t write laws anymore).

However, the current system of representation has been proven to not work and has been proven to be easily hijacked and hacked, if merely increasing the size of the body does most of the work of fixing our broken and unrepresentative system and immunizing it against future hijacking,  and that fix can be enacted legislatively rather than constitutional amendment? well that’s probably the best possible solution.

 

But the cynical part of me that wrote the first paragraph assumes that given software drawing the boundaries, even 3087 districts probably will not alter gerrymanderings effects, we might have to go up another order of magnitude to 30,000 Representatives handling districts with 10,000 residents to cure or alter our sick and vile system.

even then the software could probably gerrymander the same outcome though. :-p

but the risk is worth taking, it is the only realistic option we have against the enemies who have hijacked our country.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

50 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Yeah my post was typed before I saw the 870 exchange.

 

as regards large legislative bodies, partisanship and outside forces like Alec matter more to the policy written up as law more than the people elected anyways, most of whom probably have never read anything they’ve voted on in their careers anyways. so with 400 reps or 3000 reps they’re still going to do what they’re bribed to do by donations from coordinating outside forces that are writing the laws for them already, so I imagine a larger legislative body would be operationally indistinguishable from our current HOR, run pretty much exactly the same, with about the same level of efficiency and more people staffed at the actual places on K street that write every law these days  (since congesss doesn’t write laws anymore).

However, the current system of representation has been proven to not work and has been proven to be easily hijacked and hacked, if merely increasing the size of the body does most of the work of fixing our broken and unrepresentative system and immunizing it against future hijacking,  and that fix can be enacted legislatively rather than constitutional amendment? well that’s probably the best possible solution.

 

But the cynical part of me that wrote the first paragraph assumes that given software drawing the boundaries, even 3087 districts probably will not alter gerrymanderings effects, we might have to go up another order of magnitude to 30,000 Representatives handling districts with 10,000 residents to cure or alter our sick and vile system.

even then the software could probably gerrymander the same outcome though. :-p

but the risk is worth taking, it is the only realistic option we have against the enemies who have hijacked our country.

 

I’ve been interested in the idea of an “Allthing” where every citizen who cares can vote on legislation at the HOR level.  With the internet such a thing is possible if unweldy.

[DMC]

3 hours ago, lokisnow said:

so with 400 reps or 3000 reps they’re still going to do what they’re bribed to do by donations from coordinating outside forces that are writing the laws for them already, so I imagine a larger legislative body would be operationally indistinguishable from our current HOR, run pretty much exactly the same, with about the same level of efficiency and more people staffed at the actual places on K street that write every law these days  (since congesss doesn’t write laws anymore).

This is actually precisely my concern.  Beginning with the 1946 LRA, the amount of congressional committee staff continued to increase until the 1970s.  The idea was to counteract the expertise of the exploding bureaucracy in order to mitigate the information asymmetry between executive-legislative relations.  Since the 1970s, committee staff has largely either decreased or remained stagnant (albeit this varies considerably by committee) - especially compared to the continuous rise of bureaucratic expertise and manpower.  This is very much the topic of one of my diss papers. 

While my theory and empirical testing primarily concern the horizontal coordination between committee staff and careerist bureaucrats in the former's respective jurisdictions, the normative justification for the paper in large part emphasizes the vertical coordination dilemmas between MCs and the increasingly outgunned committee staff.  The result is exactly what you describe - the revolving door and its impact on legislative output.  Plainly the best way to address this problem is by recommitting to and nurturing committee staff and their subsequent expertise.  Likewise, one of the best ways to exacerbate the problem would be to exponentially increase the size of the legislature, which would render the vertical coordination problems between MCs and committee staff to a virtual quagmire.

3 hours ago, lokisnow said:

However, the current system of representation has been proven to not work and has been proven to be easily hijacked and hacked

And this is why I said in the my original response to spare my the logical fallacy of "it can't get any worse than this."  Yes, it most certainly can, and above is why it almost certainly would.

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

Does anyone have any idea should any of these oft-pondered efforts to secede actually go forward and happen one day what would happen to the citizenship status of people in said states?  

For example, if I live in California and have for years but was born in another state and lived there for years, that other state stays in the union but California secedes...Do I get dual citizenship?  Am I forced to forfeit my US citizenship if I stay in California? 

This is exactly why Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.  Based on the position of the US government - as in not recognizing the Confederacy's right to secede - all "political prisoners" and even POWs should have been hanged for treason.  Obviously he didn't wanna do that.  So, the short answer is no.  Nobody has any idea.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 hours ago, Triskjavikson said:

Semi-serious question:  

Does anyone have any idea should any of these oft-pondered efforts to secede actually go forward and happen one day what would happen to the citizenship status of people in said states?  

For example, if I live in California and have for years but was born in another state and lived there for years, that other state stays in the union but California secedes...Do I get dual citizenship?  Am I forced to forfeit my US citizenship if I stay in California?  

As far as I can tell this is an attempt to divide California into three State not an attempt to remove California or a portion of California from the Union.

As there has never been a successful secession of a State from the United States we don’t know the answer to your question but, hypothetically if California were to successfully secede from the US, I suspect US Citizens in California would retain their US citizenship as ExPats so long as they continued to pay taxes and otherwise comply with US laws regarding expatriates.

 

[Inigima]

As far as I can tell on Facebook, voters of both parties think it's a ploy by the other.

I don't think a time of major political polarization is a good time to change the makeup of the Union, the circumstances of the last one notwithstanding. Who could trust the other side to play it straight?

[lokisnow]

Honestly, if the proposed states of California and Southern California were combined and we had a proposed north/south split, I’d be for it, the borders would keep the Owens valley in Southern California, so that’s good water wise, and sure so cal would have 36 million people compared to 19 million people in nor cal, but it’d still be a big state.

but boy would republicans hate that, they want to carve republicanstan out of California, which is what all these proposals are really about. Simply dividing the state in Twain would not accomplish their goals of a republican controlled state on the pacific coast