[JauntTrooper]

The Senate is in a permanent state of gerrymandering.

There were only 13 states when the Constitution was ratified. It was never envisioned to be as disproportionate as it is today, with California's two Senators representing 40 million people vs. Wyoming's 0.6 million.

[koolba]

In 1776, the population of Virgin was about 500K, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were about 270K, and Delaware and Georgia were about 50K each.

The founders knew exactly what they were agreeing to when they gave each State two Senators. It’s supposed to be a separate check on the Federal power to force a wide swathe of consensus.

[spankalee]

California currently has of 60x the population of Wyoming, which means that Wyoming voters have over 60x the voting power in the Senate as California voters.

Whether the founders intended that or not it's a shitty, unfair, and undemocratic system that doesn't act as a check, it just enables permanent minority rule.

[johnnyanmac]

It was semi intentional. It wasn't as extreme but the Senate was still a compromise for smaller states to have leverage in government and get them to sign on.

Meanwhile, the house is about 10 times smaller than what the founders envisioned. Maybe that's overkill but we probably should at least expand the house quite a bit. And Probably expand the supreme court as well.

[Pxtl]

I would argue then that the Senate is extremely overpowered. The disproportionate body should be a brake on the power of the government, not be the literally stronger half of Congress.

The fact that the most democratic part of the US government, the house of reps, is now the weakest part of the US legislature is ridiculous.

If we're dreaming up fixes, I'd say

1) Senate actions should require a strict majority. If anything should require super-majorities, it should be the House of Representatives.

2) The Senate should not be in control of appointments to the exclusion of House of Reps. No idea what the ideal system is there but the disproportionate body should not be more powerful than the proportionate body.

3) The Senate should be able to at most block an action for one term of Congress. That means that every Senate action can be overridden by an election. Which means the disproportionate body is effectively calling a referendum on legislation, instead of being a hard-stop.

[ratelimitsteve]

the problem is that since 1911 the house has also been a compromise for smaller states to have leverage because it's capped at 435 total members regardless of population. we've gone from a system of dynamic tension between popular rule and representation for smaller populaces to a system where both houses are on the side of the "underrepresented" to an extent where they're actually vastly overrepresented. Combine that with the electoral college (which again allows a ruling elite to overrule the populace and advantages smaller states) and the fact that the elitist president and elitist senate pick the supreme court and you can see where the so-called "underrepresented" populations are actually the ones in charge of every branch of government.

This is, of course, exactly what the founding fathers intended. They disliked kings but they feared rule by common people and always intended there to be a privileged class of citizenry that does the actual ruling because people like you and me are just too ignorant to be trusted with that. That's why they excluded the vast majority of people from voting at all and those that were allowed to vote had their power diluted by various mechanistic means like capping the senate, flooring the house (and later capping it as well), using the electoral college to make sure that those precious few who vote at all don't vote incorrectly and having the least representative members of the executive and legislative branch select the judicial branch so that they're not swayed by "politics" (read: what the governed actually want).

And that's how we have a system that claims to be a democracy but where what people want is actually completely disconnected from what happens, and where "The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all" (https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/).

[mlrtime]

That is the point of the Senate! These are united STATES, and always have been.

There is no way to prove this but who is your Representative without googling the naming, do you know them? Ever talked to them before?

[spankalee]

It might be the point, but it's a bad point. It's a bad system that results in minority rule.

[ratelimitsteve]

doubly so because the house has been floored since inception and capped since 1911, the president gets elected by the electoral college (which favors smaller states) and the president and senate pick the supreme court so there is no proportional representation anywhere and there hasn't been for over a hundred years

[Yizahi]

If states are so independent and equal that they demand exact same legislative power as fifty times bigger states, then maybe that equality should be full? Like for example equal federal monetary transhes to every equal state? And equal taxes collected from each state? No?

[teiferer]

And now ask the 3.2 million Puertoricans how they feel about that.

[jalapenos]

Could just as soon argue it's shitty and unfair that populous states like Russia get to impose their will in less populous ones like Ukraine.

Something being more democratic doesn't make it better by default. Hence why there's a bill of rights.

[judahmeek]

I doubt the founders considered the possibility that political realignment would result in nearly all low population states being on one side of the spectrum.

[cherrycherry98]

Counting the two Independents as Democrats, who they caucus with:

Top 25 states: 2 Democrats - 52% 2 Republicans - 40% Split - 8%

Bottom 25 states: 2 Democrats - 36% 2 Republicans - 60% Split - 4%

Top quintile: 2 Democrats - 50% 2 Republicans - 40% Split - 10%

2nd quintile: 2 Democrats - 60% 2 Republicans - 30% Split - 10%

Middle quintile: 2 Democrats - 40% 2 Republicans - 60%

4th quintile: 2 Democrats - 30% 2 Republicans - 70%

Bottom quintile: 2 Democrats - 40% 2 Republicans - 50% Split - 10%

The very top and very bottom are a 55% to 45% split in either direction. It's not a heavy skew, a single party flip in the quintile from the majority to the minority would make it 50/50 even. Those quintiles cancel each other out when voting on party/caucus lines. It's actually the 2nd and 4th quintiles that have the biggest skews. Democrats take the 2nd quintile while Republicans take the 3rd and 4th.

[judahmeek]

I definitely appreciate your measurements, but I think your analysis is off.

The top & bottom quintiles don't cancel out, but rather support the same trend, which is that Republicans have more voting power per capita.

That said, I am surprised that the top & bottom quintiles are nearly balanced. I'll have to look up which bottom quintile states have Democratic senators.

[cherrycherry98]

Thank you for that.

I agree, the data does indeed show that Republicans have more voting power per capita, as they have advantages in the bottom 3 quintiles. However, I don't think the correlation of population to party (at the state level) is as extreme as some try to portray it. There are high population Republican states as well as low population Democratic ones. Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Hampshire are Democratic states in the bottom quintile.

The top has 11 Democratic votes and 9 Republican votes. The bottom has 9 Democratic votes and 11 Republican votes. If they all vote on party lines it's a tie. So it's really the middle population states that give Republicans their current edge.

It's a frequent criticism that smaller states have outsized representation relative to their population. The US is not alone in this, the EU also has the same characteristic. Germany, the most populous, has over 150 times the population of Malta, the least populous, but only 16 times the amount of representation in parliament (96 MEP vs 6 MEP). By comparison, the largest state, California, has 37 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming, but 18 times the representation in Congress and the electoral college (54 vs 3). Granted, it's not an apples to apples comparison as the votes are divided between houses and the relative power of the EU vs the US federal government but it's a comparison nonetheless.

It's a compromise when trying to form a union of political entities that differ so greatly in size. The smaller entities obviously give up some sovereignty to their larger counterparts. The larger ones seem to have to have to reciprocate in a meaningful way to keep a voluntary union.

[codenaught]

The existence of the Virginia Plan (the Large State Plan) and the New Jersey Plan (the Small State Plan) indicates that balancing the differing interests of high- and low- population states was a prominent concern of the founders. I think they would expect states to often align by population size since that very thing occurring at the convention led to the compromise written into the Constitution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Plan

[judahmeek]

I have a hard time conceiving of matters that states would separate themselves on by population size other then proportional representation in Congress back then.

I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.

[nobody9999]

>I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.

Not so much, unless you consider Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont to be "frontier" states in 1787. Actual frontier states like Georgia were in favor of the Virginia Plan as they figured their population would grow soon enough and they could take advantage of their eventual large population (with slaves being counted as 3/5 of a person) in a "Virginia Plan" world.

The Connecticut Compromise[0][3] ended up in the Constitution as a reconciliation of the Virginia Plan[1][4] and the New Jersey Plan[2][5], with the larger states supporting the Virginia Plan and smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan.

The above is incredibly abridged and ignores much context. As such, I strongly recommend you read Article I, Sections 2 and 3 of the US Constitution[7] (the result of the Connecticut Compromise) as well as the original Virginia and New Jersey plans, or at least the wikipedia pages I linked for a much better discourse on the topic.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Plan

[3] The current system. Which differs from the original only in direct election of Senators, rather than them being appointed by state legislatures[6].

[4] Proposed a bicameral legislature with both houses apportioned by population.

[5] Proposed a unicameral legislature with one vote per state.

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...

[7] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/

Edit: Added the missing link.

[Loughla]

No, I like the way the Senate runs in theory. Equal representation for the states regardless of size. Only if it's alongside the house with proportionate representation.

That seems like a good theory that would keep itself in check.

In execution it's an absolute shit show, I'll give you. But I do believe the theory is sound. With the house and the Senate we get the best of both worlds.

In theory.

[lotsofpulp]

Why is the theory sound? It’s an arbitrary number of regions delineated by arbitrary lines given a disproportionate amount of power that run completely counter to the goal of a democracy.

[johnnyanmac]

>Why is the theory sound?

Because tyranny of the majority is still a thing. Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes. So the house is there as a large power and senate can check it.

Of course, in practice the house is way under represented so its almost like we have a senate and a mini-senate. That's where things fall apart.

[kelnos]

> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.

I don't see why that would be the case. To win an election you don't need to win states at all; you need to win lots of voters, and those voters could come from anywhere.

You could lose every single voter in both CA and TX and still win the election, given different political demographics across states.

As an aside, I also think abolishing the Electoral College and going strictly by the national popular vote would increase voter turnout for presidential elections. I live in a solidly blue state, and if I didn't care about down-ballot races, I probably wouldn't bother to vote in presidential elections, since my vote doesn't really matter here. Only votes in swing states matter under the current system.

[Pxtl]

Tyranny of the minority is not better.

[lotsofpulp]

> tyranny of the majority

Aka democracy.

> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.

No, it wouldn’t. It would switch to appealing to the most voters, who may or may not happen to live in California and Texas, but that is irrelevant to a democracy.

[johnnyanmac]

>Aka democracy.

Yes. I hope I don't need to explain the many times that the majority sentiment was in fact not the correct one. A pure democracy under the basis the US was founded under would end up much more conservative than what we have today.

> It would switch to appealing to the most voters.

So it'd switch to appealing to urban cities and ignore the rural areas. Iirc the top 10 cities today make up some 40+% of voters. Why bother going to Omaha when you can focus instead of LA and NYC?

[twixfel]

Tyranny of the majority may be undesirable but tyranny of the minority is even worse. At least the majority, are, you know, the majority.

[mlrtime]

You are taking a very narrow one sided view. We live in a Republic of states, not a Federal Democracy. I know you would like this to happen, but it won't here for good reasons.

[lotsofpulp]

There is no “good” reason. It just so happens to be the way the power dynamics of the past have played out, and there has not yet been sufficient motivation for the population to go to war.

[culi]

the senate was not originally meant to be elected. It was a way for the elites to maintain order if populism got out of hand. People often forget that the entire US Constitution is a response to the crisis of Shays Rebellion where the poor starting rebelling and even getting their members elected under the articles of confederation. The whole point of the senate is to limit democracy's threat to elites

[nullocator]

ya so instead we get multiple lifetimes of minority rule and stagnation.

[johnnyanmac]

Minority forces of change also happen for the good as well. There aren't too many landmark cases where the majority suddenly voted to give more representation, more power to workers, nor simply cede powers previously enjoyed by government.

[Loughla]

Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things. They set their own laws.

Having 1 chamber that allows equal representation

And

Having 1 chamber that allows proportionate

Is a good system in theory. Otherwise, States (which are again separate entities) with high populations just steamroll those that have low populations.

The system now allows states with high populations to be appropriately represented in the house, which sends bills to the Senate.

I feel like it's a good system, in theory. You get your population representation and checks and balances for rural areas as well.

[nullocator]

The barrier of entry to becoming a state is currently too high, and the barrier to stopping to be a state is even higher.

[kelnos]

You keep saying "in theory". If the practice -- as you seem to admit -- doesn't actually work, then what's the point defending the theory? It doesn't work in practice, so it's a bad idea.

> Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things.

In practice that's not really true. The federal government has many, many levers it can use to get states to fall in line.

[mlrtime]

>The federal government has many, many levers it can use to get states to fall in line.

This is a separate problem that should be fixed.

[lotsofpulp]

> (which are again separate entities)

In theory, but in practice, most states are highly dependent on a few very populous and productive ones, for economic and military protection.

Not to mention that the Feds control the purchasing power of the currency and international trade, so the states aren’t sovereign to do anything of consequence.

Hence in practice, this whole theory of states being sovereign goes out the window.

[echelon]

States are sovereign entities with their own laws. They can even, in theory, secede from the union.

The Senate is a good system, it's just that most states are Republican.

Some of the larger states might consider splitting themselves into separate states to better represent their populations. Though that may not be constitutionally possible.

If we ever add additional states to the Union (Puerto Rico, D.C., etc.), they'll want to enjoy having an equal say with every other state in the Union. It's a compelling feature of our system.

The House, as a proportional system, actually needs to be re-normalized. There are not enough representatives to have an actually proportional vote.

[nullocator]

Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why? The system as it's designed seems to want to incentivize having many low population states as a way to spread and gain power, and as such the current 100 power holders are incentivized to to protect their power by preventing the dilution of their power that would come with more states.

Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control this is frequently mentioned and brought up several times in this post alone. Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?

[echelon]

> Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why?

States have sovereignty and rights.

The point is that all states have equal representation.

> Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?

Because states are political test tubes and need autonomy.

> Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control

In my lifetime, the Senate has been majority Democratic party controlled [1].

If you go back to the second Bush term, it's been 60% Democrat.

The current party makeup is only temporary. Things are constantly in flux.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

[valleyer]

States can not "in theory" secede from the United States. See Texas v. White: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White

From the point of view of the U.S. legal system, the Confederacy's secession was "absolutely null".

[echelon]

It's more complicated than that single case [1], and the chief justice admitted there were other routes:

> Chase, however, "recognized that a state could cease to be part of the union 'through revolution, or through consent of the States'".

Secession does not have to be done legally. Who knows what, if any, conflict that might bring about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States

[Yizahi]

Most states are Republican only because of first past the post system. If states internally did democratic majority elections, then most of them would turn progressive very fast. Including Texas, which is already democratic, but is suppressed by a blatant corruption via gerrymandering.

[spankalee]

The Senate is a terrible system. There's no logical reason why citizens in one state should have orders of magnitude more say in the federal government than citizens in another.

The founders aren't infallible gods, and they really fucked up here.

[Centrino]

Unlike in many other countries, where provinces or regions are merely administrative divisions created to decentralize or streamline administration, the US emerged when states voluntarily came together and decided to create a country. The states were willing to outsource part of their autonomy to a federal level, on condition that guardrails were put in place to limit the power of that federal level. Those guardrails were: bicameralism, equal representation of states in the Senate, and the electoral college. The House is the voice of the people, the Senate is the voice of the states.

The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively prevents a majority of voters from large urban centers from imposing their will onto rural populations, at least at the federal level. It was designed that way.

I've seen comments here claiming that countries like Canada or France deliver better outcomes than the US. They are stronger welfare states, yes, but they also have become overly paternalistic nanny states, with heavy-handed regulations, and high taxes stifling individual initiative.

[spankalee]

The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively allows a minority of voters from rural areas to impose their will onto large urban centers

[teiferer]

> There's no logical reason

If you study the U.S. history in detail the you see the reasons and the main ones are quite "logical".

You might not agree with them (I don't necessarily), but that doesn't make them illogical.

[NoGravitas]

They were logical at the time they were implemented. Most of those reasons have been invalid since the Civil War, and should have been fixed during Reconstruction, except the winners didn't have the foresight or political will to do what needed to be done.