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[GreatJustice]

It's worth mentioning that Texas has a clause that lets it split into several different states if it wants. So if the Republicans want some extra senate seats, all they'd need to do would be to chop up Texas and voila, magic control of the Senate! Mind, as far as I know none of them have thought it up, but it would be rather abusive of the present senate system.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That would not work as advertized. The new states would not all be Republican, or at least not fully so, and the State of Austin would definitely be Democratic. The gamble is too high.

[MaximumZero]

Don't forget that Dallas has a huge population of African American folks, Hispanic folks, and LGBT folks.

[Nadaka]

Dallas? That is not the city that has "keep Austin weird" as its motto.

[GreatJustice]

That would not work as advertized. The new states would not all be Republican, or at least not fully so, and the State of Austin would definitely be Democratic. The gamble is too high.

The proposed maps for a split Texas, from what I've seen, put Austin alongside broader swathes of central Texas, making it practically a "swing state". South Texas would be safely Democratic unless the largely Mexican Hispanics there started to transform politically into Tejanos, Northern Texas would be exceptionally Republican, and the Gulf Coast and the Dallas area, would be somewhere between "Lean R" and "Solid R". At least from the Senate, it would very much favour the Republicans so long as they ran half decent Senate candidates in the two "swingish" and one "swing" state. They'd hurt in the electoral college, mind, and in a bad year could get totally crushed in maybe three of the five new states.

That is, of course, assuming the Texas legislature made a generally fair and reasonable map. If they decided to gerrymander it, they could probably make a big strip of Southern Texas for the Hispanic immigrants and split the remaining four through dilution of northwestern Texas. Doing that, they'd make one state that votes like DC and four that vote like Nebraska, with the added bonus of basically nullifying whatever demographic disadvantages they have in the future.

[FearfulJesuit]

This would just be a massive gerrymander in favor of the republicans.  The geographically concentrated democrats get packed into high democrat urban districts while republicans win the still uncompetative but not by as large margins rural districts.  It wouldn't be surprising to see results like Democrats winning the popular vote 60%-40% but not controlling the house under this system.  You'd be taking a map like they have in Pennsylvania and extending it to the entire country across state boundaries.

See, I'm not entirely sure about this. A lot of those splits cut cities in half and lump them in with rural voters, whose votes are then nullified or at least face stiff competition. Look at Minnesota, for example, dominated by Minneapolis voters, or St. Louis or Kansas City, who together will take most of Missouri.

The thing is I'm not really sure it's possible to create a system where neither rural voters nor city voters are overwhelmingly favored.

[mainiac]

Minneapolis happens to get split in favor of democrats but most other liberal cities aren't.  Democrats don't want liberal cities like Detroit, Chicago, Boston, etc. in densely packed districts.  Democrats will win there with 80% of the vote but that's a lot of surplus democratic votes.  On the other hand it's very difficult to draw many districts that have 80%+ republican votes simply because the parts of the country that republican aren't all that populated compared to NYC the Bay Area, DC, etc.  So simple math identities tell us that's not good for democrats though maybe not to quite the extent I was saying.

[Descan]

I don't get why you don't just tally up the votes for which party in an area and split it between the candidates. Like, 10 Dem candidates, and 10 Repub candidates, and 7 mill vote for dem, 3 for repub, give 7 of the dems the seats and 3 of the repubs the seats.

I mean, you'd probably want to get a tally of who the voters want most from each party, most to least, in order. And if the candidacy is to represent a specific area, and not just the state as a whole (I don't know how the House works in that regard) then you WOULD want districting.

But otherwise, whyyyy? @_@

does any of this make sense

[Nadaka]

What you are describing is one variant of party proportional by state, something I myself advocate. The only effect of district by district representation comes from people selling votes to get corporate investments in their district and by adding porkbarrel riders to other legislation that gives random government grants and boons to corporations in their districts.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Party proportional representation is problematic when our legal system doesn't even officially recognize political parties in any way. We'd immediately lose all of our voting power to the whims of party bosses.

[FearfulJesuit]

So, two and a half days until the economy blows up!

[misko27]

I don't get why you don't just tally up the votes for which party in an area and split it between the candidates. Like, 10 Dem candidates, and 10 Repub candidates, and 7 mill vote for dem, 3 for repub, give 7 of the dems the seats and 3 of the repubs the seats.

I mean, you'd probably want to get a tally of who the voters want most from each party, most to least, in order. And if the candidacy is to represent a specific area, and not just the state as a whole (I don't know how the House works in that regard) then you WOULD want districting.

But otherwise, whyyyy? @_@

does any of this make sense

Because the US is a strictly representative democracy. That is, you vote for someone, and only that person. That person is the person who holds power, and for better or worse, there is no shadow government, there is no man behind the curtain, what you see is what you get. Speaking from experience, among other things it makes it incredibly hard to launch a coup on the government, since it is impossible to seperate the symbolic government from the functional government.
 
Ironically, it's more representative then other countries in that manner, in that we choose the specific person who has power, as opposed to the party and general ideals of which.

[misko27]

Le Fiscal Cliff.
 
A series of masive tax hikes and spending cuts. Super austerity. Will tank economy. To stop it, we have to walk line between stopping the debt and aiding the economy.
 
And we failing bro, we failing.

[mainiac]

I don't get why you don't just tally up the votes for which party in an area and split it between the candidates. Like, 10 Dem candidates, and 10 Repub candidates, and 7 mill vote for dem, 3 for repub, give 7 of the dems the seats and 3 of the repubs the seats.

I mean, you'd probably want to get a tally of who the voters want most from each party, most to least, in order. And if the candidacy is to represent a specific area, and not just the state as a whole (I don't know how the House works in that regard) then you WOULD want districting.

But otherwise, whyyyy? @_@

does any of this make sense

It would require a constitutional amendment which would require the parties to agree and we don't have high hopes for that.

[Osmosis Jones]

On the upside, recent polls suggest the GOP will take the heat (rightfully) for this, far more than the Dems will.

Seriously though, this shit is bloody annoying. I live in another country entirely, on the other side of the world, but our share market is still gonna tank a few points because Boehner is a git and Norquist is a fanatic.