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Comment by lupire | Hacker News Reader

USA operates under the political delusion that geographicallynlcoalnareas are politically unified.

You can still have those at state level, or even lower, by grouping counties.

The hill people from Appalachia deserve to be represented by someone local. The low lying coastal communities in the outer banks also deserve to have someone that understands them, rather than someone from NYC. The border towns in Texas are better represented by someone from there, rather than someone from Ohio. There is some value to local representation, it doesn't need to be all in.

Romania for example has a hybrid system: it's "first past the post" first and foremost, so people get local representatives, but all the unused votes that would otherwise get wasted (both winning and losing ones) are then put together in a big national pool and then you have the second round of MPs appointed because of that pool. That way popular vote matches the percentages in the parliament, but you also have local representation.

As someone who lives in the Outer Banks I'd much prefer a random person (our state is 50/50) than the gerrymandered bullshit we deal with now. It doesn't help that the local pool business guy (true story) is our representative when he runs unopposed because of extreme gerrymandering.

Id just use sortition. Someone who didn't want to run for office, is perfect.

Yeah I consistently hear people say "well if we have proportional representation then you won't have access to your representative who is beholden to your needs specifically." My federal district has 600k voters. My house representative lives 100 miles away from me and is a complete asshole who regularly publicly attacks my demographic. I'm sure not able to take him to a baseball game to share my political concerns, let alone get him to care if I send a letter.

but that is a failure of the current system after Congress passd a law to fix a number of representatives in the house. There used to be a much smaller proportion of citizens to representatives than there is today. The excuse they used to fix the number was that it was ridiculous the number of individuals that would be in the House, but personally, I don't care if they have to hold it in a football stadium---- I want a representative that I might have met at my local coffee shop. That's the ideal and we need to get back to it.

Sure, and that's a problem. It is true that uncapping the house and ending up with like 15,000 representatives would achieve a bunch of goals and IMO be a significant improvement, but I personally find this less likely to happen than to change from a geographic model of representation.

Probably, but all this does is lead to more of what we have now: No trust in government because government is far away. No trust in your representative because they are some mega-rich millionaire (or hangs with them) and not only have you not met them, they don't even care about your hometown.

And think of this. Today House members spend all their time mooching for donations, because to get elected requires a BUNCH of money. That money is increasingly dominated by money outside your district. If we have a Representative for every 20,000 citizens for you 15,000 number, that means you can run a small campaign for very little money. Heck you could just knock on doors for no money.

THAT takes a lot of power away from moneyed interests.

Also, 331,000,000 citizens / 50,000 citizens/rep = 6,600 reps

To me, the distance to government doesn't really affect my trust in government.

I agree that uncapping the house would improve things, but I do not think that it is fundamental to improving things.

No, but, say, areas in general have different concerns. E.g. setting a national minimum wage based on what people in cities want is a big problem for employers who are in lower-cost areas.

The area covered by my federal representative is quite large. It contains significant areas of abject rural poverty, some small cities, as well as multiple large universities and their associated college towns. This area does not have meaningful uniform concerns.

You say delusion but I can tell your politics with far far better than random accuracy just by the city you live in. State legislators do actually deal with issues local to the district despite them being drawn increasingly weird.

I don't think we should base our political system on the assumption but I don't think it's unfounded. It's tough to want to have the makeup of my state legislature reflect the will of the population at large while making sure when the pool is distributed my district gets a democrat because anything else would be insane given the political makeup of the area.

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