7 ms·
On the other hand, you can't gerrymander Senate seats. (it's not representative now, but it's not changing either)
by powera 11y ago
On the other hand, you can't gerrymander Senate seats. (it's not representative now, but it's not changing either)
- specialist 11y agoI'm totally on board with starting over with new state boundaries.
- afarrell 11y agoI'm actually really intensely curious how one would design a voting system for people to choose what subentities to belong to. How would you populate the ballot? Would you run a clustering algorithm on the votes? What if New Jersey and Michigan just decide they want to be as they are, but excluding Camden and Detroit respectively? Or would you do something whimsical like draw lines based on football/baseball teams and cleave states like CT in half?
- vpeters25 11y agoUnlike the House, which represents the people, the Senate represents the states. That's why each state has 2 senators regardless of its size and population: I think the idea was to prevent oppression by large states.
- tadfisher 11y agoSo splitline-partition the country.
- nickff 11y agoThe intent of the Senate was to preserve the independence and influence of the states. If you splitline-partition the country, you are eliminating the means of achieving this goal, and it would be simpler to abolish the Senate. It can be argued that the current system of directly electing Senators has already made the institution unrepresentative of the interests of the state governments, but your proposal would further alienate Senators from their home states.
- WildUtah 11y agoThere is no constitutional provision that would ever allow abolishing the Senate. The Constitution of the USA prohibits any amendment that could change the disproportionality of the Senate.
- schoen 11y agoTechnically it says that "no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate" so the Senate could presumably be abolished by constitutional amendment if all states agreed. (I wonder about replacing the Senate with another legislative house and giving the existing Senate largely ceremonial responsibilities without formally abolishing it -- would that count as depriving the states of equal suffrage in the Senate?)
- pc86 11y agoPresumably any amendment that would abolish or sufficiently alter the Senate would simply remove that article as well. The phrase "the Constitution prohibits this amendment" doesn't make any sense because an amendment to the Constitution cannot by definition be unconstitutional.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoPerhaps that was meant to say, it would make the Constitution internally contradict itself?
- schoen 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrenched_clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrenched_clause
- nickff 11y agoAn amendment can alter the text of any portion(s) of the constitution. While I agree that abolishing the Senate would be a radical change, I do not know of any restrictions which would bar it.[1] Even if this were not possible, a constitutional convention could be held to make the change. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Five_of_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Five_of_the_United_Sta...
- WildUtah 11y agoThe Senate representing the states was abolished a century ago when the Seventeenth Amendment was adopted. Today senators are chosen by popular election the same as congressmen, they just have wildly disproportionate electorates with some elected by half a million and some by tens of millions.
- WildUtah 11y agoNorth and South Dakota are two states instead of one so that Republicans could have an extra two senators. Hawai'i and Alaska were admitted to the Union together so that neither party would gain an advantage in the Senate from the addition. So yes, you can gerrymander Senate seats. It's just harder and less reliable than House seats.
- rmc 11y agoI wonder is this one reason some in the US Establishment are opposed to Peuto Rico being a state? Since it would probably be 2 Democrats?
- Bud 11y agoThere is no question about it. Same with the District of Columbia and various other places that should arguably already be states. They'd be likely to provide Democratic Senators, so there is a gigantic roadblock to keep this from happening.
- philwelch 11y agoLikewise, the promise of 2 Democratic senators is the main reason that Democrats are pushing for DC statehood rather than the more logical outcome, which would be retrocession of the city of Washington to Maryland.
- pc86 11y agoIt's more difficult to make an argument against Puerto Rican statehood, but DC is expressly not a state, and should either remain a federal district with no voting representation or be part of Maryland (as stated elsewhere).
- pc86 11y agoIf you're willing to change the definition of the word gerrymander, sure.