[echelon]

States are sovereign entities with their own laws. They can even, in theory, secede from the union.

The Senate is a good system, it's just that most states are Republican.

Some of the larger states might consider splitting themselves into separate states to better represent their populations. Though that may not be constitutionally possible.

If we ever add additional states to the Union (Puerto Rico, D.C., etc.), they'll want to enjoy having an equal say with every other state in the Union. It's a compelling feature of our system.

The House, as a proportional system, actually needs to be re-normalized. There are not enough representatives to have an actually proportional vote.

[nullocator]

Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why? The system as it's designed seems to want to incentivize having many low population states as a way to spread and gain power, and as such the current 100 power holders are incentivized to to protect their power by preventing the dilution of their power that would come with more states.

Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control this is frequently mentioned and brought up several times in this post alone. Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?

[echelon]

> Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why?

States have sovereignty and rights.

The point is that all states have equal representation.

> Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?

Because states are political test tubes and need autonomy.

> Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control

In my lifetime, the Senate has been majority Democratic party controlled [1].

If you go back to the second Bush term, it's been 60% Democrat.

The current party makeup is only temporary. Things are constantly in flux.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

[valleyer]

States can not "in theory" secede from the United States. See Texas v. White: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White

From the point of view of the U.S. legal system, the Confederacy's secession was "absolutely null".

[echelon]

It's more complicated than that single case [1], and the chief justice admitted there were other routes:

> Chase, however, "recognized that a state could cease to be part of the union 'through revolution, or through consent of the States'".

Secession does not have to be done legally. Who knows what, if any, conflict that might bring about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States

[Yizahi]

Most states are Republican only because of first past the post system. If states internally did democratic majority elections, then most of them would turn progressive very fast. Including Texas, which is already democratic, but is suppressed by a blatant corruption via gerrymandering.

[spankalee]

The Senate is a terrible system. There's no logical reason why citizens in one state should have orders of magnitude more say in the federal government than citizens in another.

The founders aren't infallible gods, and they really fucked up here.

[Centrino]

Unlike in many other countries, where provinces or regions are merely administrative divisions created to decentralize or streamline administration, the US emerged when states voluntarily came together and decided to create a country. The states were willing to outsource part of their autonomy to a federal level, on condition that guardrails were put in place to limit the power of that federal level. Those guardrails were: bicameralism, equal representation of states in the Senate, and the electoral college. The House is the voice of the people, the Senate is the voice of the states.

The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively prevents a majority of voters from large urban centers from imposing their will onto rural populations, at least at the federal level. It was designed that way.

I've seen comments here claiming that countries like Canada or France deliver better outcomes than the US. They are stronger welfare states, yes, but they also have become overly paternalistic nanny states, with heavy-handed regulations, and high taxes stifling individual initiative.

[spankalee]

The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively allows a minority of voters from rural areas to impose their will onto large urban centers

[mlrtime]

Which you want the opposite to happen , not a better system.

[spankalee]

How in the world is minority rule better than majority rule?

[newfriend]

We don't have minority rule though, we have a balance.

[teiferer]

> There's no logical reason

If you study the U.S. history in detail the you see the reasons and the main ones are quite "logical".

You might not agree with them (I don't necessarily), but that doesn't make them illogical.

[NoGravitas]

They were logical at the time they were implemented. Most of those reasons have been invalid since the Civil War, and should have been fixed during Reconstruction, except the winners didn't have the foresight or political will to do what needed to be done.