Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
As a non-American I'm not an expert, but both their houses are geographically based - but they're based on different geographical boundaries. I believe.
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Yes, both houses are based on geography: every congressman has a state they belong to, and people from outside that state have next to no say in determining who that person is (other than aid in campaigning).
House representatives belong to specific areas within the state. For example, Paul Ryan is from Wisconsin, but he's especially from the area south east of Milwakee. The voters in Milwakee itself don't get to vote for him, they voted in Gwen Moore. The exact alignments of these districts is up to the state legislatures.
Senators represent an entire state, and there are only two per state. In Wisconsin that's Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin. Everyone in the state got to vote for or against both of these senators. So senators are still localized, but they are less localized than representatives.
In any case, Both houses are very similar in terms of power. They were designed to be out of sync with each other and be split on issues that are very close. The senate has a touch more power, if only because they run conformation hearings.
In contrast, the system proposed has two houses with very different powers intentionally separated instead of mirrored.