Just looked up states by population. 4 states (CA, TX, FL, NY) have populations exceeding 15 million, and 6 (DE, SD, ND, AK, VT, WY) have populations below 1 million. Drawing lines a little deeper, 12 states are over 8 million, and 14 are under 2 million.
How about amending the constitution to reapportion senate representation to address the most significant population discrepancies? Essentially splt the largest states, and combine the smallest. I note that neither the largest and smallest are exclusively red or blue.
Nor are all of the largest states consistently red or blue throughout themselves. Perhaps voting in the split or combined units could be tweaked to discourage one demographic from being overrepresented.
Not suggesting Senators should be apportioned equally, just suggesting eliminating some of the greatest inequities. Reapportionment could be done only every 50 years or so.
Of course, this will never be politically feasible… But I guess I’m wondering why state boundaries are considered sacrosanct, with the result that Wyoming’s 600k citizens have the same senate representation as California’s 37 million.
Both houses of Congress, and the legislatures of the states in question need to agree to any redrawing of state lines. I highly doubt any state would vote to give up its Senators.
Not trying to be snarky, but if you know it’s not politically feasible, then don’t you know why? Why would the smaller states willingly give up their agreed upon advantage to the larger states unless they had to? Why would the larger states agree to be broken up and then diminish the power that the state legislature had? It’s not like people are rioting in the streets over this. Right?
You mean, why shouldn’t we make the Senate into another version of the House? I don’t really think you need to ask that question if you pay attention to Congressional politics… :dubious:
Well, in case of Texas, it could, apparently on its own initiative, spawn four more states:
“New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal constitution.”
I don’t know that it would necessarily be another version of the House, given the smaller numbers, and larger constituencies.
And the smallest states don’t HAVE to agree, if 2/3 of both houses and 3/4 of the states wish it.
And I guess we’ve always had huge discrepancies. Quick google shows that in 1770 4 colonies were over 200k, and 4 under 100k . VA at 450k and GA at 23K was probably not terribly out of line with today’s biggest and smallest.
The other day, a Chicago Trib columnist jokingly proposed solving IL’s budget mess by dissolving it, and giving portions to all of the neighboring states!
Just look at the length of months, 4 months (Apr, Jun, Sept, Nov) have 30 days, and 7 have 31 days (Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Aug, Oct, Dec). Then there’s February.
How about changing the calendar to have 13 months of exactly 4 weeks each? That would make things so much more efficient! Payrolls and bill paying would always line up the same. As for the extra day each year, plus one every 4 years, just forget about them. Sure, the calendar would drift in relation to the orbit of the sun, but it would take a lifetime to see a significant change. It would all be back to where it started in…
Eh? What’s that?
OH! Sorry,I thought this was a thread for ideas that make sense but will never happen.
To be fair, one could make the Senate much less advantageous to the smaller states without making it the House. CA has 53 Representatives (IIRC), but if it had 8 Senators, would it really be basically the same as the House? Senators serve longer terms and the Senate has different rules and traditions, too.
I wouldn’t conflate lessening the disparity inherent in the Senate with eliminating it completely.
But it’s not going to happen anytime soon anyway, so it’s more of an academic discussion than anything else.
Dont know if this present a problem, but some of the population densest states are small like
New York 8.491 million
New Jersey 8.958 million
and the population sparse are huge, like
Montana 1.033 million
Wyoming 586,107
North Dakota 756,927
South Dakota 858,469
Would that present a problem where you have these now north western supermega states like Monyomingkota?
that have huge land masses, and these tiny NE coastal states that are now further sliced into super micro state land masses?
In 1850, Texas was reduced to its current size. The rest of what had been Texas is now part of five other states: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.
One other minor glitch, at least as to the states the OP mentioned… aside from the Dakotas most of the other least populous states mentioned are not physically adjacent. Are we really going to combine Alaska and Vermont into a single state? Vermont and Delaware are at least a bit closer but their geographic dissimilarity gives rise to differing interests their populations may want represented.
I remember reading several discussions of converting large swaths of the plains into buffalo wildernesses. They barely sustained populations at the best of times. Let’s stop pretending they are sufficiently important to play such an outsize role.
IggyI didn’t get close to deciding how it would work. Could be that the smallest states could be joined to a modest-sized neighbor. Or there could be incentives (I don’t know what) to encourage small-to-middle-sized states to voluntarily/pre-emptively join.
Sorta behind my thinking is my dislike for states refusing to acknowledge regional shared interests. Such as here in IL, where they keep talking about building a new airport in the middle of a cornfield that no one wants. Where the interests of the Chicago area are better thought of as a region stretching from Milwaukee across into NW IN.
