Technically, it says no state can be denied equal representation without its consent. So I think an amendment giving proportional Senate representation would be legal if it was ratified by all fifty states. Which admittedly is unlikely to happen (we all know how difficult North Dakota can be).
Of course, there’s nothing that prohibits abolishing the Senate. If that was done, each state would still have equal representation ie zero.
I think that is a bit too creative for its own good. Equal “representation” requires a form of representation does it not? And the mention of a body named the “Senate” requires there be a Senate, no? That seems a mathematical, overly linguistic and artificial construction of the Constitution.
We might as well say that “equal protection of the law” is satisfied by providing all persons no protection of any law.
When is this canard going away?
Is Vermont famed as the corn capital of North America? Is Delaware teeming with amber waves of grain? Is this why these tiny states have such disproportionate electoral strength?
No. The largest state for agriculture, by far, is … wait for it … California! California has a larger land area than Montana, or than both Dakotas added together. There are 24 Senators representing 12 states whose combined area is less than that of California.
Wasn’t there a proposal to split California into four states to pick up six more Senators? Perhaps that’s worth doing if/when humans regain control of Middle Earth.
Two down, two to go. Let the civil servants rule!
If we want a deliberative body, we should go the Roman Senate / House of Lords route:
– Membership is for life
– Membership is based on time of service in elected roles, with more weight exponentially based on level such that ex-two-term Presidents get in, Representatives would get in after 24 years of service, or less if they’ve also served as mayors/state representatives, etc.*
– Senators get a least a million dollars a year salary indexed to inflation
– Senators may have NO other source of income
– If no one within a state qualifies in a four year span, there may be an election amongst the most-qualified to add to the senate, which would ensure some equality in membership amongst the states although the larger ones would have more people “naturally” qualify.
It certainly has its flaws but that would ensure a deliberative, independent body. One thing it would not be is collegial since the number of members would be larger than a person’s monkeysphere so they could not all be considered close friends of each other, but the collegiality ship has already sailed.
*Adjust the number of years to qualify depending on the size of the Senate you want and how many vacancies there are.
I think that’s doomed by the placement of the second semicolon in the first paragraph of Article IV, Section 3:
As I read that:
So the solution (which I’m sure is politically implausible, so I’m just having fun here) is to have California come up with a plan to divide itself into several sub-states, all of which share a border with Nevada. Then strike a deal with Nevada where in return for cash, water rights, or other valuable considerations, Nevada agrees to contribute a few acres of Nevada to each of the California sub-states, so that they would each constitute “the junction of two or more…parts of states” which could be OK’d by Congress and the respective state legislatures.
One of those California sub-states would have to give a few acres of present California to Nevada, so that Nevada minus some modest acreage didn’t run afoul of the “no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state” language.
Of course, once California and Nevada did a deal like that, there’d be nothing to stop other pairs or clusters of states, no matter how small, from doing the same thing. The Dakotas could collaborate to turn themselves into a whole bunch of smaller states, and next thing you know, the flag would have to have hundreds of white stars in that blue field. 
I don’t know how Scotus would rule on that semicolon — a case has been made to partially invalidate the 2nd Amendment based on a smudge that looks like a comma! (My best solution to the Axis of Evil on Scotus would draw a Warning.)
But the Dakotas would not be able to gerrymander themselves unless the R’s got control of both Congressional houses.
Is my proposal “partisan?” Sure! Criminals have taken over the GOP and have declared War. It’s foolish for Americans to ignore that fact. It’s a delusion to imagine that “playing fair” has any merit in this subverted former Republic. Restore Democracy by whatever means necessary. Then we can talk about fairness.
OK, if we interpret the Constitution as requiring a Senate with a nonzero number of senators for each state, then we could pass an amendment to de-power it, much like the UK did with the House of Lords. Every state would still get two Senators, they could still deliberate and give their official advice and judgement on legislation, they could still vote, and the democratically-elected House could hold all of the actual power.
I’m not a fan of the Senate because it is ultimately undemocratic, and I am a firm believer in democracy. The way senate seats are distributed and they way the senate sets its own rules undermines the will of the majority and delays good legislation way more often than it prevents bad legislation. If we keep the Senate, we should keep it the way the UK keeps the House of Lords, as a cute political curiosity with almost no power. I would make the Senate an unpaid position, and all senators get to do is confirm executive branch appointments, and then by a simple majority.
I’d also increase the number of Representatives in the House, get rid of all US Territories by making them states or parts of states, and let everyone over 18 vote, but like I said, I think democracy is a good thing.
I see what you are saying, but that also seems like a hypertextual reading of that clause. Also it belies experience as West Virginia was formed entirely from Virginia.
In my case, it’s not so much that my state is getting screwed by the EC. My problem with the EC is that the candidate who wins the popular vote can lose the election. That’s not an issue with a Senate election - if Senate Candidate A gets 48% of the vote and Candidate B gets 47%, Candidate A wins.
I don’t feel my state is getting screwed by the EC - and that may be the difference between those who are in favor of the EC and those who are not. In my view, “states” don’t have interests and don’t get screwed by the EC- the people living in those states have interests. Granted, I live in a very divided state, possibly the most sharply divided of all - but my interests and the interests of someone who lives in Elmira probably don’t have much in common. And that person in Elmira might feel he’s being screwed due to the winner take all method of choosing electors used in nearly every state.
You might be missing the point of CoastalMaineiac’s comparison.
EC: The states select the electors, and the electors select the president.
Senate: The states select the senators, and the senators select the laws.
The difference is that we know what percent of the overall US population favors each presidential candidate (“who wins the popular vote”), but not what percent of the overall US population favors each potential piece of legislation.
Yeah, word games really don’t work in trying change govt to make election outcomes more to your liking (which is exactly what most recent ‘reform’ proposals are all about, though this one even more extreme than usual). Unless/until you can elect reps (who then appoint judges) who make the whole thing a complete joke. Which can happen. It doesn’t matter what a constitution says or was clearly intended to mean if the level of cynicism and ‘ends justify means’ rises sufficiently. Lots of examples of that around the world in modern history.
And I mean really, it’s so shockingly ‘unfair’ that the Senate is composed the way it’s written in the Constitution and has always been. I mean who knew, right? Also hard to imagine why smaller states insisted that future reduction of their Senate representation not even be subject to the amendment process but each one’s consent. Why would they have ever done that?
I understand the point of his comparison - but I disagree with it. When we start holding votes so that we do know what percentage of the population favors each piece of legislation, I will be all for getting rid of Congress altogether. The system isn’t set up as a direct democracy ( which is unworkable in anything larger than a small town) and when I vote for my Rep or Senator, I am literally voting for a person to represent me. Presumably I have informed myself as to what positions he or she has taken in the past and is likely to take in the future. That’s not what I’m doing when I vote for president - in that case, I am voting for people who have promised to vote for my chosen candidate in some future election. The only thing I know about the electors is that they will vote for my chosen candidate ( I may not even know their names) and voting for electors has no practical advantage over voting directly for the candidate , as voting for senators/representatives has over voting for each individual piece of legislation.
IOW, there are reasons for selecting senators who select laws that don’t apply to selecting electors who select a president.
Among other things—
I’d be in favor of reallocating both the Senate and the House to be based on socio-economic zones rather than states.
I’d lift the numerical limits on House numbers and reallocate to make it more proportional.
I’d nationalize Senate, House, and Presidential elections and give line-drawing to a non-political body.
I’d adopt a New Zealand style hybrid system with proportional representation with top offs from party lists and some form of preference voting.
Essentially I’d make the national government representative of the people, removing any representation for states.
Sure, it makes sense to select legislators to vote on the laws-- Everyone voting directly on all of the laws would get way too cumbersome. But we should at least make an attempt to make the legislature a representative sample of the people, so we’ll get at least approximately the same laws that the majority of the people want.
That was obviously a special case. The legal position is that West Virginia was formed with the consent of Virginia. Of course at the time most Virginian legislators didn’t show up at the convention in Wheeling where West Virginian statehood was under discussion; they were gathered in Richmond. But the legislators who chose to show up in Wheeling were deemed to be the legal government of Virginia and they voted to split the state in half and form a new state.
A few years later, when the rest of Virginia was being readmitted to its regular status in the United States, they voted to retroactively consent to the formation of West Virginia.
But, what if the Real Americans[sup]TM[/sup] cannot get a majority of the people to vote for their favored representatives?
If the will of the conservatives is thwarted by the people, then the people are the problem.
I just don’t see how this can happen. It’s like the Supreme Court; it was intended to be a non-political body but as people realized its functions had political impacts, the choices of who served on it became political issues. The same would happen with any organization tasked with drawing congressional districts. Its decisions would have significant political effects so politicians would want to influence the membership of the organization. Democrats would try to get Democrats in and Republicans would try to get Republicans in. Direct elections wouldn’t be a solution; parties would just run candidates for the organization.
States insisted? How do states communicate? I’ve live in a state all my life and I’ve never heard it say a word.
States don’t talk. People talk. So explain why a person who lives in Wyoming should have more representation than a person who lives in California.