Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Representative Democracy

I've had discussions with people richer than I am, who claim that because they pay more taxes, they should have more say at the ballot box. Of course, our representative government isn't based on one dollar-one vote.

It's also not based on one person-one vote. It's a representative democracy with two houses of Congress, one that provides 2 senators per state to give all states equal representation, and one that is represented by population so that heavily populated areas are not under-represented. Well, if that still true, it's time to reassess the number of congressional seats. Do the math with me.

Illinois has 18 congressional seats. Wyoming has one.

Illinois' population is 12.8 million. Wyoming's is 585,000. If 585,000 is the marker for 1 seat, then 18 seats should serve 10.5 million. What about the other 2.3 million in Illinois? That's another 4 seats. And I'm guessing that all of those would come from Cook County. (see the map below) That's where I live.

Talk about taxation without representation!


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