2016 U.S. Downballot: THEY ARE THE LAW

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > 2016 U.S. Downballot: THEY ARE THE LAW

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Hedera Helix posted:

So, basically, the Democrats have to win every race currently leaning dem, and either two of three tossups while holding NV or losing NV and winning all three tossups. This will get them to 50 seats, which if Clinton wins the presidency, will be enough to take control of the Senate; otherwise, they'll need several more seats in order to make up for everyone who will want to be bipartisan and work with President Christie or whomever.

And then two years after that, the Republicans win five seats and we're back to where we started.

Am I reading this correctly?

welcome to the Permanent Republican Majority

inshallah

# ¿ Nov 10, 2014 01:59

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 00:48

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Feingold gonna ride in on a golden chariot and liberate his people from the shackles of the Koch Brothers' slavery

Please?

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 01:19

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

The US despatately needs party list voting, and also to remove the Senate's veto power. Maybe someday we'll even get a full parliamentary system :allears:

icantfindaname has issued a correction as of 19:18 on Feb 23, 2015

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 19:13

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

More importantly, it's the only real way to fix gerrymandering, because there are no more districts

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 20:33

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

This is also easily fixable with party list voting, as all you have to do is mandate the parties keep a certain percentage of minorities on their candidate lists instead of essentially rigging elections in dozens of single seat constituencies

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 09:08

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 00:48

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Duckbag posted:

Another option that's vanishingly unlikely but would be really interesting from a map-making point of view would be to reform the states so they're all roughly the same size. You could theoretically do this by breaking up the big states, but you'd have to break them up quite a lot to achieve parity with the smallest states. You'd have to break California up into more than 60 equal-sized states for those states to be as small in population as Wyoming and Vermont are. Likewise, you could condense all the little states, but there are limits to how well that would work as well. The combined population of all six New England States, for instance, is only 14.4 million. Still 5 million less than New York and Florida and less than half the population of California. Figuring out how to divvy up all the geographically large, but sparsely populated states in the Plains and Mountain West is an even thornier issue and don't get me started on non-contiguous territories like Alaska and Hawaii.

If we tried to preserve existing state borders (IE no breaking up and recombining them) while making every state have roughly the population of California, we'd wind up with eight or nine states. I'm going with nine because it seems easier. Let's try it. California would be California, obviously (38 million), a combined New York and New England would be a fairly obvious one that wouldn't be that much smaller (34 million). Texas could eat a few of its neighbors (Texas + Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma = ~38 million). Florida could gobble up Georgia, Alabama, and Mississipi for about 37.5 million. But with the big four states accounted for, we have to start getting a little more creative. Pennsylvania +New Jersey + Ohio+ Delaware + West Virginia (I know, I know) makes a plausible Rust Belt State with about 36 million. That leaves the Midatlantic. Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and DC obviously belong together, but combined they're still just shy of 30 million, which is too small, so I'm going to go ahead and give them Tenessee and Kentucky, making a state with a little more than 40 million people, the largest so far. Note that even when the states are loving enormous, Appalachia still gets split three ways. Next I'm going to put the four states around Lake Michigan together Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin makes 35 million.

All right, fantastic, I've got seven of my nine states: California, New EngleYork, Greater Texas, Greater Florida, Rustbeltia, The Chesapeake-Appalachian combine (well, what do you want to call it?), and the People's Republic of Lake Michigan. That just leaves two states, we're almost done! There's just one problem, we still have about half the country to cover. Suddenly, California, the model for this little project, becomes our greatest obstacle. We don't want to make it any bigger, but it's hard to make viable states with it splitting things up the way it is. Let's try putting all the Plains States together. Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas add up to... 21 million. Hmmm. We can give them some Mountain states, how about Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, that puts us up to... 28. Goddammit! Screw it, let's give them New Mexico, Arizona and Utah too. That puts them up to 39 millionish. Perfect, except it's an abomination. That just leaves, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska... oh, and Hawaii. Let's see, that's... 17.5 million. Goddammit, I guess we needed NM, AZ, and UT after all. OK, so Great Plainsia goes back down to 28 and The Great Western Amalgamation goes up to 28.5. Which is... still 10 million shy of California.

Oh well, I guess it's back to the drawing board.

or you could just, like, amend the constitution to remove the Senate?

# ¿ Feb 28, 2015 06:51

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