Doing a reboot of my old TL, let's go!
Sages, à la Chełm
The Workings of the Columbian Government
The [Placeholder] of Columbia (often called "Columbia with an O" to disambiguate it from "Colombia with two Os") is the oldest still-extant country in America - this is because it has existed longer than every other country that currently exists in America. Initially founded as the Holy Caribbean Empire in 1754 (in imitation of the Holy Roman Empire, which was similarly situated half a continent up from the place it was named after), it was quickly noticed some decades later that, despite being called the Holy Caribbean Empire, they had completely forgotten to provide for the existence of a Holy Caribbean Emperor, and so they hastily renamed the nation, intending to come back to it at a later time that, as of 2024, has not yet come around.
At first, the government consisted simply of a House of Commons, comprised of representatives sent by the governments of the various constituent states of not-yet-Columbia. However, vague language in the constitution made it so that there was a) no expiration of House of Commons terms, and b) no restriction on how many representatives the states could send, how many seats they could assign, and how many seats could be held by a single person. After several hundred commissions were given out in the span of just over a decade, it became clear that something had to be done about the sorry state of the House of Commons, and the states called a convention to reform the government.
In the ensuing constitutional convention held in 1787, it was decided that the House of Commons would be supplemented by its opposite, the House of Rares, elected by the people of Columbia (whenever each given state deemed it fit, so long as each state was represented proportional to its population and each state had at least one Rarer) instead of the states. In addition, starting with the next session of the House of Commons, each state would be limited to four seats held by four Commoners. In addition, an [Insert Head of State Title Here] would be chosen by the members of both houses (or, as became the case when the cries for popular choice became more and more commonplace, specially-chosen electors) in an electoral conclave every four years.
This sweeping change was enacted into law, and states began eagerly appointing or electing new members of the House of Commons for the next session. Unfortunately, the House of Commons did not adjourn on schedule, or even at all - it has remained in session 24 hours a day, 365 or 366 days a year since the beginning of the 1787 session. Originally, this was because the vast majority of Commoners did not want to lose their jobs in the House of Commons, but it has since become a protective measure - if the House of Commons ever adjourns, the vast majority of the Commoners elected to the next session will be dead. As the House of Commons by-laws prohibit the presence of dead persons, such a session will be unable to reach a quorum, and all government business will grind to a halt. This would be a bad thing.
This is not to say that the states have spent the past two hundred and thirty-odd years constantly one-upping each other. A shaky agreement to chill on the appointments was reached so as not to invite further outrage, and while occasionally a state would accidentally appoint a new Commoner to several dozen seats in the way that one might accidentally open several dozen tabs by annoyedly spam-clicking a laggy "new tab" button, generally this was respected, with states trying to choose one Commoner every three years to keep the House of Commons above replacement level. Things actually worked well for the next several decades. Then Canada happened.
Figuring that what had worked for Columbia would work for Canada, upon the new nation's independence in the mid-19th century, the Canadian legislature decided that its seats would be apportioned "by the same method which is in use in the [Placeholder] of Columbia for its House of Rares." This worked well until 1900, when the Canadian census revealed that its least-inhabited state (Yukon) had less people than the least-inhabited state in Columbia (Alaska). Accordingly, Columbia was left counting Yukon's population as the quotient for its apportionment, as to do otherwise would violate the Canadian constitution by using different methods in their legislative apportionments. This wasn't too bad (by Columbian standards) at first, but as Yukon hemorrhaged population over the next couple of decades the House of Rares ballooned in size - nearly quadrupling after the 1910 census and more than doubling again after the 1920 census, reaching a peak of nearly thirty thousand Rarers after the 1930 census.
While the House of Rares has managed to rein its numbers into the quadruple digits in the past few decades, its exceedingly numerous size made legislative sessions very difficult, and power began to flow back to the House of Commons with its far more reasonable triple-digit number of seats. States therefore began to make Commoners popularly elected rather than the choice of the state legislatures (whose difficulties with electing one Commoner at a time have been previously mentioned), a process that was essentially complete by 1920. Commons elections are, almost as a rule, nonpartisan, though candidates are broadly lumped into various ideological blocs, especially around the time that the [Insert Head of State Title Here] is elected, as Commoners have traditionally participated in electoral conclaves even as Rarers have been supplanted by specially-chosen electors in the vast majority of cases.