The USA senate is another example of something that is not democratic. 2 people per state regardless of population is kinda questionable.

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cedilla 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's federalistic. It's a bit drastic - but I guess no one could imagine one state having 66 times the population as another in 1789. Other federal states compensate for that - for example, in the German Bundesrat, each state gets 3 to 6 seats according to population.

A problem for the US is that /both/ chambers of parliament are skewed that way.

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xienze 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That's why it's balanced with the house of representatives, which is proportional.

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dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The House is neither proportional (structurally represents parties roughly in proportion to their vote share) nor, what I expect you mean, divided into districts of equal population. The size difference between the smallest and largest districts—RI district 2 and Montana’s at large district—is 1:2 in population. It’s less unequal than the Senate, but its still not equal representation.

And, despite certain bills having to originate in the House, the Senate is more powerful since all Congressional powers either require both houses in concert or the Senate alone (except for electing the President when there is an electoral tie, which the House does but with a voting rule of one-vote-per-state-delegation which gives it the same undemocratic weighting as the Senate has normally.)

	▲	xienze 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> The size difference between the smallest and largest districts—RI district 2 and Montana’s at large district—is 1:2 in population. Come again? MT and RI have the same approximate population (1.1M) and the same number of representatives (2). I’m talking about the state level here. > all Congressional powers either require both houses in concert Right, they act as checks and balances upon one another. Equal-sized representation to give smaller states a way to avoid being steamrolled by the will of the largest states — why would states want to stay in a union where they have no hope of representation? Methinks if Alabama and Mississippi kept everything about themselves politically the same yet were both the size of California and New York you’d probably be of a different mind about the importance of the senate.

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TimorousBestie 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The House of Representatives has not been proportional since the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.

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guappa 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The entire nation is held hostage by very few people basically.