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this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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US Congress is broken into bodies. The Senate and the House of Representatives.
Senate is 2 people per state. So Wyoming’s 0.6m people get the same representation as California’s 40m people.
The House is proportional to population size. There are 435 seats in the House, and those seats get allocated to states based on their population size. Bigger states get more seats. They’re allocated using this formula:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%E2%80%93Hill_method
Big states often get grumpy that the senate allows a minority to obstruct what the majority in the nation wants. That said, the senate allocation rules were established this way to encourage smaller states join the union. It was a way to ensure that small states didn’t get completely steamrolled by states that has different populations and needs.
The Congressional districts also aren't evenly distributed, meaning if you live in a densely populated city, your vote means less than if you live in a rural area. I haven't bothered looking at actual population stats, so maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
You're not wrong. I think districts have to be roughly equal population within a state. But California needs like 17 more spots for their votes to equal Wyoming's votes for the House. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule
You are correct, and it is exacerbated by the cap on representatives. You will never really get it 100% perfect due to the land mass of the US, but uncapping it and making it proportional would go a long way.
Minor correction: the Senate is 2 per state, so Wyoming's 1 state has the same representation as California's 1 state. The Senate is (supposed to be) the voice of the States in the Federal Government. The Senate wasn't even supposed to be elected by popular vote, they were appointed/elected by their state governments until the 17th amendment. The change made senators into super-representatives, which changed power dynamics. Arguments can be made here for whether this was ultimately better or worse.
The House of Representatives IS the voice of the people, and should be proportional to population size (but was artificially capped because the Feds complained it was getting too big so now Wyoming has more representational power per person than California). This needs to change because it's only going to get worse going forward.
With this breakdown, the Federal Government's interests, State's interests, and the People's interests balance each other. These three bodies have vastly different focuses.