It's not democratic. It's republican. Remember that America is a republic, not a democracy. Each state has 2 senators/electoral votes because this country was founded as the United States. It was supposed to be more of a coalition of states united under a federal government, than a single nation.
Also, California has a huge population with tons of representatives, and basically every elected official is democratic. I don't think you should complain.
> Remember that America is a republic, not a democracy
Republic. Aka, Res Publica. "Thing of the people". A form of government where all political power originates with the people, directly or indirectly.
Democracy. Demos Kratia. "Rule by the people". A form of government where all political power originates with the people, directly or indirectly.
These two terms are not about how decisions are made. They do not discuss who elects whom, and how, or if everything is directly chosen. They exist to differentiate the systems from previous feudalistic rule, where the power came from the fact that the leader had the power to protect you from other leaders (the power was justified through the strength), and from monarchies (including both earlier ones, e.g. the ancient egyptian dynasties, and later ones, e.g. french absolutism – both justifying their power as being chosen by a god, or descended from one).
Now, the US itself has a governmental form called "Representative democracy", meaning that all choices are made by representatives, chosen by the population, and whose power comes from the people, who have to respond to the people, and who have to represent the will of the people.
Also, what you’re thinking of is the question between direct nation-wide rule, or a federal rule.
Germany is a federal republic, and also representative democracy. Yet it manages to solve this exact issue – by electing the first chamber of parliament, the Bundestag, entirely with MMP, meaning it is chosen independent of states, and the second chamber of parliament, the Bundesrat, represents each state.
This guarantees that all decisions have to be backed by > 50% of states, and > 50% of population. This guarantees both the democratic principle, that power has to come from all the people, and also the federal principle, ensuring that states also have power.
TL;DR: You’ve misrepresented everything you’ve said, and your argument isn’t even conclusive. You can have a more representative system without losing the power granted to the states, e.g. the German system.
I just want to correct this now and say the United States of America is a constitutional democratic republic form of government. This distinction matters.
Perhaps you should spend a little of time reading about the US form of government because what you described is very similar to the purpose of the House and the Senate. Barring gerrymandering issues, the house members are populous elected representatives with each state given weight based on its population. Then each state gets 2 senate seats which are elected within the states by popularity as well.
Tldr; you've essentially described how the law making arm of the US is already elected and have pretended it's something new.
I’ve described what the US model would be ideally. But that’s not what it is today. The German system was designed after the US system (due to WWII, and everything after), but improved.
Gerrymandering is a real issue (the German model doesn’t have that), the house seats are effectively arbitrarily distributed, etc.
There's no double standard, just randomness. We don't come close to seeing everything. When a bad post hasn't been moderated, the likeliest explanation is simply that we haven't seen it yet.
We've scolded kuschku plenty of times for breaking the guidelines in the past, and you're quite right that he did so there with that uncharitable swipe.
By the way, I (the user you had replied to) fully support your phrasing, and even your comment — my original comment was a bit unstructured, so your question was valid, as it was easy to miss if someone doesn't know the German system.
So I am especially disappointed by the downvotes and the unasked for moderator action your comment got — it asked a valid question.
what does the lack of a monarch have to do with how much representation an area has.
truly, the US is an oligarchy. regardless of what votes say, actual decision making and power rests with the wealthy nobles, like the Trumps and Kochs.
> It's not democratic. It's republican. Remember that America is a republic, not a democracy.
"Democracy" and "Republic" aren't part of a formal system where they're mutually exclusive.
America is a Democracy, and was meant to be without any question. It's a Republic, too. If a programming metaphor helps, it inherits traits from both. It's democratic republic with elected representatives. It's a lot of things. Including some mistakes which we've eventually recognized with official amendments and court rulings and other forms of change. One of the principles of the American system is that any part of the system is open for review, criticism, and even rewriting.
Maybe the way we elect the executive branch is one area that needs change.
> Each state has 2 senators/electoral votes because this country was founded as the United States. It was supposed to be more of a coalition of states united under a federal government, than a single nation.
The "coalition of states" thing was tried first, and it wasn't working out super well, so we got a new system that actually made a single nation and it's worked out better.
Giving states 2 senators and electoral votes wasn't done just because it was Totally The Best Ideal Thing Ever For Everybody. It was done in large part because it had to be done to get buy-in and make the actually working single nation happen.
Now, the practice does have some other merits. Rural areas shouldn't just be resource colonies for metropolises and regional voices are important and hiding 100 extra electoral vote easter eggs around the country could help everybody get attention and in principle be part of ensuring the POTUS is a reasonable representative of a plurality across the whole country.
But the thing that's manifestly un-representative (and doesn't serve any clear purpose as far as "Republic-ness" goes) is the whole winner-take-all approach to awarding electoral votes.
We could fix that as a country and have a more representative presidential election by requiring states to award their electoral votes proportionally to how the population votes.
If the principle you care about when you say "we're a Republic" is something along the lines of avoiding the tyranny of the majority, awarding proportional electoral votes to the candidate that came away with the minority state-by-state is right in line with that.
Also, California has a huge population with tons of representatives, and basically every elected official is democratic. I don't think you should complain.