I understand that in the 49 states with bicameral legislatures, the state Senate is elected pretty much on the same principle as the House: single member districts, apportioned by population. There’s just fewer of them.
Why bother?
Are there states where the upper house is NOT elected on single member, FPTP electoral systems? Any PR Senates, Senates apportioned by county, etc.?
Until the 1960s, it was fairly common for some U.S. state Senates to be apportioned by equal votes for each county. This gave rural counties tremendous influence in those states, which they weren’t interested in losing. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that non-population based representation in state legislatures violated the principle of one-person-one-vote – I forget which part of the U.S. constitution they found supplied this right, but it was a controversial decision at the time – and the states all had to switch to population-based representation for both houses. However, some states do have multi-member disticts, where the voters in a combined district will select, say, 3 or 4 persons.
I suspect “FPTP” is a pretty obscure abbreviation for most people on this board. I assume you are refering to “First Past the Pole”, i.e. single member districts where the highest vote-getter is the only winner.
Nothing is too obscure for this board! Yes, that’s what I meaned.
with a new house based on area. This 2428-member house would have 424 Alaskan members, 173 Texans, 105 Californians, all the way down to 1 each for Delaware and Rhode Island.
What about the US Senate. It is profoundly biased toward rural states. California has fifty times as many people as the smallest states, yet has only two senators. Does this make a difference? Of course. Twenty senators representing small rural and western states are able to control policy on the national forests, for example, even though their populations could all live in the LA area.
And furthermore, even as the US becomes more urban, this cannot be changed with out ammending the Constitution, which must be passed by, you guessed it , two thirds of the Senate!
Galen, that’s why the House and the Senate have different powers (besides voting on legislation). No one could agree on whether representation at the federal level was “fair” on an equal or population based system. There is quite a case for each side; remember, this was at the time when each state pretty much considered itself its own sovereign territory. States with large populations argued that since they had more people, they should get more influence. Smaller states argued that since the federal government should deal with the state, not the people, all states should have equal influence. So it was a compromise, like a lot of things in the Constitution.
You can’t change the representation in the Senate unless you first amend the clause in the Constitution that states you can’t amend the constitution to lower a state’s representation in the Senate. In other words, the US Senate isn’t changing for a LONG time.
The case that instituted the concept of “one man, one vote” in state legislatures was Reynolds v. Sims (377 U.S. 533). Warren referred to it as one of his most far-reaching opinions.