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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood why the number of congressmen per state wasn't purely based on population. Why does land get voting rights?

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(I assume you're referring to the Senate and not the House, which does do somewhat population-based apportionment)

The two-assembly structure exists because it was a compromise to not give the densely-populated states all the power in the new Republic. Crucially, this sort of compromise was important because it helped the less-populated states get on board with the whole "federal government" concept without fearing that power over their own affairs would be continually swamped by places like New York. "Land" gets voting rights because those who were in charge of that land (the state legislators) wanted it in order to sign onto the project.

This is why I find the modern media complaints trying to do away with such structures very troubling. It may be more vestigial at this point, but the setup was supposed to emphasize a collection of states rather than mere administrative subdivisions of a faraway government. Frankly, if there would be any change to the state-based system for senators, it should come with a free ability for smaller states to secede as a group; because it would be going back on the deal.

Correct. However one of the key differences is that when the Republic was established, per the Constitution, States' Rights were a primary aspect of legislation. The federal government had very little power and very few laws compared to today. Most laws existed on a state-by-state basis. The USA of the late 1700s was really more like the EU than it is today.

And that's why New Hampshire needed senators. New Hampshire needed to ensure that it could still get the things it needed from the federal government (presumably money in most cases) to make New Hampshire a good place to live. That's why land has voting rights -- New Hampshire (using it as an example for all less-populated rural states) used to be a lot more sovereign.

Now things have changed. New Hampshire isn't just ensuring that it gets the resources it needs. Because most laws in the US are now enacted on a federal level, New Hampshire is deciding implicitly how /other/ states behave. And this is the problem, and is clearly against the intent of the Constitution ("any power not explicitly granted to the federal government will be left to the states").

So, the bicameral legislature as designed made sense. But in its current context, it's fundamentally broken. If we want to return it back to its original intent, then it's time to get back to a period of States' Rights.

“most laws in the US are now enacted on a federal level”

That’s simply not factually true.

Factually false but effectively true? I understand what's trying to be gotten at with the statement but it's not exactly laws per se. It's more a power dynamic but quantifying that is a bit tricky.

The original 13 states plus Vermont and Texas should have that option because it would be going back on the deal with those states when they voluntarily joined the country. The other states should not because they were created by act of Congress out of territory that was already part of the US. There was never any deal made with those states.

Compromise. When the Constitution was drawn up, there was already a large disagreement about this. The North was more densely populated than the South. It would have meant that North would have dictated all the policies.

The South had an agricultural industry that was reliant (at least they believed it was reliant) on the horrid practice of slavery.

The Civil War settled the issue of slavery, and probably was the best time to try and rebalance the Senate. So now we’re stuck, and why would any of these less populated states give up power?

Looking back, from a systems perspective (not necessarily the view taken at the time), the Senate was created to represent the structure of government. They were supposed to be the old party hacks from each state that were sent to DC to help architect and fix the architecture of the federal government. Their interest was in the system, in the political structure and operation of the government, not making the folks back home happy with their votes. They were more like judges. Our own little homegrown aristocracy.

Looked at it that way, it makes sense that each state should have an equal number of representatives. After all, the federal system was supposedly created and maintained by the states. But after the Civil War flipped that around, and the 17th amendment called for the direct election of senators, they were really mis-configured for the job. As many people point out, now they're just direct representatives of the people, only with a mission created from the old ways of doing things. So why are they elected like this again?

As you say, we're stuck with it now. The only way to answer the criticism of giving states equal senators is to use an argument that is no longer valid. [Insert long discussion here about how nobody wanted a democracy in the U.S. It was never a goal and it was feared by the founders]

> Insert long discussion here about how nobody wanted a democracy in the U.S. It was never a goal and it was feared by the founders

I wouldn’t say exactly they didn’t want it... but they definitely feared it. The presidency was also not directly elected, and now we’re dealing with that and the idiocy of the electoral college.

At least that one seems more feasible to fix, as the states themselves can decide how to allocate their electoral members.

I do wonder if the equal protections clause could be a mechanism to force a rebalancing of the constitutional senate allocation. I’m no lawyer, but it seems they they could be in conflict with each other.

The argument I've heard is that politicians wouldn't bother campaigning or making improvements to any of the states with low population. It's political welfare.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_(politics) for some discussion of this issue.

I don't believe there's any better reason than wanting the small population states to sign the Constitution in the 1780s. And maybe also an attempt to protect the needs of people like farmers from being ignored, since they would live in low population states compared to urban professionals. Not saying it's a good idea.

It was definitely not created to protect the interests of farmers. The vast majority of the population worked in agriculture at that point, so they wouldn't have needed any special protection.

...it is. The House of Representatives seats are based purely upon population which is determined by a census every 10 years. The Senate is redundant because of the 17th Amendment but its original purpose was to represent the individual State governments separately from the populace.

Individual states used to be more sovereign. It's similar to the structure of the European Parliament (where small countries have 10x as many representatives per capita as large countries), or the UN (where otherwise China and India would have 1/3 of the votes).

Because you don't want the land to take it's water rights and transportation links (among other things) and go home?

It's not about land as I understand it but about securing equal representation in the Senate between the republic's constituent states. The House reflects the population, the Senate secures the rights of the smaller states in the face of overwhelming population elsewhere.

Originally the State governments directly chose their Senators. So you had a house for the States and a house for the People. The 17th Amendment brought about the situation we have today.

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