• collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Their two senators don’t represent them at all though. That’s the rub. They’re punished because they live in a colossal state with a bunch of dumb fucks. If you get 260k votes in North Dakota, you are a Senator in a landslide. You get 260k votes in Texas and congrats you managed to lose to Henry the Porpoise who was a write-in candidate.

    North Dakotans have disproportionate political power because the system is inherently biased against large states. The result is tyranny of the minority.

    If we can’t have some equity in the rules, then we should consolidate the Dakotas, Wyoming,Montana, and Alaska down to one state. The lower 48 of that group especially largely have similar political views. They shouldn’t get 5 times the political power of California or Texas when together they don’t even have half the population.

    • Narauko@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You are saying that politicians from one party cannot represent constituents from another party, meaning that a percentage of the population in every level doesn’t have representation at any given time. If only a person from your particular party affiliation (ideally with perfectly synchronous beliefs about everything) can represent you on the city council, and again as the mayor, governor, etc, then partisanship can only accelerate and dissolution of the union is inevitable.

      I would also like to point out that our government was designed for tyranny of the minority and tyranny of the majority acting as counterbalances. You are also conflating North Dakotans with North Dakota. The priorities and mindset of the State are and should be different than the individual, and the Fed is and should be different from both of those. This is supposed to balance disparate needs of all the groups and people, and the reason for all 3 to have their own “representation”.

      We could just as easily break up the populous states into multiple smaller ones, then they would get the same benefits as the Dakotas or Wyoming. People could also move to those states and get the same benefits, but neither of these are desirable as there are benefits to the population density both for states like California and the people that live there. Rural vs urban needs have been in conflict for thousands of years and probably aren’t going to be solved any time soon.