Prof Suggests Apportioning U.S. Senators Based on Population
“the disparities among the states are only increasing”
This is a concept that has been floating around in progressive circles for a while now. The left can’t stand the fact that less populous states like Wyoming have the same representation in the U.S. Senate as California.
Professor Eric Orts of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania writes at The Atlantic:
The Path to Give California 12 Senators, and Vermont Just One
In 1995, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared, “Sometime in the next century the United States is going to have to address the question of apportionment in the Senate.” Perhaps that time has come. Today the voting power of a citizen in Wyoming, the smallest state in terms of population, is about 67 times that of a citizen in the largest state of California, and the disparities among the states are only increasing. The situation is untenable.
Pundits, professors, and policy makers have advanced various solutions. Burt Neuborne of NYU has argued in The Wall Street Journal that the best way forward is to break up large states into smaller ones. Akhil Amar of Yale Law School has suggested a national referendum to reform the Senate. The retired congressman John Dingell asserted here in The Atlantic that the Senate should simply be abolished.
There’s a better, more elegant, constitutional way out. Let’s allocate one seat to each state automatically to preserve federalism, but apportion the rest based on population. Here’s how.
Start with the total U.S. population, then divide by 100, since that’s the size of the current, more deliberative upper chamber. Next, allocate senators to each state according to their share of the total; 2/100 equals two senators, 3/100 equals three, etc. Update the apportionment every decade according to the official census.
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Comments
Progressive motto: “If ain’t broke, fix it.”
Or: “If it ain’t broke, fix it until it IS broke.”
The situation is untenable.
I wonder what, exactly, they think “untenable” means over at The Atlantic.
Perhaps something like “unexploited opportunity for a power grab.”
Here’s an idea which is even “better, more elegant, [and] constitutional”—admit that the 20th Century was a really bad time for Amendments, and repeal more of them, just as was done with the ridiculous 18th. The 17th, 19th, 25th, and 26th were awful ideas then, and are even worse now. Undoing the 17th should make it clear to even the dimmest academic that the Senate has nothing at all to do with population, and isn’t supposed to.
Can somebody please explain to him/her/it that there is also a House Of Representatives in the US Congress?
Repeal of the 17th Amendment would be even better.
Bizarrely, Supreme Court rulings forbid state legislatures with an unapportioned Senate, enabling progressives to achieve at a state level what they can’t yet achieve at the national level. That’s one of the reasons Chicago, Seattle, and New York City have so much influence in their states.
Great idewa, Prof. Cause when Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Iowa, Oklahoma, Maine, New Hamshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maryland, West Virginia, and who knows which other states realize they are being disenfranchised from representation in the US government in favor of the mega cities, they will probably be understanding about it all. Sure. Because all we really want is for the coasts to be happy.
No, leftists, the population centers don’t get to run the whole country. Google, “Electoral College”. Nice try, though.
Given the fact that this Constitutional change would require a positive vote in the legislatures of thirty-seven states, it’s not going to happen. I assume those who suggest it are not familiar with the Constitution.
One more step in the effort to convert the United States of America into the United Election Districts of America.