Imagine that you have a nation that is one thousand square miles in size. Ninety percent of the nation is taken up by a city of ten million people. The other ten percent is empty desert and wilderness, populated only by a grizzled hermit named Jim. Tasked with inventing a representative political system for this country, you say, “Well, looks like there are two areas here, so I’ll draw a line between the city and Jim’s land, and I’ll give each an equal number of representatives. When the ten million city people want something they will have to negotiate with Jim, who has a power equal to all of them combined.”
Stupid, right? Yes. This is the United States Senate. This is quite literally the design of the U.S. Senate...
22 Comments
orclev@lemmy.world · 45 pts · 12h
Ultimately it's because the US is a bad compromise. The original intent was for the US to be a loose confederation of somewhat independent countries similar to how the EU is currently structured, however the civil war showed that some of those States couldn't be trusted enough to not treat their citizens like shit so the federal government had to be strengthened. This reduced it from a loose confederation into a mostly centralized government but with a bunch of territories that function more as testing grounds for stuff that isn't quite ready to be promoted to the federal level.
The Senate is an awkward leftover of that transition. Under the original design it somewhat made sense, you could even argue that the House was the bit that didn't quite fit under that model because every State was supposed to be equal to every other one. The thought was if you didn't like the State you were in you could just move to another one. Slavery of course disproved that theory.
Under the post civil war design of the US the Senate is now the piece that doesn't quite fit because the people are supposed to be the ones in charge now with the States being an awkward hold over from the earlier confederation concept.
So yes, ultimately it probably makes sense to eliminate the Senate and strengthen the House. It's either that or you fundamentally restructure the powers of the US government again. The States have demonstrated that they can not be trusted with civil rights so at a minimum you would have to make civil rights the exclusive domain of the House leaving things like economic policies and trade to the Senate. What we have now is just awkward and doesn't really work for anyone, the civil war was never really handled properly and it's about time we cleaned up from that properly instead of taking a bunch of half measures and kicking the can down the road.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com · 23 pts · 12h
i gotta admit, the last decade sure feels like the confederacy has won a long, simmering war.
2hundredpancakes@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 11h
You think we handled that badly, check out operation paperclip for even more bad news.
gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 8h
Well, at least the war on terror and the war on drugs both went well, right?
Uranus_Hz@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 9h
Additionally, the House was weakened with the Apportionment act of 1911. Instead of growing with the population as it was originally designed, it fixed the number of congresspeople at 435. This skews the electoral college such that the less densely populated states have more power over presidential elections.
Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz · 11 pts · 11h
And most of those same states still treat their citizens like shit.
dhork@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 12h
Ironically, though, Senate seats are more often in play than House seats, because their borders are set, and they can't be gerrymandered to advantage one side or the other. Yes, the population of a state can lean one way or the other, but thatis much harder to game.
I would be in favor of keeping the Senate, but balancing out the seats a bit, and removing the requirement that 2 seats go to every state. Large states might get 3 or 4 Senators. Small states may have to share one. You may have some "redistricting" where which state is assigned to which seat changes, but there would no longer be such a discrepancy between Senators and how many people they represent.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com · 4 pts · 12h
could you do something weird like take the state with the least population, and set that as a floor for every other state? alaska gets 1, california gets round(population/alaska population) ?
DomeGuy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 9h
This is generally called the "Wyoming Rule", because since 1990 it's been the least populous state.
https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/was-nevada-the-least-populous-state-until-1960/
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 10h
I'm almost positive CGP Grey did something along these lines, with spreadsheets and everything, but I cannot for the life of me find the video.
SinningStromgald@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 10h
There was a multipart series on voting.
Is it one of those?
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 9h
Possibly, though it would've been one of the newer ones.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1h
I always kinda liked the idea of having the most populous city of every State elect a senator, directly counterbalancing the rural overrepresentation.
halcyoncmdr@piefed.social · 1 pts · 1h
Simply removing the permanent apportionment from 1911 that artificially limits the House would dramatically reduce the effect of the gerrymandering. The House should be nearly 3x as large as it is. The odds of the House being within one or two seats at any given point would basically be zero.
TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 12h
As it is, the Senate makes representation in Congress less proportional, which I think makes it less democratic.
I have wondered, though, if the Senate could serve a different purpose. I wonder if the Senate could become a body of experts, like medical experts, scientists, and those with extensive knowledge, education and experience in an important field of study. That way, there would be a kind of technocratic body that could push back against or otherwise moderate misinformed policy that might come from voters and their representatives. Just a thought I've had.
daannii@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 11h
There already were federal departments for such things.
Cdc. Fda, education department. And a ton more. Trump has just been dismantling them.
TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 11h
That's true. Those departments have served a similar purpose to what I described.
There's really no reason, then, not to abolish the Senate, in my opinion.
dhork@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10h
There can be a reason to leave two different legislative bodies both agree on legislation before it advances, with different rules, as it ensures more deliberation before new laws are sent to the President for signature.
And as I mentioned in another post, there can be value in having an entire state vote for a Senate seat, because then that seat is not so easy to gerrymander.
Perhaps we need a different system than "2 Senators for each state, regardless of size". But then in order to get that, the current States need to mostly agree, and there are enough small states which will lose too much power.
SinningStromgald@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 10h
Or we could fix gerrymandering.
spacegoat@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 6h
At this point I’m for completely and permanently disenfranchising conservatives at any cost.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 9h
When it comes down to it, you can't make one set of rules for a population this size that everyone will agree with. So there is no correct answer, only the answer that gets the side that shares your opinion a majority.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 9h
I wonder how many people would be okay with banning agriculture. Its a terrible idea that would end in so much bloodshed, but like... There have to be people out there that would think it's what they would like