Republicans in OH, MI, PA and VA (all controlled by the GOP at the state level) are all apparently considering changing the electoral system from a winner-take-all to awarding each candidate by congressional district.
Naturally, their rationale is that they're trying to give smaller communities "more of a voice" in those states.
Yea they sure are. I mean WTF. They all ready have a disproportionate voice in most States. It's one of the reasons why I'm a Democrat now. Living in a metropolitan area it certainly isn't in my financial interest to vote Republican and here's why.
In Ohio we have 18 representatives in congress. The GOP has gerrymandered our State so that 11 of those Reps (mostly Repubs) represent about 33% of the population of the State, mostly rural regions. The other 7 (mostly Dems) represent about 66% of the population of the State, in mostly urban regions (Columbus, Cleveland/Akron/Canton, Cincinnati/Dayton, Toledo). So the rural regions of our State are grossly over represented in Congress.
That's also true at the State level. We have 33 State Senators. 22 represent the rural districts, again mostly Republican and about 33% of the population and 11 represent the urban regions, again mostly Democrat and about 66% of the population.
Then there are the State Reps and it's the same thing there, the rural districs are grossly over represented in the State House. We have 18 Reps from the urban districts (again 66% of the population) and 81 Reps from the rural districts (again 33% of the population) all thanks to GOP gerrymandering in recent years. To show the gross inequity Franklin county, where I live in the Columbus region has a population of 2 million but we only have 3 reps in the State house. The rural district where I'm from in Auglaize/Mercer and parts of Allen county has a population of 125,000 but they have their own State Rep. So at the State level people living in the urban regions have 1 rep per 417,000 people where rural regions have 1 rep per 46,000 people. So rural districts are recieving about 10 times the representation at the State house than people who live in urban regions.
Why is this not in my financial interest? Because for every 3 dollars of tax revenue generated in this state $2 goes to our rural regions and $1 goes to the urban regions. Actually is really a higher ratio than that because the tax revenue ratio of the urban to rural regions is more like $5 to $1 with the majority of the tax revenue being produced in the urban Democratic regions. So though we produce most of the tax revenue most of the tax revenue is spent in the rural regions. So for every tax dollar I pay at the State level roughly $1 goes to the urban regions representing 66% of the population and $2 goes to the rural regions representing 33% of the population.
Talk about makers and takers. It's pretty obvious in our State that urban democrats are the makers and rural republicans are the takers.
