Voting by land area vs voting by population is one of the oldest debates ever. There's pros and cons to either side, but the general idea is that in a representative democracy you want the different groups to have their interests represented (i.e. if you have 30% of the vote, you should have 30% of the "power"). Pure population might be more likely to lead to policy for population centeres at the expense of rural centers, since you just need 51% of the vote to do what you want, as the majority takes all the power. E.g. if 75% of population is urban and 25% rural, and assuming that they are unified voting blocs (big if), rural effectively has 0% of the power, as 25% of the vote is going to win a majority vote 0% of the time. Ideally they would win 25% of the votes (or have 25% of the "power" somehow), but failing that, having half the power seems more fair than having none of it.
I remember i heard once the idea that if the percent of the representitives was porportional to the sqrt of the population, that that tracks the amount of effective power much more closely to the population distribution than linearly assigning representitives, but i dont know how true that is.
I remember i heard once the idea that if the percent of the representitives was porportional to the sqrt of the population, that that tracks the amount of effective power much more closely to the population distribution than linearly assigning representitives, but i dont know how true that is.