You take the good and the bad.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
You can't go around saying "DEMOCRACY IS FAIR BECAUSE EVERYONE GETS A VOTE" and then when a majority of people vote for something you dont like, you can't go claiming "TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY!"
edited 2nd Apr '11 11:53:37 PM by Thorn14
The only real solution is to make the members of all representative bodies into at-large officials.
Is there any centrist party in the US which is centre-slightly left on fiscal and centre slightly right (as opposed to fundo territory extreme right) on social policy? I'd go for that. But then, I'm somewhat communitarian, so I seem to be flailing.
As for the suggestion of at-large status, that would work great for the Senate, and make state elections even more important, but I don't see how it'd work for the House...
The real problem with districts is gerrymandering. Instead of abolishing them, we need to have an independent commission draw up the borders like in Iowa.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayThere is absolutely no way you can draw up districts without gerrymandering, no matter how you cut it, somebody's getting screwed over.
^^ What in the what what? Maybe I'm misreading you, but I think you typed that backward. It's dead simple for the house, since then nobody would be representing a state, instead they'd all be stateless representatives at large, or alternately (in a party list system, which I favor) representing parties.
The only way I can imagine at large representation working in the senate is if it was retained as a miniaturized mirror image of the house, locked to 100 members so that we still have individual legislators big enough to fend for themselves amongst the president and governors, instead of just hundreds of pipsqueak house members.
edited 3rd Apr '11 6:55:30 AM by EricDVH
But at large members makes it more expensive to campaign, increasing the influence of special interests.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play^^ If they were stateless representatives at large, 90% of Congress wouldn't know how to deal with 95% of the country's issues that specific Congressmen from specific states would.
Face it, a Parliamentarian style Congress is never going to happen. Proportional representation was doomed to failure from the start and if you really want the entirety of Flyover Country from the Sierra Nevada to the Appalachians to up and secede and starve the leftist coasts of everything be my guest. We'll be happy to plummet New York and San Francisco into impoverished 3rd world status. They depend on our resources and people to survive and promote their silly ideologies, not the other way around.
It's centrist as in "traitor".
We picked Obama because we thought he was The Liberal Guy.
He has failed. We will find another way.
You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.^^^^^
No, I meant what I said. We can't have stateless representatives for reasons already stated. But we can at least change the way we get our senators within the current system into office. Even if we're a federation in name only, what little remains of states rights will be loathed to be given up by said states.

I wouldn't mind a Kuccinich/Weiner ticket myself, but I wouldn't want to threaten losing the election to Palin in order to have it on the ballot :P