[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.