Negotiate? He's suggesting things would've gone better if we'd agreed to mostly keep slavery but soften it a little in exchange for concessions? Well, that's horrifying.
That precise negotiation is how we got the civil war, as well as a number of other completely busted, antidemocratic US institutions like the Senate. Making compromises with slavers.
It's all so bad. The House should have thousands of members to give states proportional representation, but instead Alabama votes count for more than California votes. In turn, this makes the electoral* college unbalanced too in the same way. There's a huge bias towards rural voting power.
If California had 70million citizens, current district sizes are around 700k. So it would have about 100 districts. It would have about 1/5th of the total electoral college vote.
It's honestly insane that New York and Cali have purposefully handed over political power to republicans since the 60s.
As I understand it, because every state still has to have at least 1 House member (and thus 1 electoral college vote). Without increasing the size of the House then all that can do is reduce the proportional power of each vote within California. The State itself becomes more powerful, sure, but the votes of citizens within California are worth less and less as the population grows. It's a really bad system.
Yeah, but it's not just Wyoming. It's all the little flyover states all teaming up against big bad California, and using their disproportionate electoral power to do so - it's the reason we've had multiple presidents that lost the electoral college, after all.
Yeah sure they can get 20 extra electoral college votes combined, but California would have 20-30 more itself. California just handed these over to republicans by refusing to build housing for 60 years.
New York has done the same.
We've just handed tons of political power over Republicans, who already have a natural advantage.