You can't persuade people if you don't understand them, and you can't understand them if you engage in thought terminating cliches like mentally inserting "voting against their own interests" instead of trying to understand what those people regard as their interests.

I always find that an interesting concept.

How does being against more taxation, government control and spending, equate to “voting against their own interests”?

Spokane is larger than Bremerton and Kent, it’s the one exception in Eastern WA.

In terms of the EC (and the Senate), its' because the US is a Republic, and state's participation in said Republic is in part based on the promise that they won't just be steamrolled by larger population states.

To put this another way, the EU would have a very difficult time getting low pop or small countries to join if they weren't assured of some ability to advance their interests even if those interests were not shared by the high pop or large countries.

They shouldn't, they should have more local autonomy.

I was simply pointing out that the issue of rural disenfranchisement was clearly acknowledged on a federal scale but not a state level.

> But why should the status of "living in a rural area" allow one to get more votes, at any level?

I never actually advocated for this. I just pointed out that it's clearly something that was thought about on some levels and not others.

The point is that systems should be set up in a manner where nobody is disenfranchised. People should have a say in the rules being applied to them.

Personally, I think the solution is reducing the scope of federal and state power in favor of regional autonomy.

> as currently falsehoods spoken in conservative media fuel the culture divide more than anything

Lmao, it's not just conservative media man. They are all propaganda machines, right and left.

The reason that the Senate is 2 for every state instead of by population is because the USA was formed as an alliance between independent states who didn't want to give up their autonomy and didn't want to empower a central government.

Why would a small population state with lots of natural resources join the union if it meant they'd never have a say in anything as a state?

To think about it another way, imagine another reality where California and most of the north eastern states were full of people who thought Trump was awesome and senate seats were awarded via population just like the house, would a liberal WA benefit from being part of a union where WA would never have a meaningful say vs. the pro-Trump states? If no matter what the states with the most population could set the agenda for everyone else, like deciding to build a wall on WA's border with Canada and because WA has a small population compared to CA or NY we'd never be ablet o say "no"...wouldn't it feel pointless and shitty that people thousands of miles away from WA could steamroll the people who live here and do stuff in our state we didnt' like?

I'm not sure how you think West side tech giants contribute to the East side economy.

Second, I never advocated for E. WA being it's own state.

But...it's not a "city" that's voting, it's individual people. There are more people there. Most of the people in the state are voting a certain way, they just happen to live geographically near each other.

If anything the argument is that states are too geographically large, but if they were divided up then it's actually the rural areas that would suffer more from loss of tax dollars coming from the cities.

There's really no perfect solution to this issue.

Ah yes, valid reasons like bigotry, hatred, and christian nationalism leading them to vote to try and ban books, strip rights from others, and enforce their delusional beliefs about a magical sky daddy on the rest of us.

And the rural dwellers of Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, Kansas, etc... all outvote urban interests in their states.

Congrats. You've noticed the dividing line in US politics is now Urban vs. Rural with suburbs being the kingmakers. This is not how it always was and likely is not how it will always be. If people are unhappy with the current division, all they need to do is wait for a political realignment. We are probably due for one anyway, and are likely seeing one happen in real time.

Poor people live very different lives than rich people, black people live very different lives then white people, women live different lives than men. All those groups are vastly underrepresented politically, should they also get extra votes?

If the status of living in Wyoming get you three votes for president to everyone one a Washingtonian gets, should not like people get two? Poor Middle Eastern women get four?

The issue that needs to be addressed is some people get more votes than others. Living in a different area should not get you an extra vote, and land mass should not get to vote either.

Right now 60 to 75% of the country supports Medicare for all, But senators that represent only a small percent of the nation are able to prevent it because of the outdated way the United States government represents people.

The only fair way to do it is one person one vote. We need to change our laws to acknowledge that and move from a flawed democracy to a true democracy.

Yep legal gun owners in rural areas (and urban as well) are stripped of their constitutional rights (see recent Supreme Court Bruen decision) by urban liberal voters in this state because many city/suburbs dwellers don’t use guns in their day to day life and think banning them will solve gun violence. Show me where banning drugs stopped drug violence? Banning alcohol , alcohol violence (dui, domestic violence, etc)? Difference is guns are protected by our Federal and State constitution but WA lawmakers don’t care because gun owners are in the minority so they can pass whatever law they want constitutional or not. Have these “common sense gun laws” worked so far? Most gun owners are all for background checks and training on safety and safe storage. But banning the very tools needed for hunting, self defense, defense of our communities is straight up a violation of the second amendment. It bugs me so much to live in a state where we are doing this. And I know I will be downvoted into infinity but I ask you look up the origins of gun control…. Like lots of things came out of racism…. See black panthers… and see how gun laws are rarely enforced and when they are they are disproportionally used on the poor and minorities. So our dear overlords sell “gun laws” for safety to their white liberal voters and the result is more and poor and minorities in jail and no real reduction in gun violence. If you don’t fix the reasons for violence you will never ever stop it.

And the reason they want gun control is control of the population and to tighten their grip on power and lessen chance of citizens holding them accountable and to make us more dependent on them. It baffles me that the party that does not lien the police writes laws where the police are exempt from the gun control laws…. So only criminals and police will have: “high capacity” (really standard capacity) magazines and semi automatic rifles. While law abiding citizens will be forced to be handcuffed with nerfed weapons…. All for our safety???? Make it make sense…. If they want mandatory safety training… sign me up. Mandatory background checks… sign me up. But banning common defense tools but exempting themselves and criminals???? Come on now people wake up…

This is the last 10 years of gun control legislation in the state.

We have state preemption, which means it's all or nothing, the entire state has to have the same gun laws.

WA has had a system of ballot initiatives since 1912, where you can bypass the state legislature by gathering enough signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. If it passes it becomes law.

So Seattle billionaires have been bankrolling initiative campaigns in King county (paying signature gatherers, media campaigns, paying for transportation to polling stations, etc.)