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It doesn't necessarily mean that the Senate arrangement is a good thing - it just happened to be the compromise they had to settle on to move forward with the Constitution back in the day. EC is a similar arrangement. But one has to remember that this was back when there were 13 states, and the states themselves were very different from what they are today. So was the federal government, of course (and the change in that began long before 9/11). What may have been a reasonable compromise back then is not necessarily so reasonable today. Interestingly, the Federalist papers, when arguing for the new Constitution, criticized the Articles of Confederation arrangement of one-state-one-vote - but that criticism is formulated broadly enough that in today's context, it's just as applicable to the Senate: "Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration." Note the highlighted bit. At the time it was written, a simple majority of the states could be had with less than one-third of the total population represented by those votes. Today, a 75% supermajority of the states (as necessary to e.g. ratify constitutional amendments) can be had with less than 1/4 of the total population of the country. It's a very different balance, and given how much more important the Senate specifically is due to Supreme Court appointment, I'd say that the warning Hamilton gave to smaller states in the Confederation is once again fully in force today. |