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I'm not necessarily sold on the idea that reps of a given state should only be responsible for a very small subsection of people who are likely poorly informed. Just thinking of my own representative, who won against a progressive based entirely on name recognition rather than policy, it seems abundantly clear that money can easily touch all races whereas educated voters and advocacy may not exist in enough districts to be meaningful. Money can, and in quantities above the median income with ease.
After reading the article, I think there's a inherent assumption that more means harder to gerrymander, but every republican gerrymandering recently released is computer generated. What would prevent them from arguing the districts of densely black areas thinly sliced from urban areas and then expanded out to suburbs is legal? When computer modeling and accurate voter information is supplied the possibilities of gerrymandering are not remotely hampered by increased resolution of the electoral maps. The districting will come to head with the notion that the same district even be contiguous. Do you trust SCOTUS to affirm it needs to be?
I'd argue that it is a lot easier to inform the public when the campaign doesn't have to cover as much area and that it becomes more difficult to buy every race when there are more of them.
Sorry for the edit after your post. I think buying races isn't harder when there's more of them, but organizing for them might be. I'd be open to change on that opinion, but eventually wouldn't you hit a point of diminishing budget for a small candidate that they can't afford a single commercial whereas the corporate candidate could afford multiple?
Edit: Eventually the resolution of targeted ads starts to fail too relative to the district borders.
What would shape your opinion more: being bombarded by ads or the candidate showing up at your school to do a town hall and answer questions?
If we make things small enough, where in a typical campaign a candidate can meet their constituents at least once, does being outspent on ads matter as much? Doesn't it at least make break-through candidates more likely if only because national parties have to spread out their spend?
Speaking from my own community, if the community knows who you are you've basically nearly won. One of our politicians started their career owning a real estate business where they posted their face on every billboard in the area. They were big with the center of commerce crew, but were* also antithetical to the views of a mostly young and highly educated and progressive city. They won anyways, because the opponent wasn't already burned into the minds of everyone who drives around here.
I do like the idea of smaller meaning that you may actually know the person and have an opportunity to talk to them person to person, I just have a jaded view because of what I've seen happen with human fallacies controlling the results.
We truly are creatures of habit and prefer something known. Also, people just don't have the fucking time to know anything but passively absorbing it. We've collectively gone from requiring 40 hours of work to support a whole family, to now needing 80, as a minimum, for most families.
Who the fuck has time to research candidates policies? Lmao Susie needs to be at soccer practice 5 minutes ago. We've allowed ourselves, bit by bit, to have our time stolen because of all the wage theft we've allowed by not keeping the minimum wage pegged to inflation automatically. Every year they push on 2% inflation target. And every year they didn't raise the minimum wage, they stole 2% from us.
It also makes any progress we make for ourselves, so brittle. Before, you could have two part time jobs help support a family for a bit. Now being out of work could mean homelessness.
I've got the same jade. It's nice to be realistic, but knowing that there might actually be solutions some day keeps it from becoming nihilism.
The entire electoral system that is based on a popularity contest is just really broken. It's a testament to how perfectly "broken" the American electoral system is that we are still using an electoral system created for a 13 colony slave based society made to favor rich land owners.
I say "broken" because it's really not. It's actually very well written to ensure the system favors the power of the ruling class over the masses. What we are seeing now is the confidence of that class raising to such a high degree that they are no longer pretending that they have maintain that illusion.