Thought experiment: let's say we could implement this tomorrow. What would be the effect on our politics? My theory is that it would somewhat rectify our inherent rural bias[1].
[1] http://teachingwithdata.blogspot.com/2011/06/elections-and-r...
[1] http://teachingwithdata.blogspot.com/2011/06/elections-and-r...
That's the whole point of the Senate: to give states equal weight, not citizens. For that, we have the House, where everybody does (in principle) have equal command of a representative. This is pointing to a feature and calling it a bug.
That depends on if you are a democrat of republican.
Democrats would probably prefer to have every state have equal population and make representation equal for all.
Republicans would probably prefer to keep the old system in place which gives land mass credit over individual people.
I'm not arguing for either one, but saying it is definitely a feature is in the eye of the beholder.
EDIT: I made a bad assumption about who would favor what system. In any event, the basic point stands that one group will think its a bug, while the other group will think it is a feature.
Edit: btilly below is right, the House isn't technically proportional representation, it's equal-population districts. Still, state by state representation doesn't seem to be breaking reliably for Republicans.
The Republicans were able to control the house while losing the national congressional popular vote by being better able to redistrict their congressional seats in ways that were favorable to them.
This is why it is important which party controls State legislatures, those legislatures favor their own party when they draw the map.
In a perfectly gerrymandered system, the party in power can win using only 25.1% of the vote - and that's if all districts have equal population. You can get by with even less if the districts have imbalanced populations. In that "perfect" system, you draw the districts so that your detractors are 100% of the population in the districts you know that you're going to lose, and your supporters are 50.1% of the population in the ares you want to win.
In real life, of course, it's messier and you can't draw the lines quite so perfectly, but here's a link to the districts near Chicago - look how oddly-shaped they are, especially as you get closer to the city center. (They'll probably change again next election season, doubly so if the other party gets control.) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/IL
If you look at the TX map and zoom in on Austin you will see how silly it is.
For the 10 smallest states by population, 14 of the 20 senators caucus with the Democrats.
I think a radical electoral rewrite like this would probably help the Democrats in the Senate, but not by as much as you might think.
Remember how hard it was for Obama to pass health care reform when he had 59 Democrats and Joe Lieberman?
Thats what the Senate + the filibuster does to our politics, it grinds it to a halt.
Edit:
First line should read: Some of those 14 Senators are amongst the most conservative in the Democratic party.
Ben Nelson is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. During the health care reform bill he was a holdout until the end, threatening his own parties signature piece of legislation. He caved when his state was given a special deal.
And liberal Republicans get elected from small states, too. Remember Lincoln Chafee?
It is an advantage that violates the principle of one person one vote and equal representation.
People that believe in equal representation as a founding principal of democracy are justifiably outraged by this assault to democratic principles.
The Senate was a compromise to form the union at the start, and it has evolved with time. The 17th amendment gave the people the right to vote for their senators directly, previously state legislatures elected senators for the people.
The basic truth that all men are equal and there should be one vote for one man supersedes the privilege of some citizens, in some states, having more political power than other citizens in other states.
Citizens of large states do not deserve to be discriminated against in the legislature while at the same time subsidizing rural states. The rural states get more than they give in taxes.
It's just not right. The Senate, in it's current stage of metamorphosis, is a basic violation of democratic principles and the time has come to alter or abolish it. A quixotic cause to rally for no doubt, but a right and good cause for anyone that keeps a candle burning in the window, that one day America will live up to its promise and potential.
I like the streamlined efficiency of a unicameral system in a time where technology is changing things so quickly.
New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden have moved from a bicameral to a unicameral system. In the United States, Nebraska operates with one.
What are the negatives?
Does not follow.
Democracy is not the one true form of government. Constitutional representative democracy just has relatively few catastrophic failure modes.
This function of the Senate is IMO far more important than arbitrarily giving group A of citizens multiple times more political power than group B. Equal representation of states was conceived of in a time when our nation was very different. The Senate's current form was an acknowledgement of the fact that each state was sovereign. The framing of our Constitution almost bears more similarity to the EU than it does to the US that we recognize today, at least with respect to the attitudes towards the relative independence of each state.
On top of that, the divisions that made a "state" anything more than an arbitrary administrative division based on an accident of history are largely gone. The urban-rural divide is far more of a dividing line in terms of demography and ideology than state lines are. Citizens of Los Angeles and Richmond, VA are far more similar to each other than they are to citizens of Shasta County, CA or Wythe County, VA. Just look at any per-county electoral map if you don't believe me.
This map, or something like it, preserves all the benefits of the Senate while going a long way to fix what's horribly broken about it: namely, granting huge amounts of political power to arbitrary blocks of citizens.
What I am saying is that in the "rural bias" link they refer to the Senate as "overrepresenting rural citizens" and the point I'm making is that the Senate is not about representing citizens, it's about representing states. And it's meant to balance the House, which is about representing citizens. So the rural bias of the one ought to be adequately met by the urban bias of the other. The ethanol subsidy may be stupid and bad, I'd hardly put it in the top 10 problems we have. I think it would take a lot of spin to recast all our problems as inherited from the Senate and wide open spaces.
The idea that you're dominated by the whims of rural voters is a little absurd when we're both so clearly dominated by the whims of large corporations and special interests. To me, this is simply whining about the wrong problem, and a much harder problem to solve. It's not going to be fixed either by an amendment or by redrawing state lines, so what exactly is being proposed here? Nothing--it's simply a fun thought experiment. I just don't approve of fun thought experiments becoming vehicles for absurdist political melodrama.
Why do we need a balance against representing citizens? I think the only reason for this is that money from the Federal gov't often goes to States and not directly to the people.
Since the U.S. is a union of the states, it makes sense to have a legislative body representing states' (and indirectly, peoples') interests. Whether the population differences between Texas and Wyoming are too extreme is a legitimate question, but I still believe in the original intent of the Senate.
BTW, the original intent of the Senate was all but destroyed by the 17th amendment, which seriously impacted states' rights by moving the motivating factor of Senators from "How do I get reelected by my state?" to "How do I get reelected by the people?"
Finally, (and this is only a statement of fact, not of defense) it is fairly well known that most Founders, especially Federalists, were wary of democracy unchecked. IMO, fair democracy does depend on an educated populace, which makes me sad about today's government.
However, the country is "The United States," not "The United Population."
The U.S. Constitution was version 2.0, the MVP for the U.S. were the Articles of Confederation. [And to push the bad startup analogy further, the Declaration of Independence was when the founders quit their jobs and the Revolutionary War was the period when they burned through cash to develop traction.]
All of that ignores that states are not simply "administrative divisions". Though IMHO we have far too much federal law these days, your average person interacts mostly with state and local laws. Those can be vastly different between states. The state lines may now be arbitrary and historical, but the hundred/s of years of laws, legal rulings, and forms of government are not.
As long as we intend to be a union of states, the state lines are very important. For some states like GA, FL, TX the urban/rural divide arguably seems to be equal enough neither side has a huge advantage in state politics. For others like NY and CA, it's a far bigger issue. I sometimes wonder if perhaps New York City and Long Island wouldn't be better off joining the state of New Jersey. Leaving the remaining state of New York better balanced between rural/urban.
I'm curious because the way I heard the story it went something like, "they needed the House to get the big states to agree to the Constitution, and they needed the Senate to get the small states to agree". That also has the effect you're talking about, but I never heard that it was deliberate. I would be interested in why they set it up that way.
"In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic.
Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger."
That's pretty clearly only your opinion and not an obvious fact. Urban centres tend to vote for more progressive policies in the US, so all you're saying is that would be too progressive for your liking.
Besides, what this imbalance really does is allow national groups to game the system. By focusing lobbying/campaigning efforts in smaller states, you can gain influence in government more efficiently than by trying to influence the high population regions. Which distorts the importance of those small states even more...
Some states are ripe for "redistricting".
I think this redrawing of states would end that dynamic decisively, which maybe is what urban people want.
Example: Milk production is heavily subsidized in NY, obviously a lot of money being given to rural businesses. Most of the farmers don't want the subsidies, but if they refuse the 'free' money their product prices would rise 2-3x and instantly be driven out of the market. A few politicians find it very beneficial to keep those subsidies in place.
Don't complain about people accepting offers they can't refuse.