Harvard Law Review: Avoid permanent minority rule in the US by making DC into *many* states

Harvard Law Review: Avoid permanent minority rule in the US by making DC into many states

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01/11/2020 11:17

Subject: Harvard Law Review: Avoid permanent minority rule in the US by making DC into *many* states

quote

Anonymous

Yes.

America's urban areas are the most productive and vibrant part of our American economy and the thing that makes us unique in the world economically.

I am sick and tired of being in an urban area and being ruled by rural conservatives who believe the lies they're spoonfed by Fox and other rightwing media.

Finally, someone wrote up this proposal. Make DC into many small states, change the constitution to make it more fair, then merge the new DC states into a single DC state.

We should all be sick of being ruled by a conservative minority.

https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/01/pack-the-union-a-proposal-to-admit-new-states-for-the-purpose-of-amending-the-constitution-to-ensure-equal-representation/

For most of the twenty-first century, the world’s oldest surviving democracy has been led by a chief executive who received fewer votes than his opponent in an election for the position.
The first of these executives started a war based on false pretenses that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The second — a serial abuser of women who hired as his campaign manager a lobbyist for violent dictatorships — authorized an immigration policy that forcibly separated migrant children from their families and indefinitely detained them in facilities described as “concentration camps.”

Recent events have highlighted some of the ways in which federal elections in the United States are profoundly undemocratic and, thus, profoundly unfair.
The Electoral College — when it contravenes the popular vote — is an obvious example of this unfairness. But it is just one of the mathematically undemocratic features in the Constitution. Equal representation of states in the Senate, for example, gives citizens of low-population states undue influence in Congress. Conversely, American citizens residing in U.S. territories have no meaningful representation in Congress or the Electoral College.

What's the solution? Make DC into many states. Admit them. Then change the constitution to fix rule by a conservative minority.

While a step in the right direction, these proposals are inadequate. To create a system where every vote counts equally, the Constitution must be amended. To do this, Congress should pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.C., to an area encompassing only a few core federal buildings and then admit the rest of the District’s 127 neighborhoods as states. These states — which could be added with a simple congressional majority — would add enough votes in Congress to ratify four amendments: (1) a transfer of the Senate’s power to a body that represents citizens equally; (2) an expansion of the House so that all citizens are represented in equal-sized districts; (3) a replacement of the Electoral College with a popular vote; and (4) a modification of the Constitution’s amendment process that would ensure future amendments are ratified by states representing most Americans.

Radical as this proposal may sound, it is no more radical than a nominally democratic system of government that gives citizens widely disproportionate voting power depending on where they live. The people should not tolerate a system that is manifestly unfair; they should instead fight fire with fire, and use the unfair provisions of the Constitution to create a better system.