> 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 does

> 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.