America's upper house, say political scientists Frances E. Lee of Case Western Reserve University and Bruce I. Oppenheimer of Vanderbilt, is "the most malapportioned legislature in the world."
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In 1790... it was possible to assemble a Senate majority out of members representing 30 percent of the national population; today, it is possible to do the same with senators representing just 17 percent. Under current rules, 41 senators representing as little as 11 percent of the U.S. total can effectively veto any bill, while 34 senators representing as little as 7.5 percent can block any constitutional amendment. To quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the only senator who apparently realizes that anything is amiss: "Already we have seven states with two senators and one representative. The Senate is beginning to look like the pre-reform British House of Commons."
This is indefensible by any standard. The participants in the 1787 Constitutional Convention agreed to equal state representation in the Senate because it was the only way to win over states like Delaware and New Jersey that feared being bulldozed by transappalachian giants like Virginia and Pennsylvania. Yet while the United States has seen every sort of geographical and ideological conflict over the ensuing centuries, it has never seen one in which differences in state population have played any significant role. After all, what conceivable reason could New York and Texas have for ganging up on, say, Vermont and the Dakotas?
It is possible to assemble a Senate majority out of members representing just 17% of the population.
As a California resident, my vote to elect a senator is worth 1/60th of that of a citizen from Wyoming. That's 1.6%.
I get it -- yes, there's a reason why things are so. The founding fathers had their reasons. But that's not a good enough reason when it comes to government. Not when the reasons cease to make sense. Government exists for the good of the people, not to preserve its own creation story.
Minority states rights? I'm with the American Prospect on this one. Is NY and TX gonna start ganging up against Vermont? Why? What's the real issue?
And I ask again. Is it time for reform?