A Proposal to Admit New States for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution

"Let's game the system so that we can change the rules to be what we think they should be!"

Does anybody see a problem with this? Not necessarily with the desired changes (though I think they are highly dangerous), but with the methodology? We're deep into "ends justify the means" here.

"We deserve to have things go the way we think they should! They didn't, so the rules must be unfair!" (Never mind that it's the rules that we've played by for 200 years, and that their side has won as often as they lost under those rules.) "So we should change the rules so that we always win, because we deserve to!" That's the cry of entitled losers everywhere. But do we really want the rules to be drawn up by whining, entitled losers? That's not a way to get good rules.

And, you're going to create new states out of DC's 127 neighborhoods? 127 new states? And your goal is also that "all citizens are represented by equal-sized (House) districts"? Well, the population of DC is 702,000. Divided into 127 districts, that gives 5,500 people per district. (Unless you want to have one House district represent more than one State, which seems to me to be problematic.) 330,000,000 people in the United States would give you a House of 60,000 members. That's probably not workable.

This whole thing smacks of "one person, one vote, one time". If they win (not necessarily the Democrats, but people that back this crackpot idea), they'll stack the deck so thoroughly that they'll never lose again. Such people do not deserve your vote; rather they deserve being opposed as strongly as possible.

And what in the world has happened to Harvard Law, that they're supporting garbage like this?

What a rhetorically weak and unintelligent opening, which shortsightedly ignores that Presidents who won the popular vote in the past have started wars and engaged in infidelity before. The idea that somehow policies and behaviors that the author has a personal problem with would be avoided by bowing to the popular vote is just silly.

> "Equal representation of states in the Senate, for example, gives citizens of low-population states undue influence in Congress."

As for the above quote, I would have expected more from the HLR. The entire reason why Senators are apportioned as they are is to give low population states extra influence. Supporters of progressive economic policy will immediately understand the reason: smaller states should get the same number of Senators as larger states to balance their weakness relative to these states. Similar reasoning is used to justify transfers of wealth from the wealthy to the poor.

One little talked about reason why this is especially good for the country and its people is that it provides an extra check on the impulses of powerful states that may want to push policy which may not be beneficial for the entire country, or is shortsighted.

It stands to reason that small states may have profoundly different perspectives than large states and so by forcing these different perspectives to come to terms with one another better policy will be the result. If one state or region had complete dominance, there would be no opportunity for debate and the benefits of the reflection that such debate forces.

The entire US system is built with the idea of balance in mind and everything is structured so that the various forces in the nation balance one another.