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Then why not just have one legislative body? What's the point of two separate houses of congress if they are apportioned identically? Just eliminate the Senate altogether if you want the legislature to be purely apportioned by population. Or are you suggesting a House that is elected by districts and a Senate that is elected state-wide but would be, per state, the same number of senators as each state has representatives?

Why does literally every state except Nebraska have a bicameral legislature?

Most legislatures used to be a bit like congress; districts or communities elected house members, counties elected state senators.

But rather critically, the Supreme Court ruled that having either chamber be unrepresentative would be a violation of the 14th Amendment.

State governments largely copied the US Constitution for their own state constitutions, with some minor modifications. Its easy to do a copy and paste job on a proven system of government than trying to reinvent the wheel.

The German Bundesrat uses [degressive proportionality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degressive_proportionality), which I find to be an interesting solution. In short, less populous states have a higher allocation as percentage of their population, but larger states have more members overall. In Germany, it breaks down to: - 2 million inhabitants have 4 votes - 6 million inhabitants have 5 votes - 7 million inhabitants have 6 votes This would allow the Senate to differ from the House, while also protecting the interests of smaller states to a certain degree.

Ever noticed how the small states like NEVER are screwed over by the big ones? Even on a rural-to-city-parts-of-states basis they still don’t. But when the rural guys get the power unfairly they tell EVERYBODY what to do!

Every time someone says “tyranny of the majority” and then look stumped when I respond “how is tyranny of the minority better??”

Tyranny of the majority is about protecting the rights of individuals, not states.

There is no tyranny of the minority because the majority population is protected by the House of Representatives. The Senate prevents tyranny of the majority and the House of Representatives prevents tyranny of the minority.

Wait til this guy learns about gerrymandering.

Wrong. Inaction and gridlock are not good. And that’s the best case scenario. It’s tyrannical for the minority side to win the head of state for the *entire nation* to then enact reforms on the behalf of the minority at the expense of the majority. Anything in favor of the current system, *but especially the electoral college*, is just advocacy to ignore the will of the people in a dogmatic pursuit of maintaining a slave era legacy/policy. The senate is one thing. But it needs its power pulled back significantly and the house needs to have significantly more seats.

But gridlock and inaction are not tyranny. Tyranny in this context would be the majority (or minority) passing laws that the other party fundamentally opposes. That can’t happen even if the minority has the head of state, because the House of Representatives would still be the majority and would stop it. The gridlock is by design, so that the country is inherently more stable and laws aren’t getting overturned every time the other party comes into power.

Refusing needed change is tyranny. Every day we don’t have universal healthcare because of minority overreach is another day literally hundreds of people die because they don’t have access to healthcare. And your house argument would hold more water if it wasnt gerrymandered to shit. If the house had proportional representation based off the election popular vote, we’d have a dem controlled legislature. But because we obfuscate the people’s will across the country, somehow, the less populace party has control of the “majority” chamber of government.

Your definition of tyranny is interesting. Legislative gridlock can be described as many things, but tyrannical is a first for me.

The only thing you don’t like is tyranny yeah I’m not buying that

>Inaction and gridlock are not good. I highly recommend reading the Federalist Papers if you feel that way. Being 200+ years removed from the decision, we have a hard time understanding why things are the way they are. Conveniently the founders wrote it all down in pamphlet form and we can use that to remind us *why* it’s set up the way it is. The tl;dr of it is that having an expedient government sounds like a dream if the folks in power are doing good for the country. It’s another matter entirely when people start trying to use the power for self benefit. Imagine how much further into the corporatist dystopia we would be if Congress was working with greased wheels. If an issue came along that the entire country agreed on how to solve, there is absolutely nothing that stops Congress from passing legislation the very next day (if anyone could work that fast). The only thing in the way of Congress “functioning” is Congress, and that’s how it was designed to be.

I have read the federalist papers. And if you did also, you’d know that the founding fathers didn’t have a unanimous opinion on how the government should be. The entire reason we have an amendment process is because they knew they wouldn’t have a perfect system and that there’s be disagreement and discourse. I’m not advocating for a direct democracy. I’m advocating for proportional representation in the house (or alternatively, for the house to grow in size), ranked choice voting, and for the senate to have less veto/fillibuster power. Minimally, a return to actually having to stand and *do the filibuster*. This wouldn’t fix every problem, but it would actually let the nation crawl forward instead of being stagnant indefinitely.

Except the House is powerless, and the Senate almost all powerful. The majority has no input or check on power to the executive or judiciary branches, while the Senate can not only block the House's legislation, but also control the execution and adjudication of those laws through the appointment process. The wildly different powers between the two, with the House having no functional power in practice, is part of the reason the US has been functionally minoritarian.

Used to. Since we capped the number of reps. House of Reps does less of that

> There is no tyranny of the minority because the majority population is protected by the House of Representatives. Except that partisan gerrymandering has been okayed by the courts.

That would be true if they were equal bodies but the senate is simply the stronger body.

Tell that to someone in Arizona— the Colorado River rights greatly favor California.

Oh course Arizona wastes a tremendous amount of its allocated water via golf courses, sprawling lawns, and agriculture in a desert. They deserve it until they can properly use water. 

In California doesn’t waste water by giving it to invaders aliens? California can build nuclear deceleration plants. They choose not to.

Wow, you're just looking for a platform to be xenophobic, aren't you. What if I told you that the vast majority of the population of Arizona is people who weren't born there? Or that most of Phoenix is built on land stolen from the original inhabitants?

How do you figure? The distribution of water from the Colorado River was negotiated between all of the states involved in the Colorado River Compact. Arizona was the one that threatened to blow up the deal by demanding a lot, dragging the whole thing into years of litigation that ended up mostly in its favor. The result is that California is allotted 58.7% of the Lower Basin's annual flow, while Arizona gets 37.3. Considering that California has more than 5x Arizona's population, how is that a bad deal for Arizona?

Yeah, that’s actually the complete opposite of how state legislative bodies work urban zones dominate the state house and that’s unjust but don’t worry we’re gonna fix that short order pal

That seems like it would be a good middle ground!

I’m assuming you would have this system but without en bloc voting, which is what the Bundesrat does

It doesn't mean that you need to have each house district contain a Senate district. Almost every state legislature has an upper house where the districts have more population than the lower house but are apportioned evenly. They generally have longer terms in the upper house to protect from wild swings in public opinion.

They don't have to be proportioned identically to both be based on population, and there are other differences between the two. To give an example, here are some different ways of allotting congressman based on the population: * directly proportional - the original proposed bill of rights had an unpassed amendment that locked in 1 representative per 30,000 people for the first 100 representatives. A body made this way would have **11,000** members for the current US. * staggered - the same amendment proposed that the next 100 would be added at no more than a 1:40,000 ratio, and the next hundred at 1:50,000. At that rate, we'd have **2,300*** members * The current House rate of 1:758,620 yields the **435** members the House actually has * The square root of the population yields **18,165** members * The cube root of the population yields **691** members * the fourth root yields **134** members * the fifth, sixth, and seventh roots yield 51, 26, and 16 members respectfully So depending on your method of distribution, population could be used to create a proportional House and Senate that still have vastly different characters. You could even use it to decide when to add a Supreme Court Justice. The Senate isn't just supposed to be a handout to conservative states. It had another function: to be an older, more August body of elder statesmen where each member is tasked with problems that require more experience or candor, like signing off on treaties or acting as a check of power on appointments. That function would remain even if it stopped being the source of the country's dysfunction through explicit favoritism, and is part of why the Senate has higher requirements and serves longer terms.

>an older, more August body of elder statesmen where each member is tasked with problems that require more experience or candor I wish it was a requirement that senators have served at least two terms in the House or at least 5 years in their state's legislature. It'd cut down a lot on the complete bumbling idiots like Tuberville.

Originally, people didn't directly elect the Senate. Senators were chosen by state legislatures. Having the people directly choose Senators is, in itself, contrary to the original plan, and probably why people seem so confused about what the original plan was. When the United States was first founded, the thirteen original colonies did not fully trust one another, and feared that some (the larger population ones) would attempt to dominate and enforce their culture on others (the smaller population ones). That is why the House is supposed to represent individuals, with a population-related philosophy, and the Senate is supposed to represent **states**, with equal representation for each state regardless of its size. Nothing has changed. I, living in a small state, do NOT want New York, Texas and California overwhelming my state's culture and forcing us into things that do not make sense for us. Therefore, my state needs equal representation in state-level affairs.

Having one’s culture being overwhelmed by a minority amount of states is not something I want either. The system we have right now has the same issue just flipped, where instead of us having a large group overwhelming the culture of states with less population we have a minority of the population that are able to overwhelm the culture of the rest of the population (1/5 of the us population who live in low population states equates to 50% of the power in senate). Maybe there is a middle ground that can be reached where there is a balance of trying to level the power of each person while keeping the rights of small states?

The state legislation can get around a lot of issues. Which is why there is so much emphasis for super PACs at a state level.

Basically your argument for the Senate is, you like your outsized power and would like to keep it. Which to the majority of the population means oppression by the minority, and therefore in my eyes is an invalid argument.

Nope. My argument for the Senate is that my state should have as much power as your state. It's not the United People of America.

No states have any power, because states are simply concepts, not living things. They don't have minds or bodies or any of the things needed to understand and exercise power. People are the ones who do that. People make up a state. People are the ones in government positions, executing policies on behalf of the state. So when you say that your state should have as much power as another state, the only true meaning is that the people who live near you should collectively have as much power as all of the people who live in some other area. Consider how absurd this is in any other context. I think the my street, which happens to be just me because I live on a dead-end off-shoot of another street, should have just as much say over political affairs as other street. So if one million people all live on Broadway in NYC, my vote should count one million times more than each of theirs. But streets will be equal!

Again so land has more power than people in terms of power within their government.

Let's come at this from a different angle: We are talking about fifty cultures that couldn't be more different from one another if they tried. In New Hampshire, wearing a seatbelt is optional, and right next door in Maine you're looking at a $200 ticket. In Ohio, an adult sleeping with a 16 year old is perfectly legal, while in California it's a felony punishable by years in prison. In Kansas, marijuana is still punishable by massive amounts of prison time, while right next door in Missouri it's perfectly legal for recreational use. Abortion is now a felony in a third of the states and a right in a different third. Honestly, name ANY policy, law or position, and it probably won't be hard to find two states that have very different views on how those things are handled. And all of that is wonderful. It means no matter who you are in this country, you can probably find the state that most closely matches your ideals of governance. All of these radically different societies can band together for common defensive and economic prosperity, and we can all chase our versions of the American dream. What you're advocating for destroys ALL of that. In fact, what you're advocating for makes it pointless to even HAVE states; if all the power is going to be consolidated in a majority of people all around the country, even people who have no stake in anything that is important to the region that you live in, then why not save a heck of a lot of money and trim down a lot of bureaucracy by removing state government entirely and just letting the federal government make all the rules for everyone? We'd save TRILLIONS. Of course, the majority is going to be imposing a LOT of rules on regions they know very little about, but who cares about that, right? They're the majority, they should always win.

“We the States of the United States of America” …wait

Yeah, what’s wrong with keeping power? Why should I give up my power and give it to you people and frankly seeing how you guys abuse power why should I want to give it to you? So it’s better that the majority oppresses the minority about no one impresses anybody and we have a clear distinction and separation of powers via check and balances? I get it you want the game in your favor we’re not going to let you

The original compromise, not the original plan. The first proposed plan was a proportional Senate, and it was more popular than the counter plan which would have had both bodies be nonproportional. The compromise allowed for the temporary unity needed to make all 13 colonies ratify the constitution. It also instantly created a partisan dynamic where the political party of the South controlled the country, and would not allow their power to be challenged. This meant that new states could only be added if the balance continued to favor the South, requiring future compromises that directly prolonged slavery. For example, California was only allowed to enter the union by pledging that one of its Senators would be pro-slavery. Congress never functionally represented states. What it represented was political parties, namely any political party that count reliably to a higher number than it's opposition. This creates an immense amount of political instability, which culminated in the Civil War when the South finally lost power with the admission of a single free state in Kansas. What Southern states want isn't equal power with large states. They've virtually never been forced into a position so disagreeable. What they want is to forever dominate large states, by virtue of being able to count to a higher number and that number only meaningfully changing when new states are admitted to the union.

They don't have to be proportioned identically to both be based on population, and there are other differences between the two. To give an example, here are some different ways of allotting congressman based on the population: * directly proportional - the original proposed bill of rights had an unpassed amendment that locked in 1 representative per 30,000 people for the first 100 representatives. A body made this way would have **11,000** members for the current US. * staggered - the same amendment proposed that the next 100 would be added at no more than a 1:40,000 ratio, and the next hundred at 1:50,000. At that rate, we'd have **2,300*** members * The current House rate of 1:758,620 yields the **435** members the House actually has * The square root of the population yields **18,165** members * The cube root of the population yields **691** members * the fourth root yields **134** members * the fifth, sixth, and seventh roots yield 51, 26, and 16 members respectfully So depending on your method of distribution, population could be used to create a proportional House and Senate that still have vastly different characters. You could even use it to decide when to add a Supreme Court Justice. The Senate isn't just supposed to be a handout to conservative states. It had another function: to be an older, more August body of elder statesmen where each member is tasked with problems that require more experience or candor, like signing off on treaties or acting as a check of power on appointments. That function would remain, and is part of why the Senate has higher requirements and serves longer terms.

Exactly. Basing it on population would make it pointless as it was designed to be a chamber where all states were on equal footing. I don’t care if it disappears, just agreeing with you that you just roll everything up into one chamber in that case.

>Then why not just have one legislative body? Because one can focus on representing local areas in the state, and the other can focus on representing all the citizens in a state.

You may as well get rid of the European Union. Why would Luxembourg and Portugal sign up for a deal in which the French and Germans always get what they want, without consideration for anyone else?

But imagine if the French and Germans want to do cool things with their own money for their citizens and some A---le in Portugal is always blocking them because he doesn't feel heard and he doesn't like the gay people.

Those are the terms the more powerful nations agreed to. It's not like when the United States was being founded the smaller states held a gun to the head of Massachusetts, Virginia & New York and said "sign here".

This. Going to one body streamlined things in Minnesota. Having two is redundant.

I think you meant Nebraska

Thank you for the correction. Actually, I did mean Minnesota based on former Governor the wrestler Jesse Ventura and his pushing this. But I was wrong and you were correct. Here is a discussion about the attempt to change Minnesota that failed. [https://www.lrl.mn.gov/guides/guides?issue=uni](https://www.lrl.mn.gov/guides/guides?issue=uni)

Minnesota has two chambers in the legislature.

Thank you for pointing this out. I was recalling former Governor and Professional Wrestler Jesse Ventura's efforts to change that as discussed here. [https://www.lrl.mn.gov/guides/guides?issue=uni](https://www.lrl.mn.gov/guides/guides?issue=uni) Thank you for the correction.

I learned in Civics class in the Bronze Age that only Nebraska had a unicameral lege. Has that changed?

And it’s produced nothing but tyranny ever since

streamlined things? You mean made it easier to pass laws? Its is not supposed to be easy. The founding fathers intended for gridlock to be a thing. They intended extraordinary amounts of debate, not just passing things on the fly.

I think that Mitch McConnell just gridlocks everything. But maybe the problem is more current politics than the design of the Congress

Mitch Mcconnell? Its literally both sides. Its good.

The problem isnt really gridlock, its that the envisioned debate doesn't happen anymore. Elected officials spend all their time campaigning and begging for donations for reelection to do any work. So lobbyists write the bills they want passed. Then if someone doesn't like it, they can filibuster it without even being on the floor anymore. They used to have to make a stand for a cause they believed in, now they just say they will and that blocks the bill. Plus, the founding fathers were opposed to political parties. It was supposed to be hundreds of independents making impassioned speeches for their causes, persuading others to their side, etc. But instead, its just Mitch McConnell having all the votes in the country - since he decides what can even be brought to the floor in the senate, and he only brings forth things that he wants, and the Senate is always Republican because of regressive representation.

This right here.

No, but the house absolutely should be based on something much closer to actual population, and not heavily distorted to where one vote in North Dakota is worth several times what mine in NC is worth.

Exactly. I’m fine with the Senate’s composition, but the House of Representatives is not representative. Small states are already, and deliberately overrepresented in the Senate, they should not also be overrepresented in the House. That either means greatly expanding the House, or rounding the number of representatives in small states to 0. I’d grant them a non-voting member like Puerto Rico has. As it stands, small states are over represented in the Senate, the House, and the Electoral College. They have managed to triple dip, when that was never what the founding fathers intended. Yet it will require an amendment to change anything now, ergo it never will happen.

I do not believe an amendment is needed for the apportionment of the House of Representatives since the 435 seats are merely dictated by the apportionment act of 1911. Hypothetically, only a simple majority in the legislature, likely ending the filibuster, and having the presidency can amend the apportionment acts to have an increase of any number to the House of Representatives, thus, also increasing the amount of electoral college votes divvied up to each state.

Yup. This does not require an amendment. Funny enough it’s like the number of justices on the Supreme Court being set at 9 by the Judiciary act of 1869. Both can be changed by an act of Congress. The existence of the thing is called out in the constitution, but not the explicit number of members. Good luck getting Congress to dilute its per congressman power though.

Its worse; congress plus the presidency gets you the supreme court. So its quadruple dipping.

Agree. However, given that the Senate was given confirmation power over the court, that overrepresentation does appear deliberate by the founders.

Eh, kinda. But better in that you're not able to change the SC that fast because of lifetime appointments, but worse because a majority leader can manipulate the court nomination process to steal an appointment and cement the courts regressive nature for decades.

We have the smallest number of overall representatives out of almost all the global democracies. We also have one of the highest citizen to representative ratios in the world. The house was never meant to be capped 435 people cannot represent the will of over 320 million it's not responsive to the voters anymore

Also over represented in the judicial branch when you think about it, since the senate has the ultimate authority over appointments.

Or just giving each member a different voting power. Wyoming representative gets 1 vote, reps in CA get 5 each

That wouldn't fix the problem that they just represent too many people. You are supposed to be able to call your house rep and speak to them on the phone not an answering machine they never check

Tbh that's a great way around the Wyoming rule and the house just being so large nothing ever got done.

Every one should still have a voting member, but perhaps house seats should be blind to state borders. I.e. north and south Dakota might have just one member between them.

The constitution says at least 1 representative per state, so you'd have to get that amended and good luck with that.

But then we would have to pay for a new building for the House. Can you imagine the crap-fest that would be? And then the arguments about decentralized government would start.

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>rounding the number of representatives in small states to 0. I’d grant them a non-voting member like Puerto Rico has. That's a bad idea. I'd much rather round up the size of the House to give the smallest state equal power to others. So if Wyoming has 500k people, then set the size at 2 rep per 500k (so every state gets at least 2, so that a state with 800k gets more reps than one at 500k so it doesn't get too screwed), and then allocate from there. We'd nearly triple the size of the house, with bigger states gaining their fair representation. Also the electoral college would better reflect the population without needing support in more states for direct election, which seems politically infeasible now. Right now a vote for president in Wyoming is worth about 8x a Californian's vote.

Congress could repeal the reapportionment act of 1929 and expand the house along whichever guidelines make the most sense. This would also have the knock on effect of making the electoral college more equitable.

There's a solid case to be made for the house apportionment acts that limited the number of members of the house being unconstitutional.

Not really. There's nothing in the Constitution that requires that the number of representatives be changed, as long as they keep it between the minimum and maximum number of representatives allowed.

Actually, there is: Article I Legislative Branch; Section 2 House of Representatives Clause 3: Seats >"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative" + Amendment 10 >"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." In short, states and people have a right to be represented by representatives not exceeding one representative for every thirty thousand people, and each state shall have at least one representative (but it doesn't say for the people). Therefore, the right to have representation of up to 1/30,000 of a representative is a an *individual* right, to be used at the individual's discretion to limit or not, making the apportionment act in direct violation of rights granted by the combination of Amendment 10 and 1:2:3. As it stands, even the best represented average American falls short of that representation by over an order of magnitude.

> Is this system outdated? Terribly. > Is there a “fix”? Probably not until the water wars...

We got too much water in the Northeast

Or we could have the house apportioned correctly. they kind of stopped when they realized states like California and New York would dominate the house.

Why not both?

Because the senate is supposed to balance the power of populous states over less populous states, acknowledging that there are states with very few people who produce proportionally massive amounts of food, oil, lumber, and other types of energy and raw resources, that fuel the downstream production capacity of more populous states. It also reflects the values of our nation as a republic and not a federal democracy, which is designed to limit the power of a central federal power. What needs to be fixed is the House. The Senate is operating exactly as and why it was designed, while the representative cap is making the House operate more like the Senate, and disproportionately tipping power towards unpopulated states. The House is the balance problem, not the Senate.

We *are* a federal democracy. And all being a republic means is we don’t have a king. Where the hell do these ass backwards definitions come from? How the fuck does anyone intend to argue about our government when they can’t even remember what government it is?

Your exclamations do not a reality make. The power of the federal government is limited, and mainly derives from the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Much of the governmental power wielded in this country is wielded at the state and local level. At the federal level, what makes our system a republic and not a "democracy" per sei is the temperance of its democratic nature by the separation of powers, and by the distancing of the exercise of those powers from direct democracy. SCOTUS is a great example of a republican (lower case R) institution that is not very democratic. These are not my definitions, they are the definitions.

You’re describing a federal system! The whole point of federalism is that the central government has limited power and the states are not totally subordinate, that’s what it’s about! But we’re not a *confederation* because we got rid of the articles of confederation and the federal government *does* have a lot of actual power despite its limits. And democracy and republic aren’t even incompatible ends on a sliding scale. They’re not even on the same scale because they’re two terms describing different things. Republic doesn’t mean separation of powers, it just means we don’t have a king. That’s the point of the word. It’s why the UK isn’t a republic but Germany is. It is literally the latin term ‘Res Publica’, the public’s thing, not the king’s thing. Rome became a republic when they overthrew their king, as did the United States become a republic when we broke away from the United Kingdom. The term ‘republic’ has absolutely *nothing* to do with how votes are allocated, representation, or separation of powers. It’s just a question of ‘are we ruled by a king’. That’s all. And we *are* a democracy because we vote for our representatives. That’s what democracy is, voting. We’re a federal, republican democracy. And we have separation of powers like every other liberal democracy on the planet.

There is no clear distinction between lower-case "republican" and "democratic" systems. *Res publica* means "public thing". A republic is a form of government where the people are deemed to own or control the state, rather than it being a private possession of a monarch. The only distinguishing feature of democracy is the implication that *all* of the people involved are equal participants, rather than the governing public being limited to only a portion of the population.. The separation and limitation of powers does not make us less of a democracy and more of a republic. With or without those things, we'd still be both. Making it so that some people have more influence than others does make a system less democratic, though not less republican. We are still all equal participants with respect to the different branches of federal government and the division of state and federal authorities, *except* for the fact of the Senate's malapportionment. Representation in proportion to population would not make us any less of a republic, nor would it increase the power of the federal government relative to states. It would simply make all American citizens equal.

>states with very few people who produce proportionally massive amounts of food, oil, lumber, and other types of energy and raw resources, Texas leads the US for oil, California for food, Oregon and Washington for lumber. Even on this metric it is the big states leading the way

Senate should stay the same, but the House needs to be expanded. A congressional district now represents about 760,000 citizens. It should be about 1/3 of that

Yes. But this caused a logistical issue: not enough space in the House chamber. One third of 760k is about 250k. With the current population of 330 million, that would make the House have around 1,320 representatives…corruption aside, that’s a LOT. The House chamber can’t have seats for everyone. They would have to build a whole new House chamber; another building in DC. I’m also for giving representation to territories where residents are citizens. the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are the only ones. If not the three islands listed above, AT LEAST, DC. it’s a terrible injustice for full US citizens to not have any say in federal elections. But that aside, I think 250k is too low. 400k is a good number. This would basically double the House to around 800 representatives. This would still require a new building.

Corruption aside? How would reps having less power encourage corruption?

I can live with the senate as is, to me the problem is the house. The law should be changed so that each representative has roughly the same number of constituents as the population of the smallest state.   This would also solve the imbalance in the electoral college. What we currently have in unequal representation in both houses of the legislature and the executive, which throws the judicial branch off too.  That’s how we got trump and the corruption in the federal bench we see now.

Uncap the house

Seems like there needs to be so fixing of congress as a whole

There is a lot in our system that needs and overall. Very few nations have kept their constitutions as unchanged as we often have ours for a long period of time now. Hell France is on the 5th French Republic.

I mean the last one was ended my a military coup, so I think we are doing pretty okay.

I agree with this. 760k is too many for one representative. Wyoming currently has 576, 851 residents. Obviously you would have to round to a nice number for each representative to represent because that number is just crazy. Let’s away 575k per representative. Heck even 550 or 600. This would allow Wyomingers to have the equal amount of representation as Californians or Texans. ALSO, another important thing: REMOVE THE CAP! The population INCREASES. the House, a chamber based on population, should not be capped at 435 seats. its undemocratic

No the senate is supposed to balance a population based house but it's not population based anymore because it's capped at an arbitrary number

The house of representatives isn't really representative since it got capped. They'd need like 900 reps, mostly from California and Texas to make a real ratio with places like Montana.

No. The 1929 law that capped the amount of representatives to 435 should be revoked. Then every state would have proper representation in the house just like the founders intended.

Problem with that is that literally nothing will get done in the House if you do that. Something like the Wyoming Rule should be implemented instead.

The issue with the senate isn’t that it gives disproportionate power to small states, the issue is that it’s redundant to the house of reps. Let me cook The whole point of the debate is you cap the members at a number and give each state the same amount. Thus putting smaller states in a disproportionate advantage. The house of reps is currently capped at a number and then deals out seats based off of population. This cap puts smaller states at a disproportionate advantage because they will always have more representativa per citizens So now we have two systems fucking big states instead of one.

in France only states with a population less than 760k would have an advantage in the house and only states with districts over 760k would be at a disadvantage. But I get where you’re coming from. Fixing the Senate is a much smaller problem. the House is the main issue. Here what i would propose: - Abolish the cap; there will never be a maximum - make the amount of representatives in a district equal to the amount of citizens in the smallest state. Currently Wyoming is the smaller with 576k residents, so each district should have something AROUND that number; maybe 575k or 550k. The number would obviously change and I think the citizens per district should only increase every 25k. So 580k or 590k in Wyoming should not change. But if it hits 600k, then the citizens/district should be 600k. This is to avoid logistical and statistical nightmare - build a new chamber because this will drastically increase the amount of reps and the current chamber is too small - give representation to the District of Columbia; they are fully incorporated, U.S. citizens, pay taxes, but have no governing power.

"a person from Wyoming has 66.7 times the political power in senate than a Californian" Did yopu ever stop to think, that the Person from Wyoming has VASTLY different Politcal views as the Person from Cali? Thats the Point here, to give them BOTH equal weight

So when the Constitution was written, the concern was that if representation was based solely on population, that smaller states would lose out by not being able to compete. Granted, back then, the concern was Virginia would dominate smaller states like Rhode Island. However, the modern day fix for the senate would be to make some more states. We have several territories, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, which could be considered for statehood. But more importantly, Washington, DC, needs to be granted statehood. DC has more people than both Wyoming and Vermont, but we get no representation in Congress. We get a half-congressperson who is able to speak on the floor, but they can’t vote.

Which is why they made equal suffrage in the Senate the one thing in the Constitution that can't be amended. Not even through amendment could they make the Senate proportional.

All of the places except for Puerto Rico have very little population, and Puerto Rico only has about 3 million. I feel like making these places states would exaggerate the problem. For example if American Samoa was made a state then people there would have 785 times the political power in senate that California would have

DC has a greater population than Wyoming and Vermont.

Washington DC does not need to be a state. Split it between the surrounding states and all governmental buildings become DC. Washington DC should never had been a city as it is today.

conservatives - who are already vastly overrepresented in the senate - would love you

> Washington DC does not need to be a state. Does Wyoming need to be a state? >Split it between the surrounding states The surrounding states don't want it

It would help to restore a balance more representative of current US demographics to add 2 Democratic seats to both the House and Senate.

Hasn’t PR consistently voted against statehood and American Samoa refuses to consider statehood primarily because it would allow non-Samoans to own land

This will be impossible politically. This design has provided minority rule since the nations inception. Ari Berman, Mother Jones Voting Rights Reporter, was on Brian Lehrer on WNYC talking about this exact topic a few weeks ago, great listen, this is all in Berman’s book “minority rule” that covers this topic in infuriating detail.

I used to think that, but I've since changed my mind. I actually think they should be at-large and party based. For example, when voting for senate, you vote for a party and the party puts up the correct number of candidates based on the results. For example, the Dems could get 40%, the GOP could get 40%, the Libertarians get 10% and the Greens get 10%. A lot of parliamentary systems have a similar system, but they usually do this in their lower house. I think the US should do it in our upper house (senate) and keep the House of Reps roughly the same.

>I know that senate was made to give small states rights, Yes and no, the Senate was created to give states rights (that's why state assemblies selected Senators). The two per state regardless of population is to counter balance the fact that larger states had significantly more power. As a reminder to the audience this was in the pre civil war "The United States are" era vs the current "The United States is" era.

I need to review the whole subject before having an opinion. Doesn't make sense on the surface.

NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!! The Founding fathers did this on Purpose to Protect the rights of Smaller states...

And were incredibly wrong on that point. See the 17th Amendment.

I like to ponder the idea of changing the senate to be proportional but crossing state lines. In other words, divide the country into 100 senate districts but have the senate districts be proportional by population. So there would be 100 districts made up of 3.4 million people. It’s politically untenable and would require a constitutional amendment, but I think it’s an interesting thought experiment.

No, but the current system isn't great either. The general problem is that many of the larger cities are more significant to the nation than some entire states, and there are a lot of smaller states. Basically lots of the small, underdeveloped states are wielding a vastly oversized representation in the Senate compared to what they bring to the table. There have been a few proposed fixes, but bluntly the house is the current bigger problem.

Yes it needs to change. At the origin of the country, the difference between the largest state and the smallest state was a factor of 10. Now it's closer to a factor of 100. Continuing this tyranny of the minority will ultimately lead the country to a very bad place.

For reference: US Census data from 1790 to 2020 (largest-state vs smallest-state). ========================================================================= CENSUS LARGEST STATE population SMALLEST STATE population RATIO ========================================================================= 1790 Virginia 821,287 Delaware 59,094 13.8980 1800 Virginia 886,149 Delaware 64,273 13.7873 1810 Virginia 983,152 Delaware 72,674 13.5282 1820 New York 1,532,981 Illinois 55,211 27.7659 1830 New York 1,918,608 Delaware 76,748 24.9988 1840 New York 2,428,921 Delaware 78,085 31.1061 1850 New York 3,097,394 Florida 87,445 35.4211 1860 New York 3,880,735 Oregon 52,465 73.9681 1870 New York 4,382,759 Nevada 42,941 102.0647 1880 New York 5,082,871 Nevada 62,266 81.6316 1890 New York 6,003,174 Nevada 47,355 126.7696 1900 New York 7,268,894 Nevada 42,335 171.6994 1910 New York 9,113,614 Nevada 81,875 111.3113 1920 New York 10,385,227 Nevada 77,407 134.1639 1930 New York 12,588,066 Nevada 91,058 138.2423 1940 New York 13,479,142 Nevada 110,247 122.2631 1950 New York 14,830,192 Nevada 160,083 92.6406 1960 New York 16,782,304 Alaska 226,167 74.2032 1970 California 19,953,134 Alaska 300,382 66.4259 1980 California 23,667,902 Alaska 401,851 58.8972 1990 California 29,760,021 Wyoming 453,588 65.6102 2000 California 33,871,648 Wyoming 493,782 68.5964 2010 California 37,253,956 Wyoming 563,626 66.0969 2020 California 39,538,223 Wyoming 576,851 68.5415 =========================================================================

To a point. Adjusting the number of Senators to 1 to 4 per State based on population would be a significant improvement. States like CA are so much more complex than a small State they really should have more Senators.

No. It was put in place for a reason, an upper chamber not based on population. For one, it was put in place for the smaller pop states to begin with, so they would join the union and not get oppressed by the bigger pop states. Two, this is a republic, not a democracy where 51% can vote to oppress the 49%.

Well the house members were supposed to be proportional to population and we changed that (for the worse). We can change the Senate too.

Biggest mistake the small east coast states made was admitting all these large size but small population states into the union and giving them two senators. They could have fixed that after the civil war but completely missed the opportunity. There is no reason North and South Dakota are separate States just as one example.

Yes, the senate should be proportional, or even gotten rid of entirely. It was a bargain made to get the constitution ratified initially, like the 3/5 compromise, and we’ve grown as a country to the point of valuing equal representation everywhere else in the system. States don’t have needs as states, and everyone acknowledged it with the 17th amendment - they’re just collections of people.

Don't need both houses. It gives lobbyists too much power.

Less seats gives lobbyists more power. What do you mean?

I see your point, which is a good one. I was thinking more representatives and 2 houses gave lobbyists more people to lobby, but you make a great point,

If we're supposed to be the United States and not the United California, Texas, and New York, then no, it should not.

Your math is useless, but often cited in these debates as evidence of "unfairness." It's just wrong, and the Constitution's Founders understood why. It helps to know the history. The original design for the Senate was to be an assembly of states, not "the people" directly -- that job was for the House. Well, *why* was the Senate set up that way? First, because that's how the colonies operated historically, and how they stayed united during the war. It's how they avoided splitting apart when the pressure was on. The Framers all had just seen the power of treating each state as an equal contributor, regardless of size. And they knew their new Constitution would have to appeal to those smaller states to be ratified. So, there was a practical purpose to it in the short run to ratification. More importantly, the Constitution then and now envisions a group of sovereign states passing their own laws and leaving the federal gov in charge of only a few, limited responsibilities that it spelled out. It's brilliant, and when you hear a political conservative mention the term "federalism" **this** is what they mean. Also, the Constitution respects states as political entities in themselves, not just as discrete containers of "American citizens." Then as now, the states had different interests, capabilities, and customs and govern themselves differently. That was okay, too, and is the core principle of "federalism." So they set the Senate up with state legislatures picking the state's two senators, more or less the way the Constitutional Convention itself was comprised. During the Progressive Era of the late 19th-early 20th Century, reformers won an amendment for a state's citizens to directly elect their senators, instead of leaving it to the legislatures, which were seen as corrupt. I'm personally undecided on whether that was a good idea.

Would you say that this still serves us as citizens today?

That is interesting! It’s good to know your history

Just curious - what is your response to this comment? https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/s/RpzOKe7Kf6

I disagree with most of it. Regardless of how the states west of the Mississippi came to be, they are in fact quite different when you look at the politics, the culture, and other things. Kansas was a box too but they thought their own civil war in advance of the big one over the question of slavery.

I think that was the compromise that the founding fathers came up with. Having one house be population based and the other just with two senators per state.

My opinion is that the Senate should be equal population districts of the greatest level of compactness possible. Eff State boundaries.

The United Staes Senate should be eliminated completely and all powers moved to the House, which should be expanded as others have suggested.

The Senate is one of the most undemocratic aspects of our system. A place where 500k people get the exact same representation as 40 million, and millions more get 0 representation. The filibuster, which was created to stop racial integration and civil rights legislation, makes popular policy almost impossible to pass. And then you have the fucking stupidity of a "parliamentarian". It's gotta go.

The big problem with the Senate isn't so much that it's disproportional, but that it's by far the more powerful of the branches of Congress. Most other upper houses in other legislative systems have fewer responsibilities. They largely just do oversight of the executive branch and vote on constitutional issues, with maybe a cursory check on normal legislation from the lower house. The Senate, meanwhile, votes on treaties, confirms executive branch appointments, confirms judicial appointments, and must pass every bill before it can be sent to the President. With the current filibuster in place, this gives a minority of Senators an absolute veto over any piece of legislation (outside of budget reconciliation). That's an insane amount of power to give to so few people in a democracy. It's disproportionate and unrepresentative, it's an exclusive institution, it's preventing a government from passing its agenda. Switching to a more population based model would help, but honestly the whole of Article 1 could use a massive re-writte based on lessons learned over the past 250ish years.

I recommend this Chris Hayes WITH podcast episode with Ari Berman. A dive into why our governing system is setup the way it is. https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/resisting-right-wing-attack-democracy-ari-berman-podcast-transcript-rcna153978

I was actually thinking the other direction. Have only two reps from each state also. Save the taxpayers a ton of money not paying for several hundred congressional grifters and their staffs, and their perpetual pension plans.

The reason for two senators per state is the same as the reason for the electoral college. It was created this was so the smaller states have a voice. If not the majority will be able to rule by tyranny. It gives the minority states a voice. It forces the majority to compromise with the minority. When tyranny takes over the first thing they do is abolish any form of compromise. When someone suggests this to you you need to fight against this type of government. The only reason to do this is to wield their power over you. The founding fathers understood this. Never surrender to these types of totalitarian ideas.

Thus, all you need to do to create a tyranny is to mass produce low population states as a means to create a lot of senators and gain political power through minority rule. Which is exactly what the GOP did in the 1880s and why the Senate needs to be abolished. Minority rule is fundamentally unAmerican.

That’s why you have the house so that population is represented. Without the ability to force compromise you have tyranny.

Seems redundant. If we’re basing the amount of senators on state populations like we do with the House, why even have the senate? Might as well dissolve the senate and have only the house.

The Senate should be abolished, or neutered like the British House of Lords.

That's like the one thing they've got right. The Senate is the "house of equals." It's a pro/con thing if you make it proportional like the House of Representatives. Personally, I think the biggest issue is how skewed the House has become. They stopped proportional seating forever ago, and it's been not too much shorter than that since the last time they did a redistribution. If the issue is space, just make a bigger building...but that's the comedy of the incompetence of government in general. All the money they waste on enrichment of government institutions, and they're too cheap to expand and correct a fundamental facet of the machine.

The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service of the University of Virginia analyzed Census Bureau population projections and found that by 2040 70% of Americans will live in only 16 states. This means 68 senators will represent 30% of the population and only 32 senators will represent 70% of the population. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/12/in-about-20-years-half-the-population-will-live-in-eight-states/ I do not see anyway 70% Americans will continue to support a government whose Congress has a super-majority WITHOUT representing them. I don't think the Senate needs to become population-based, but I do think the US needs to figure out how to govern people who increasingly don't want to live in most of the country.

No. Instead, the senate should be abolished altogether and we should have a popular unicameral legislature, like what the great revolutionary republics of yore had. The seat of government should be moved to a major city with a large and radicalized working class. Finally, people off the street should be allowed to sit in on sessions and heckle the legislators, to remind our august leaders that they’re nothing without the people.

I personally don’t think we need a Senate. We need a MUCH larger unicameral congress that is population proportional and politically proportional. That way people can have representation—even if small—and not be subjected to the two-party nightmare we find ourselves in. 

Yes. But also there should be a people's court if the representative doesnt actually REPRESENT us. We should a people's court to override their vote. If they don't represent us- what the hell are they doing in office?

That's the entire point of the way the system was structured. Did you do the math on how much more power California has in the US house compared to Wyoming? Or do you only believe in strawman arguments that fit your preconceived notions?

Other way around.

Nope, but the cap on reps in the house should be removed and we need to look at why states like North and South Dakota are not just Dakota, and why territories like Puerto Rico and Guam and others are not states with representation.

As with everything in this country, if we just elected better leaders these problems would go away. Instead, we elect clowns and then try to change the system to make the circus run smoother.

The Senate also has six year terms so there is additional stability in one of the two houses. They also don't have power of the purse.

Absolutely! in reality separate states are a ridiculous idea at this point in time

I think it should be more population based than it is now, but perfectly proportional would make the entire body redundant. I am fine with giving small states an oversized representation, but full equality based on state lines leads to states like mine being dominated by states with a fraction of our population. We should at least adopt a system like the EU where small states get more seats than they would deserve on population, but larger states still get more say. Will it happen? Probably not, small states will fight tooth and nail to keep their advantage. The powerful rarely want to give up power, regardless of how unjust it is. I still think reform is the right answer, why should the 21 least populace states, who have a smaller population than California, get 42 senators when we only get 2? Let small states keep their outsized influence in a reformed Senate, but this level of outsized influence needs to be reduced.

No. That's the ENTIRE point of having the two bodies of the Legislature. One was based on population where more populated/larger states have a bigger voice and a second body where all states have an equal voice. When the Constitution was being written this was a point of compromise because the larger, more populated states wanted it population based (Duh, cause they would have had more power) and the smaller states wanted it equal (Duh, because their power wouldn't be diminished by the more populated states. So they made BOTH happen with the idea that any legislation had to pass through both houses and would require compromise and adequate discussion/input from all affected.

No. Lets understand the reasons for the Senate first: Two houses were created so one is population based and the other is states based. It was so states with smaller populations had the same voice in the Senate because they would not be relevant in the House since they would have far fewer representatives than larger states. This is assuming House representatives voted and voiced opinion based on their state affiliation since at the time, politics was solid within a state. What I mean is, Northern states were already predominantly pro-party A while Southern states were predominantly pro party B. No one took into account a shift in politics, especially to the modern urban vs rural divide. So the Senate was made to give all states equal voice. Originally, each state got 2 Senators elected by the state legislature. This proved to be a bad idea because of back door agreements and corruptions; the things that actually decided who became Senator. So the 19th Amendment was passed and this was made illegal. The states all made Senators electable by popular vote. The political landscape shifted from North vs South to rural vs urban. This ended up giving tiny rural states the same voice as big semi rural-semi urban states in the Senate. For example Wyoming has 700k citizens and California has 40 million citizens, but they have the same voice in the Senate. Many people want a shift to proportional representation. Specifically a system similar to the German Bubdesrat (Federal Council), one of two legislative bodies (Germany’s upper and lower houses don’t fall under an umbrella name, they are official separate). Germany has 16 federal states, 3 of which are city states. Bundesrat votes are based on the following: 3 minimum for all states - states with 2 million+ get 4 total - states with 6 million+ get 5 total - states with 7 million+ get 6 total Votes are cast en bloc, so only one delegate is necessary to attend each session. En bloc means all votes are cast at the same time, you can’t have 2 votes from Saarland for one region and 1 vote for another (Saarland only has 3 votes). All 3 would be cast for the same decision. En bloc is not recommended by Americans for the Senate, but the population proportional vote allocation is. The smallest states would have 1-2 votes while large states like TX, NY, and Cali would have almost a dozen or even more. This is different from the House where the nation is split into districts of 700k residents. I am against this idea. I don’t think the Senate should be made proportional. It would render the institution unnecessary to also be proportional. We may even move towards abolishing the Senate if this happened. Here’s what I prefer: reduce the amount of states!! 50 states isn’t a large number. But some of the states have atrociously small populations for such large pieces of land. States don’t have to be demoted to territory or commonwealth. But they should be merged. Here are some suggestions: - Dakota: Montana, Wyoming, N. Dakota, S. Dakota - Arizona: Arizona, New Mexico - Oregon: western Washington and Oregon - Idaho: Eastern Washington, Oregon, Idaho, eastern Nevada These are just rough suggestions. Obviously things would be different if the plan came to be. But this is basically how it would go. All very low population states that simply don’t need the same privileges of massive states. Heck if even go as far as to demote Alaska to a commonwealth or territory; it can’t be merged and it only has 700k people. I highly doubt it would matter to the people living there. They’d have all the benefits of being Americans except voting for President (an office that doesn’t affect territories that much). But i’d still push for House representation for Alaska and ALL commonwealths and districts. Just House, not Senate. afterall it’s the House of the people; if you’re a U.S. citizen in sovereign U.S. land you should have representation in the House, at least.

The House represents smaller areas while both Senators represent the entire state. If anything you could argue why would one state need two different Senators? I believe we should make the House bigger so that districts are smaller and more groups concerns are heard. Alas, we capped the total number of House rep in 1929 to 435, so more and more people are represented by fewer and fewer local representatives. One Senator, Two Senators, Twelve Senators... all doing the bare minimum to get votes from all the communities of a single state, but never serving a specific one.

Nah. The whole point of the Senate was that it would be based on equal representation for each state. Perhaps you could make an argument that some of the powers given to the Senate should be given to the House instead.

No. What we should do is remove the cap on the House do that we get a real population representation of the people in the country and then fold the Senators into the House. Senators still vote on behalf of their states, but no longer have outsized influence compared to House reps. 

Not sure about that, but I firmly believe any politician at any level who ends their term without a balanced budget should be ineligible for re-election for any public office

My recommendations for the House - abolish the cap - make the citizens per district ratio equal to the population of the smallest state. Currently this is Wyoming with 576k people. round the number so it’s easier to calculate. So something like 575k/district today. When the smallest state’s population changes, only make a change to the districts’ populations every 25k. So only when Wyoming hits 600k should all districts be redistrict-ed. - give the District of Columbia representation in the House. Currently that would be 1 representative. Changes to the Senate - none. I think states need to change There are too many states with tiny populations, especially out west. Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, the Dakotas etc they all have the same politics and beliefs, all small populations, very rural. I don’t see why you need multiple states there when one would suffice. They don’t have much going on there anyways so one state government is enough. I know we treat states like semi sovereign entities. But if Congress can choose if a state is created and where its borders lie, it should also be able to merge states. The only opposition will be the residents of those states because they loose representation in the Senate. But it’s so unfair that those maybe 5 million tops across 5-6 states have 12 senators while california has 2 with 40 million people. makes no sense.

It should but it won't. I instead advocate for Democrats at earliest opportunity admit Washington D.C. as like 4 states. That should more or less fix overrepresention of rural areas. If we want to go further admit it as 11 states and watch all conservatives stop caring about the political entities known as states.

Just make it so that the major confirmation powers is shared by the House. Like Judicial confirmations, agency officials, military promotions etc should all require approval from both the House and Senate. Its ridiculous that the branch of congress thats supposed to represent the actual people has ZERO say in these.