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You talk as if this were an unforeseen consequence of the way our legislature is set up. It is not. Giving the people who live in sparsely populated areas an eq

You talk as if this were an unforeseen consequence of the way our legislature is set up. It is not. Giving the people who live in sparsely populated areas an equal voice with those who live in densely populated areas is the whole point of the Senate. It was designed to work this way and it is doing exactly what it was meant to do.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Ironically enough, rural areas in Alaska vote blue and its the urban areas that vote red. So in this case it’s the urban area majority imposing their will on the less dense areas.
- bunnyrooroo 7y ago
  You realize that 90% of the population essentially lives in three towns in Alaska right? Ha! Imposing their will?
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Yes, and they are white (like my Ketchikan born/raised mom), while the Aleuts who we took the land and the resources from in the first place live in small villages and towns. At any rate, it is just ironic how rural over representation is a right to be granted only when it’s red.
peteradio 7y ago
I don't think the disparity was expected and doubt the founders would conclude that sparsely populated states with very little economy should lead an entire branch. This is certainly not working.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Had to look up the stats on this. Around the time the constitution was written, about 5% of the US population lived in cities. It's over 80% today. I think the intent of having the Senate represent the states equally regardless of population was a good one, but the massive shift in demographics over the last 200 years probably merits a different approach. I don't think going strictly by population density is the best approach either, though - that's a good way to completely alienate millions of Americans. Remember that the two branches of Congress were setup like this to force urban and rural communities to work together and compromise. The problem now is that tribalism has become so rampant on both sides that compromise no longer really happens.
  - peteradio 7y ago
    What was the economy difference between founding states? I don't care about rural urban divide. I care about states that can effectively be purchased by a rich individual having same say as states with country sized economies. At the time of founding individual states were bringing something to the table.
    - mdorazio 7y ago
      We could look at state-level GDP as one measure, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as you think - see [1]. There's a significant amount of money in farming, livestock, and manufacturing, which tend to cluster in "cheap" states. I think you make a good point about concentration of wealth at the state level, though. There's probably a case to be made that rural states are more susceptible to control by a few individuals/corporations that make up large segments of the state's economic output. It's worth noting that economic inequality is usually higher in states with bigger economies, though [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_co...
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  How about representation proportional to economic activity instead of the quantity of state-ness being one or zero? With guaranteed representation of at least one seat, so the representation turns out to be slightly skewed against the powerhouses. Also note that Puerto Rico and Washington DC earn their seat by virtue of having enough economic activity, rather than by default. "Seats" is senate seats per state; "rep" is proportion of total representation; "econ" is proportion of total economic activity. I picked 150 for the total number of seats to make the rep vs. econ gap narrower, but not so much as to make the poorest 25 completely irrelevant. state seats rep econ --------------------------------- California 20 13.3% 14.5% Texas 12 8.0% 8.7% New York 11 7.3% 8.2% Florida 7 4.7% 5.1% Illinois 6 4.0% 4.2% PA OH }- 5 6.7% 7.1% NJ GA WA MA NC }- 4 18.7% 19.5% VA MI } MD CO MN TN IN }- 3 10.0% 9.2% AZ WI MI CT LA }- 2 10.7% 10.7% OR SC AL } KY OK IA UT KS } NV DC AK NE MS } PR NM HI NH WV }- 1 16.7% 12.5% ID DE ME RI ND } AK SD MO WY VT } island terr. }- 0 0.0% 0.1% --------------------------------- Total 150
  - peteradio 7y ago
    What is column 1 and 2 with the numbers?
    - fwip 7y ago
      The first number column is "seats per state". The second number column is "combined percentage of representatives" - PA and OH each have 5 representatives, so combined they have (5+5)/150 = 6.7% of the representation. The third column is, I presume, the percentage of economic activity (GDP?) totaled among those states.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Economic activity would be a bad choice to tie to representation from perverse incentives. It would encourage outright sabotaging other states to preserve power when it would be more optimal to go with national net economic output instead of "best for my region". Essentially the same issues as regulatory capture but worse. It is also why auctioning off positions of power for fundraising would be a terrible idea - it encourages the biggest vested interest to buy it up and exploit it at the cost of everyone else.
- slowmovintarget 7y ago
  The disparity was expected and that is part of the reason that the House of Representatives is based on population.
smt88 7y ago
But is the degree of inequality a foreseen consequence? 20% of citizens controlling 1/3 or 2/3 of the federal government is not a healthy republic, especially when the 20% have views that are so far from average. It's not like they're a representative 20%.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  But is the degree of inequality a foreseen consequence? No. Originally, the ratio of Senator to constituents and Representative to constituents was much closer to 1:1 than what we have now. While there isn't any easy way to fix the imbalance in the Senate (short of adding/splitting states), we can fix the House and Electoral College by simply increasing the size of the House (easy button would be to peg the size of a district to the population of the smallest state).
fwip 7y ago
Sure, but it's a bad design.
- RaptorJ 7y ago
  Well its a great design if your goal is to make sure agrarian slave-state get to keep their slaves. Less so in a country with ideologically coherent (as opposed to regional) parties that control all branches of govt.
aaron-santos 7y ago
At what point does it stop making sense? We exist on a continuum somewhere between states having equal population on one side and 1 person per state and 1 state with everyone else on the other. It feels like we're moving toward the latter. Especially since the way the senate rules are structured it only takes 20.5 low population states to block everything.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > At what point does it stop making sense? The same time the 3/5 compromise and the other parts of the original design of the Constitution designed to preserve unity by assuring slave states that the greater voting population of the free states wouldn't lead to abolition stopped making sense, about 150 years ago. But the power structure it set up is self perpetuating, so it doesn't matter that it stopped making sense; the people that benefit from it will always protect it and find a way to rationalize it.
Frondo 7y ago
Land doesn't vote. Those people should have an equal voice -- that's a democracy I can get behind whole-hog. They don't. They have an immensely outsized voice based entirely on geographical distance to one another. Proximity to your fellow citizens shouldn't lessen your voice, yet here we are. And anything designed to be that antidemocratic should be recognized as such, and those of us who do care about democracy should be fighting and organizing every day to disband it and replace it with something fair.
deleted 7y ago
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mtberatwork 7y ago
That wasn't the "whole" point of the Senate: "The other was intended to represent the states to such extent as they retained their sovereignty except for the powers expressly delegated to the national government. The Senate was thus not designed to serve the people of the United States equally." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate
toss1 7y ago
Clearly this is the result, and I've heard this argument before, yet I haven't seen any solid references that this was an explicit design choice by the founders to balance interests of sparse/rural states against dense/urban states. Can anyone point to any particular references in founders' documents or authoritative historians showing how this was designed as a specific feature and not a side-effect, e.g., of simply trying to treat states equally at a time when they may not have been as dissimilar (e.g., seems that having fewer people in the entire state of WY than in a single borough of NYC is far more imbalanced than the 1780s)?
- agarden 7y ago
  Federalist #62, section III: "The equality of representation in the Senate is another point, which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right, that among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, every district ought to have a PROPORTIONAL share in the government, and that among independent and sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils, it does not appear to be without some reason that in a compound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the principles of proportional and equal representation. But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.'' A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America. A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice. In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic. Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger. But as the larger States will always be able, by their power over the supplies, to defeat unreasonable exertions of this prerogative of the lesser States, and as the faculty and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable, it is not impossible that this part of the Constitution may be more convenient in practice than it appears to many in contemplation." https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp
mooon 7y ago
Your comments contain truth but no wisdom. "Works as originally designed" is not the same as achieving either the desired goals (either for the past or for today). But you know that. You have a history of being an intellectually dishonest little troll. So just fuck off.
rayiner 7y ago
The point of the senate has nothing to do with giving people in sparsely populated areas the same vote. At the time, there wasn’t the same dichotomy created by people living in cities. The purpose of giving every state two senators is so that the states, as distinct sovereign entities, each have the same representation in the senate. It doesn’t matter how many people live there.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  > The purpose of giving every state two senators is so that the states, as distinct sovereign entities, each have the same representation in the senate. It doesn’t matter how many people live there. This piece of information seems to be skipped by almost every high school civics class. Senators were never supposed to represent the people, they were supposed to represent the state governments. The whole purpose of Senators having longer terms than the House and being elected by each state's legislature instead of a direct election was to insulate the Senate (and by extension, Congress) from populism. Repealing the 17th amendment today would probably a bad idea for a number of reasons but the direct-election of the Senate certainly shifted a lot of power away from the state governments and to the GOP/DNC in a way that was never intended by the Founders.
- agarden 7y ago
  > It doesn't matter how many people live there. Exactly. It gives, and is meant to give, sparsely populated states an equal voice to the more populous states. The GP was talking in terms of red states versus blue states, and I was here assuming that context.
magduf 7y ago
>It was designed to work this way and it is doing exactly what it was meant to do. This reminds me of the MCAS system on the 737MAX: the software there worked perfectly, and did exactly what it was designed to do as it flew those two planes straight into the ground with over 300 passengers.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> You talk as if this were an unforeseen consequence of the way our legislature is set up. It is not. It kind of is; the real purpose was to give places that disenfranchised large number of residents who weren't untaxed Indians (that is, slave states) additional voting power in the Senate, House, and Electoral College. Creating a reward for policies so bad they encourage voting citizens to emigrate, while in line with the generally perverse design, was not really the focus.
bduerst 7y ago
Population density has nothing to do with it. At it's founding, the constitution gives the Senate two votes per state, which is it's own legal entity. There's a perceived culture war by people who live in rural america and your comment projecting it onto the purpose of the Senate is proof of that.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Ironically enough, rural areas in Alaska vote blue and its the urban areas that vote red. So in this case it’s the urban area majority imposing their will on the less dense areas.

bunnyrooroo 7y ago
You realize that 90% of the population essentially lives in three towns in Alaska right? Ha! Imposing their will?
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Yes, and they are white (like my Ketchikan born/raised mom), while the Aleuts who we took the land and the resources from in the first place live in small villages and towns. At any rate, it is just ironic how rural over representation is a right to be granted only when it’s red.

peteradio 7y ago

I don't think the disparity was expected and doubt the founders would conclude that sparsely populated states with very little economy should lead an entire branch. This is certainly not working.

mdorazio 7y ago
Had to look up the stats on this. Around the time the constitution was written, about 5% of the US population lived in cities. It's over 80% today. I think the intent of having the Senate represent the states equally regardless of population was a good one, but the massive shift in demographics over the last 200 years probably merits a different approach. I don't think going strictly by population density is the best approach either, though - that's a good way to completely alienate millions of Americans. Remember that the two branches of Congress were setup like this to force urban and rural communities to work together and compromise. The problem now is that tribalism has become so rampant on both sides that compromise no longer really happens.
- peteradio 7y ago
  What was the economy difference between founding states? I don't care about rural urban divide. I care about states that can effectively be purchased by a rich individual having same say as states with country sized economies. At the time of founding individual states were bringing something to the table.
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    We could look at state-level GDP as one measure, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as you think - see [1]. There's a significant amount of money in farming, livestock, and manufacturing, which tend to cluster in "cheap" states. I think you make a good point about concentration of wealth at the state level, though. There's probably a case to be made that rural states are more susceptible to control by a few individuals/corporations that make up large segments of the state's economic output. It's worth noting that economic inequality is usually higher in states with bigger economies, though [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_co...
logfromblammo 7y ago
How about representation proportional to economic activity instead of the quantity of state-ness being one or zero? With guaranteed representation of at least one seat, so the representation turns out to be slightly skewed against the powerhouses. Also note that Puerto Rico and Washington DC earn their seat by virtue of having enough economic activity, rather than by default. "Seats" is senate seats per state; "rep" is proportion of total representation; "econ" is proportion of total economic activity. I picked 150 for the total number of seats to make the rep vs. econ gap narrower, but not so much as to make the poorest 25 completely irrelevant. state seats rep econ --------------------------------- California 20 13.3% 14.5% Texas 12 8.0% 8.7% New York 11 7.3% 8.2% Florida 7 4.7% 5.1% Illinois 6 4.0% 4.2% PA OH }- 5 6.7% 7.1% NJ GA WA MA NC }- 4 18.7% 19.5% VA MI } MD CO MN TN IN }- 3 10.0% 9.2% AZ WI MI CT LA }- 2 10.7% 10.7% OR SC AL } KY OK IA UT KS } NV DC AK NE MS } PR NM HI NH WV }- 1 16.7% 12.5% ID DE ME RI ND } AK SD MO WY VT } island terr. }- 0 0.0% 0.1% --------------------------------- Total 150
- peteradio 7y ago
  What is column 1 and 2 with the numbers?
  - fwip 7y ago
    The first number column is "seats per state". The second number column is "combined percentage of representatives" - PA and OH each have 5 representatives, so combined they have (5+5)/150 = 6.7% of the representation. The third column is, I presume, the percentage of economic activity (GDP?) totaled among those states.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Economic activity would be a bad choice to tie to representation from perverse incentives. It would encourage outright sabotaging other states to preserve power when it would be more optimal to go with national net economic output instead of "best for my region". Essentially the same issues as regulatory capture but worse. It is also why auctioning off positions of power for fundraising would be a terrible idea - it encourages the biggest vested interest to buy it up and exploit it at the cost of everyone else.
slowmovintarget 7y ago
The disparity was expected and that is part of the reason that the House of Representatives is based on population.

smt88 7y ago

But is the degree of inequality a foreseen consequence? 20% of citizens controlling 1/3 or 2/3 of the federal government is not a healthy republic, especially when the 20% have views that are so far from average. It's not like they're a representative 20%.

alistairSH 7y ago
But is the degree of inequality a foreseen consequence? No. Originally, the ratio of Senator to constituents and Representative to constituents was much closer to 1:1 than what we have now. While there isn't any easy way to fix the imbalance in the Senate (short of adding/splitting states), we can fix the House and Electoral College by simply increasing the size of the House (easy button would be to peg the size of a district to the population of the smallest state).

fwip 7y ago

Sure, but it's a bad design.

RaptorJ 7y ago
Well its a great design if your goal is to make sure agrarian slave-state get to keep their slaves. Less so in a country with ideologically coherent (as opposed to regional) parties that control all branches of govt.

aaron-santos 7y ago

At what point does it stop making sense? We exist on a continuum somewhere between states having equal population on one side and 1 person per state and 1 state with everyone else on the other. It feels like we're moving toward the latter. Especially since the way the senate rules are structured it only takes 20.5 low population states to block everything.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> At what point does it stop making sense? The same time the 3/5 compromise and the other parts of the original design of the Constitution designed to preserve unity by assuring slave states that the greater voting population of the free states wouldn't lead to abolition stopped making sense, about 150 years ago. But the power structure it set up is self perpetuating, so it doesn't matter that it stopped making sense; the people that benefit from it will always protect it and find a way to rationalize it.

Frondo 7y ago

Land doesn't vote. Those people should have an equal voice -- that's a democracy I can get behind whole-hog. They don't. They have an immensely outsized voice based entirely on geographical distance to one another. Proximity to your fellow citizens shouldn't lessen your voice, yet here we are. And anything designed to be that antidemocratic should be recognized as such, and those of us who do care about democracy should be fighting and organizing every day to disband it and replace it with something fair.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mtberatwork 7y ago

That wasn't the "whole" point of the Senate: "The other was intended to represent the states to such extent as they retained their sovereignty except for the powers expressly delegated to the national government. The Senate was thus not designed to serve the people of the United States equally." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate

toss1 7y ago

Clearly this is the result, and I've heard this argument before, yet I haven't seen any solid references that this was an explicit design choice by the founders to balance interests of sparse/rural states against dense/urban states. Can anyone point to any particular references in founders' documents or authoritative historians showing how this was designed as a specific feature and not a side-effect, e.g., of simply trying to treat states equally at a time when they may not have been as dissimilar (e.g., seems that having fewer people in the entire state of WY than in a single borough of NYC is far more imbalanced than the 1780s)?

agarden 7y ago
Federalist #62, section III: "The equality of representation in the Senate is another point, which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right, that among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, every district ought to have a PROPORTIONAL share in the government, and that among independent and sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils, it does not appear to be without some reason that in a compound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the principles of proportional and equal representation. But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.'' A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America. A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice. In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic. Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger. But as the larger States will always be able, by their power over the supplies, to defeat unreasonable exertions of this prerogative of the lesser States, and as the faculty and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable, it is not impossible that this part of the Constitution may be more convenient in practice than it appears to many in contemplation." https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp

mooon 7y ago

Your comments contain truth but no wisdom. "Works as originally designed" is not the same as achieving either the desired goals (either for the past or for today). But you know that. You have a history of being an intellectually dishonest little troll. So just fuck off.

rayiner 7y ago

The point of the senate has nothing to do with giving people in sparsely populated areas the same vote. At the time, there wasn’t the same dichotomy created by people living in cities. The purpose of giving every state two senators is so that the states, as distinct sovereign entities, each have the same representation in the senate. It doesn’t matter how many people live there.

elliekelly 7y ago
> The purpose of giving every state two senators is so that the states, as distinct sovereign entities, each have the same representation in the senate. It doesn’t matter how many people live there. This piece of information seems to be skipped by almost every high school civics class. Senators were never supposed to represent the people, they were supposed to represent the state governments. The whole purpose of Senators having longer terms than the House and being elected by each state's legislature instead of a direct election was to insulate the Senate (and by extension, Congress) from populism. Repealing the 17th amendment today would probably a bad idea for a number of reasons but the direct-election of the Senate certainly shifted a lot of power away from the state governments and to the GOP/DNC in a way that was never intended by the Founders.
agarden 7y ago
> It doesn't matter how many people live there. Exactly. It gives, and is meant to give, sparsely populated states an equal voice to the more populous states. The GP was talking in terms of red states versus blue states, and I was here assuming that context.

magduf 7y ago

>It was designed to work this way and it is doing exactly what it was meant to do. This reminds me of the MCAS system on the 737MAX: the software there worked perfectly, and did exactly what it was designed to do as it flew those two planes straight into the ground with over 300 passengers.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> You talk as if this were an unforeseen consequence of the way our legislature is set up. It is not. It kind of is; the real purpose was to give places that disenfranchised large number of residents who weren't untaxed Indians (that is, slave states) additional voting power in the Senate, House, and Electoral College. Creating a reward for policies so bad they encourage voting citizens to emigrate, while in line with the generally perverse design, was not really the focus.

bduerst 7y ago

Population density has nothing to do with it. At it's founding, the constitution gives the Senate two votes per state, which is it's own legal entity. There's a perceived culture war by people who live in rural america and your comment projecting it onto the purpose of the Senate is proof of that.