Hello there, Italian here. As a foreigner interested in American politics I have studied the congressional district history and I’m fascinated by it and its developments during the course of the American experiment.

Mainly I am in awe of the idea created by the founding fathers to achieve a better representation in a very different time. These young men understood the implications of having a great population scattered on an even greater territory and they saw how society would have ended structuring itself up: a huge chunk of people living in most dense-populated cities and a smaller minority occupying the rest of the national soil in scarce-populated villages and towns. They understood that to keep the voices of these minorities heard you’d have to balance the voting system or, would the cities ally, the political system would have been tilted in their favour. Furthermore communication among long distances was not as easy and clear as today; news about a representative being involved in shady businesses in Washington would have had difficulty to travel to far away places, thus rendering the oversight duty of the people even harder to attain. That’s why you need state representatives, to have someone informed about what’s going on in Washington DC all the time.

The system has not yet realised tho that the times they are a-changing, as one of your musicians would say. In the internet era the situation is completely different as it was 250 years ago and this would require some tweaking in the machine’s clogs to update its viability. Gerrymandering should be abolished and states should move to a direct democracy system where each vote bares the same weight as all others; multi-agencies oversight should remain and should even be expanded to ensure the inclusion of as many points of view possible; recognize and face the change of societal structure by adding minorities in the legislative and policing processes.

All this must be centered around some civil assumptions which are already enshrined in the Constitution: personal responsibility and freedom, right to be happy, state atheism.

The reason why I sometimes bash Americans in my comments is because I see how strong their system is and how better and stronger it could become but they seem to choose always the worst possible option when are given that chance to improve on their ways. But then again, you are talking with someone who saw Berlusconi reign over Italy for a good 30 years, so what right do I have to be annoyed at you for having Bush and Trump in the past 25?