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Originally Posted by wdmso
Wyoming) has as much as four times the voting power of California. not sure how thats overly Democratic
California has way more electoral college votes than Wyoming.
Congress is constitutionally responsible for creating federal laws. In terms of federal legislation that will affect all the states, California has way more electoral power than Wyoming. The electoral college affects the Presidency, not the Congress. The President does not have the constitutional power to legislate.
Is the way Congress elected Democratic? Yes and no. The Founders rightly did not trust pure Democracies as historically they all had turned into tyrannies . So they created a Constitution that had various checks against that. As far as how it is Democratic--it is so by state not by pure popular vote. in the Senate each state has an equal vote of two. In the House Each state is allotted a number of Representatives proportional to its population, and it is those Representatives who decide legislation, not the individual citizens. So, again, it is the states, through representation, not each individual who have the power to legislate federal law.
So you might also want to quarrel with the undemocratic nature of how Congress is voted for and how smaller states have what you consider more "voting power."
The same fear of "popular" power went into how the President was elected. Various plans, including popular vote, were considered, but there were again fears, as in the choosing of the number of Senators allotted to each state, of larger states totally dominating the choice, as well as other considerations. And slavery was not much of a factor in finally choosing which method was adopted. Actually, several slave states were initially against the electoral college plan and some for the popular vote. See:
https://medium.com/@tomasmcintee/sla...e-1de2b9c22ffe) (or google Slavery and the Electoral College by Tomas McIntee).
As you can tell from how the Founders decided on how Congress and the President were elected, that the states were instrumental in how it all worked. The Founders were meticulous in creating a combination of a national (central) and a federal (federation of states) governance with the states actually having most of the power and responsibility of governing for the people. And the national (we now refer to it as the federal) government was limited to only the few enumerated powers given to it in the Constitution.
Funny in America we have changed dramatically in our history and have managed but many still don't want the Constitution to evolve to reflect modern day realities that our founders in all their wisdoms could never have foreseen. Change is needed .. leave the college allow a legitimate 3rd party to break the log jam. no isnt a defense
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It is not particularly funny how we have dramatically changed the relationship of the states to the national government. You say vague things like " we have changed dramatically in our history," but WE have not changed. We are the same human species that have the same essential desires and needs. We humans have instituted various kinds of governments, not, for the most part in the history of nation states, because of essential needs of WE the people. WE were usually the afterthought, the grist, the labor for the benefit of various ruling governments, ruling classes. Our founding was a unique flipping of that order--the creation of government being for the benefit of WE.
And the essential feature of our constitutional republic was not the power of the national, central, government, but the power of local and state government and the necessity of WE ultimately governing ourselves.
Nothing has changed in our nature, in who we are since then. Size of nation, of the world, technological advancement, whatever, nothing has changed the nature of what we are. The dichotomy still exists. Is the government close to home that we can more personally affect and control the one that suites us, or is it the distant one size fits all government that we can barely touch yet in actuality has near total control of our lives the one we desire. That is a simple question with volumes of debate to consider.
Thank you for at least responding to the question that went so long unanswered. But you didn't actually answer it. The undeniable fact is the national government has grown immensely in power over the states. And that is not an accident. Progressive government thrives on central power, on government's ability to do what its experts consider the good and the right without impediments like being restricted to a few enumerated powers. The constitutional order of divided government closer to the hands of the people is in the process of being flipped back to the previous old order of the nation state governed totally by centralized control which is more and more serving, as that old order required, the needs of the powerful few.
In light of all that, I'll ask again, are states necessary?
I think that if it is the Progressive notion of government that you prefer, then you would not actually see the need for impediments to unhampered power of government by things like different states and cities with their competing laws and statutes and populations who vote for their local self-interest against the national rules which would more efficiently bind us to the rule of those who supposedly know best. And so, also, how you would prefer that every election would be by popular vote--how you would prefer a Progressive pure democracy to a constitutional republic. In spite of the lessons of history which tell us what such democracies ultimately become.