Why should they have to sacrifice anything in order to be properly represented in their democracy?
That would be a question for the Founders. Whatever they were thinking at the time, the rules were the rules.
But if both sides know in advance that the rules favor Strategy X, and only one side employs Strategy X to proper use while the other does not, then the other can hardly complain that they are coming up on the short end.
The Founders were very clear about why they set up the senate the way that they did: so that the slave states wouldn’t fear the free states banning slavery through legislation. Do you think this is a good reason to keep the system the Founders put in place unmodified?
You have that exactly backwards. Living in low-population rural states turns people into conservatives. Living in cities, exposed to other people, other ideas turns people into liberals.
Saying, “this is your fault” is just absurd. This is a problem with the constitution. It’s a stupid system.
How does “freezing” the number of Representatives create the same problem? In any representative democracy, you’ll have some rounding that results in unequal districts, but by and large, each Congressional district contains roughly 1/435th of the population of the country. Because Wyoming is so small, with a population less than one standard Congressional district, it winds up with effectively 1.2 times the representation it “should” have, but again, any representative system is going to wind up with rounding errors.
If you take the smallest state and give them one representative and then scale that up to the total population, you apparently get more than 500 representatives total. You’ll get rounding errors, for sure – the next few small states also only get one, but you wouldn’t be limiting, say, California to some smaller-than-deserved number of reps due to the cap.
The problems of a 6000 member house that would have been disastrous in 1790 can now be easily solved by technology. The idea that the arbitrary distinctions of “states” all need equal representation in a house of congress seems only to exist because of a lack of foresight about the eventual reality of a large federal government.
Abolish the senate, increase the size of the house 10-fold+, and while we’re at it, eliminate the office of the president – each executive function authorized by congress will have an executive leader appointed by congress. Disputes between departments can be negotiated by mediation committees.
Combined with proportional representation this would be the end of gerrymandering, the end of the two party system, and encourage people to pay more attention to local politics rather than let national issues dominate every election. eta: And the end of the president-as-king.
Yeah, but if the strategy is to make your state so shitty that no one wants to live there in an effort to increase the voting power of those who are willing to put up with the living conditions there I think the entire body politic suffers. Having the shitty states have more voting power doesn’t seem to be leading to an improved quality of life for anyone, not even those with the disproportionate power. They get their way, but a lower quality of life.
Of course you are correct. Kentucky and Vermont were very small. For some reason Maine was listed separately even though it was part of Mass. TN was not included, although a separate census was conducted for the Southwest Territory.
I do think that the point still stands. We have had very large states and very small states for a long time. That was sort of the point of the Senate.
But the rules should be fair. “Change your life to account for stupidity in the way elections are run” is not the correct answer.
This isn’t right. Parliament is composed of the Queen, the Senate and the House of Commons. Both the Senate and the Commons have to pass a bill for it to become law. If the Senate defeats a bill, there’s no way the Commons can overrule the Senate and pass the bill.
That’s why we don’t have any federal law criminalizing abortion. The Commons passed the abortion bill and the Senate defeated it.
The only formal difference is that revenue bills must originate in the Commons.
Yeah - it is things like this that really point out the extent to which we are a federation of states. I’ve done a bit of reading about the westward expansion, and it seems to have been pretty loosey-goosey WRT the requirements of new states. I suspect fewer individual states should have been admitted at the beginning, or there should be some consolidation - but of course - unworkable.
Maybe a better solution would be for the largest states to divide. 3-5 Californias and Texases?
That doesn’t really follow, unless every state’s population is an even multiple of the smallest state’s population. California’s population is about 69.5 times Wyoming’s. It would either be half a Rep shy or half a Rep over what it “deserves”. Pretty much every state other than the smallest “base” state is going to be in a similar situation.
Increasing the size of the House would decrease the disparity, but it’s never going to eliminate it, and the discrepancy isn’t really all that large.
Please double check my stats and math. As of the 2010 census:
U.S. population: 308,745,538
California population: 37,253,956
California % of U.S. population: 12.07%
12.07% of 435 Congressional seats = 52.5 seats
Actual number of Congressional seats California has based on 2010 Census: 53
California is actually over-represented due to rounding.
I guess the 500+ number above was in order to account for the two additional senate seats that each state gets. Sorry for the confusion on my part.
How could that work? Couldn’t the Senate just “amend” a bill to remove all the stuff they didn’t like and substitute whatever they wanted?
Senate resolution SR 3482 to amend HR 4499 “New Clean Water Act” by replacing sections 1 through 577 with the text “March is hereby designated the Official Clean Water Appreciation Month of the United States” passes.
Wyoming population in 2010 547,637
That’s 0.17% of the population. By Wyoming has 1% of Congressional representatives. So they are overrepresented roughly sixfold.
My solution: Keep the 2-senator-per-state thing, since that’s what the Constitution says, but allocate the number of “votes” each Senator gets based on his/her state’s population.
Each state’s Senator casts a vote based on 1/2 of their state’s population.
For instance, Pennsylvania: Population 12.63 million. Divide that by two: 6.315 million.
Toomey (R ) casts 6.315 votes-- hell, round it to nearest quarter point for 6.25 votes
Casey (D) casts 6.25 votes.
Each state gets a minimum of 0.5 votes (Wyoming’s and Vermont’s Senators each get 0.25 votes).
This way each state still sends 2 Senators to Congress, each Senator is still directly elected by the residents and has to win a state-wide vote, but states like South Dakota and Idaho and Montana don’t hold the same power as states like California and New York and Texas.
Based on 2010 census numbers, this system would put 308 total votes in the Senate. The 116th Congress would’ve had 161 Democratic votes and 147 Republican votes. Thus, a more fair representation of the voters in each state.
Simple math on vote counting? Ha! Make them whips earn their money.
Not sure how you got to 1%. Wyoming has one House member, which is 1/435 = 0.22% of House members, and 3 total members of Congress, which is 3/535 = 0.5% of the total Congressional representation (and of course, 2% of the Senate, as every state has). So, yes, it is overrepresented in all those ways, but not by the amount you have stated.
This doesn’t pass Constitutional muster. “No State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” does not mean that each gets the same number of people in the room. It means they get equal votes.
Doh, sorry, you are right, 1% was a total brain fart. As you say, they are slightly overrepresented in Congress and greatly overrepresented in the Senate, which is by design.