| > Treating the members of each party as two different species, as though every voter for a given party has uniform shared interests with all the others. There is no such thing as "Republicans" being over-represented. Pennsylvanians are over-represented, which influences the party platforms of both the Republicans and the Democrats. For the reasons I've outlined above, Republicans are overrepresented. To reiterate, it takes more Democratic votes to achieve a majority than it does Republican votes. This is a matter of fact. > The obvious flaw in the party-based analysis being that we're currently going into a legislative session in which the Democrats control the Senate, which they do approximately half of the time. But Republicans have controlled the Senate even when Democratic Senators have gotten more votes and represent more people. So Democrats are forced to adjust their policies while Republicans are under much less pressure to do so. > Also, the purpose of the Senate is to be this way, in the same way that Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected. When the Senate was created, the difference in population between the largest and smallest states was 12x. Today it is 68x. If you still think this is a feature rather than a bug, you and I have fundamentally different ideas about what democracy should be. This will be my final comment as all those who keep telling me that it's my duty as a liberal to engage in dialog with the other side also seem to downvote my comments to oblivion when I try. Ciao. |