Abolish The Senate
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Bandit3 the Worker
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« Reply #50 on: December 02, 2014, 07:59:50 PM »

I think the Senate should be apportioned by population.

I also think the House should be districted without regard to state boundaries. Many districts would cross state lines, but that's just tough.

You mean like the House of representatives?

Wasn't having a House and a Senate kinda the whole point of "The Grand Compromise"

In the 49 states with a bicameral legislature, both houses are apportioned by population (or are supposed to be).
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #51 on: December 02, 2014, 08:09:05 PM »
« Edited: December 02, 2014, 08:11:17 PM by Senator North Carolina Yankee »

It was a big mistake for the court to rule as it did with Reynolds back in the 1960's. The Senate is not designed to be OMOV and applying a different standard to the State Senate's on the basis of the 14th Amendment only serves to create a contradiction between Article 1 and the 14th amendment.

Illinois would be much better if it had a State Senate by county. As it is now the South and Central parts of the state's can litterally get crapped on and that will increasingly be the case now that Southern ILL is just as Republican as Central ILL and thus Democrats have no incentive to appeal to that region. Everett Dirksen warned about this back then regarding Illinois.
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DrScholl
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« Reply #52 on: December 02, 2014, 08:35:27 PM »

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.
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justfollowingtheelections
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« Reply #53 on: December 02, 2014, 08:41:05 PM »

Can anyone imagine Cook county or Los Angeles county having the same number of state senators as some county with a population of less than 1,000?  Well that's the U.S. Senate.
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greenforest32
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« Reply #54 on: December 02, 2014, 08:55:01 PM »

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

Can anyone imagine Cook county or Los Angeles county having the same number of state senators as some county with a population of less than 1,000?  Well that's the U.S. Senate.

I love the American Democracy™ that ensures "states rights" to disenfranchise the population. Truly a great, sacred compromise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims#Background

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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #55 on: December 02, 2014, 09:17:38 PM »

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

But the implication is that a Senate is suppose to be proportionate to population at all and the US Senate is most certainly not. It makes no sense that the court should create a double standard regarding the structure of a Senate within the Constitution, particularly when Article 1 endorses a Senate that is not proportional for the very reason of creating balance of interests. The Court completely abandoned that in 1962 and has thus created one problem in the solving of another.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #56 on: December 02, 2014, 09:40:10 PM »

I think the Senate should be apportioned by population.

I also think the House should be districted without regard to state boundaries. Many districts would cross state lines, but that's just tough.

You mean like the House of representatives?

Wasn't having a House and a Senate kinda the whole point of "The Grand Compromise"

The same 'Grand Compromise' that ultimately led to a Civil War and a part of the country trying to secede? Clearly something worth keeping hold of...
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Beet
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« Reply #57 on: December 02, 2014, 09:56:06 PM »

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

But the implication is that a Senate is suppose to be proportionate to population at all and the US Senate is most certainly not. It makes no sense that the court should create a double standard regarding the structure of a Senate within the Constitution, particularly when Article 1 endorses a Senate that is not proportional for the very reason of creating balance of interests. The Court completely abandoned that in 1962 and has thus created one problem in the solving of another.

Proportional representation is balanced... That's the point. Disproportionate representation is what is unbalanced. I mean, it depends on what you're trying to balance. States or people? The former was created by the latter, to serve the latter. Even Hobbes, the great champion of the State, put his argument in terms of what it could do for Man. Even the worst dictatorships set up a state only to serve some person(s), if only the dictator himself. In the United States, the states were created largely arbitrarily; they do not reflect any long standing religions, languages, ethnicities, or cultures; their only rational basis is the fact that they exist, as accidents of history. Human beings, on the other hand, are the basic building block of society and each have the same intrinsic moral worth merely by being human. It's no contest.

The Senate is not going to be abolished because the Constitution has made it impossible (and because it is politically out of the question), but let's not pretend there is any good reason for arbitrary representation "by state."
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Bandit3 the Worker
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« Reply #58 on: December 02, 2014, 10:03:41 PM »

I'm tired of the cities getting crapped upon, quite frankly. The cities are unfairly underrepresented as it is.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #59 on: December 02, 2014, 10:25:52 PM »

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

But the implication is that a Senate is suppose to be proportionate to population at all and the US Senate is most certainly not. It makes no sense that the court should create a double standard regarding the structure of a Senate within the Constitution, particularly when Article 1 endorses a Senate that is not proportional for the very reason of creating balance of interests. The Court completely abandoned that in 1962 and has thus created one problem in the solving of another.

Proportional representation is balanced... That's the point. Disproportionate representation is what is unbalanced. I mean, it depends on what you're trying to balance. States or people? The former was created by the latter, to serve the latter. Even Hobbes, the great champion of the State, put his argument in terms of what it could do for Man. Even the worst dictatorships set up a state only to serve some person(s), if only the dictator himself. In the United States, the states were created largely arbitrarily; they do not reflect any long standing religions, languages, ethnicities, or cultures; their only rational basis is the fact that they exist, as accidents of history. Human beings, on the other hand, are the basic building block of society and each have the same intrinsic moral worth merely by being human. It's no contest.

The Senate is not going to be abolished because the Constitution has made it impossible (and because it is politically out of the question), but let's not pretend there is any good reason for arbitrary representation "by state."

 You balance interests of different groups of people because a dictatorship of the simple 51% majority nationwide could also lead to division as interests specific to a particular region are ignored. Like agricultural issues in small states or hurricane preparedness along the Alantic coast.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #60 on: December 02, 2014, 10:29:36 PM »

By representing every state equally, regardless of population, the Senate actually is representative of a pseudo-nation with different demographic characteristics than the actual country. The pseudo-nation represented by the Senate is more white (non-Hispanic), less black and less Hispanic than the nation at large. This is likely not surprising. I haven't dug that far into the rest, but it would be interesting to see what other trends there are in the actual population versus the population implied by the Senate.

And yet which chamber has actually passed a comprehensive bill on immigration?

The Senate was also the first chamber to pass the thirteenth amendment way back in the Civil War. Because of the Senate's nature, it is more willing to compromise because its purpose is as I said, designed to encourage states to join together to ensure each other's interests are protected and that instills a greater sense of comity then the majoritarian House has historically functioned as. The House is also far more partisan and far more political because it is up every two years instead of every six years.
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Türkisblau
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« Reply #61 on: December 02, 2014, 10:39:08 PM »

By representing every state equally, regardless of population, the Senate actually is representative of a pseudo-nation with different demographic characteristics than the actual country. The pseudo-nation represented by the Senate is more white (non-Hispanic), less black and less Hispanic than the nation at large. This is likely not surprising. I haven't dug that far into the rest, but it would be interesting to see what other trends there are in the actual population versus the population implied by the Senate.

And yet which chamber has actually passed a comprehensive bill on immigration?

The Senate was also the first chamber to pass the thirteenth amendment way back in the Civil War. Because of the Senate's nature, it is more willing to compromise because its purpose is as I said, designed to encourage states to join together to ensure each other's interests are protected and that instills a greater sense of comity then the majoritarian House has historically functioned as. The House is also far more partisan and far more political because it is up every two years instead of every six years.

Why does nobody understand this? This is basic Government 101 here.
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jfern
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« Reply #62 on: December 02, 2014, 10:41:39 PM »

By representing every state equally, regardless of population, the Senate actually is representative of a pseudo-nation with different demographic characteristics than the actual country. The pseudo-nation represented by the Senate is more white (non-Hispanic), less black and less Hispanic than the nation at large. This is likely not surprising. I haven't dug that far into the rest, but it would be interesting to see what other trends there are in the actual population versus the population implied by the Senate.

And yet which chamber has actually passed a comprehensive bill on immigration?

The Senate was also the first chamber to pass the thirteenth amendment way back in the Civil War. Because of the Senate's nature, it is more willing to compromise because its purpose is as I said, designed to encourage states to join together to ensure each other's interests are protected and that instills a greater sense of comity then the majoritarian House has historically functioned as. The House is also far more partisan and far more political because it is up every two years instead of every six years.

Why does nobody understand this? This is basic Government 101 here.

Senate Republicans are much more right-wing than ever before.

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Beet
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« Reply #63 on: December 02, 2014, 10:47:20 PM »

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

But the implication is that a Senate is suppose to be proportionate to population at all and the US Senate is most certainly not. It makes no sense that the court should create a double standard regarding the structure of a Senate within the Constitution, particularly when Article 1 endorses a Senate that is not proportional for the very reason of creating balance of interests. The Court completely abandoned that in 1962 and has thus created one problem in the solving of another.

Proportional representation is balanced... That's the point. Disproportionate representation is what is unbalanced. I mean, it depends on what you're trying to balance. States or people? The former was created by the latter, to serve the latter. Even Hobbes, the great champion of the State, put his argument in terms of what it could do for Man. Even the worst dictatorships set up a state only to serve some person(s), if only the dictator himself. In the United States, the states were created largely arbitrarily; they do not reflect any long standing religions, languages, ethnicities, or cultures; their only rational basis is the fact that they exist, as accidents of history. Human beings, on the other hand, are the basic building block of society and each have the same intrinsic moral worth merely by being human. It's no contest.

The Senate is not going to be abolished because the Constitution has made it impossible (and because it is politically out of the question), but let's not pretend there is any good reason for arbitrary representation "by state."

 You balance interests of different groups of people because a dictatorship of the simple 51% majority nationwide could also lead to division as interests specific to a particular region are ignored. Like agricultural issues in small states or hurricane preparedness along the Alantic coast.

But on what basis are we to define different "groups of people"? Why agricultural interests over say, physicians' interests or manufacturers' interests? And if that is the aim, why define it geographically? Why not set up a special protection for farmers? There are more farmers in upstate New York and Texas than in Idaho. Society is full of interests specific to small groups of people. Disabled people are less than 1% of the population. How are their interests to be represented? Should we carve out a Senate seat for them? Splitting things according to geography doesn't solve this problem. The geographic argument only makes sense if you think there is sone thing intrinsic in the land as currently apportioned among the states itself, that merits representation. Clearly there is not, nor is there any for state senate and house districts, which we redraw all the time.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #64 on: December 02, 2014, 11:15:20 PM »

I think the Senate should be apportioned by population.

I also think the House should be districted without regard to state boundaries. Many districts would cross state lines, but that's just tough.

You mean like the House of representatives?

Wasn't having a House and a Senate kinda the whole point of "The Grand Compromise"

The same 'Grand Compromise' that ultimately led to a Civil War and a part of the country trying to secede? Clearly something worth keeping hold of...

No that was a different compromise, the 3/5th compromise.  There is a fairly simple solution if large states feel like they don't have enough Senators, split up.  While technically the Congress has to approve such a split, they have yet to reject one that has been presented to them.
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Negusa Nagast 🚀
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« Reply #65 on: December 02, 2014, 11:37:39 PM »

By representing every state equally, regardless of population, the Senate actually is representative of a pseudo-nation with different demographic characteristics than the actual country. The pseudo-nation represented by the Senate is more white (non-Hispanic), less black and less Hispanic than the nation at large. This is likely not surprising. I haven't dug that far into the rest, but it would be interesting to see what other trends there are in the actual population versus the population implied by the Senate.

And yet which chamber has actually passed a comprehensive bill on immigration?

The Senate was also the first chamber to pass the thirteenth amendment way back in the Civil War. Because of the Senate's nature, it is more willing to compromise because its purpose is as I said, designed to encourage states to join together to ensure each other's interests are protected and that instills a greater sense of comity then the majoritarian House has historically functioned as. The House is also far more partisan and far more political because it is up every two years instead of every six years.

Why does nobody understand this? This is basic Government 101 here.

Senate Republicans are much more right-wing than ever before.

IMAGE REMOVED FOR QUOTATION SANITY PURPOSES

A large part of this is due to the polarization of the electorate. Less Democrats in the South/Big Sky and less Republicans in New England and the Pacific Coast. Remove the moderates and the ideology will tilt to the extreme.
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pbrower2a
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« Reply #66 on: December 03, 2014, 08:20:13 AM »

By representing every state equally, regardless of population, the Senate actually is representative of a pseudo-nation with different demographic characteristics than the actual country. The pseudo-nation represented by the Senate is more white (non-Hispanic), less black and less Hispanic than the nation at large. This is likely not surprising. I haven't dug that far into the rest, but it would be interesting to see what other trends there are in the actual population versus the population implied by the Senate.

And yet which chamber has actually passed a comprehensive bill on immigration?

The Senate was also the first chamber to pass the thirteenth amendment way back in the Civil War. Because of the Senate's nature, it is more willing to compromise because its purpose is as I said, designed to encourage states to join together to ensure each other's interests are protected and that instills a greater sense of comity then the majoritarian House has historically functioned as. The House is also far more partisan and far more political because it is up every two years instead of every six years.

Why does nobody understand this? This is basic Government 101 here.

Senate Republicans are much more right-wing than ever before.



They will probably be even more right-wing in 2017. Some are borderline fascists.
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« Reply #67 on: December 03, 2014, 09:16:34 AM »

By representing every state equally, regardless of population, the Senate actually is representative of a pseudo-nation with different demographic characteristics than the actual country. The pseudo-nation represented by the Senate is more white (non-Hispanic), less black and less Hispanic than the nation at large. This is likely not surprising. I haven't dug that far into the rest, but it would be interesting to see what other trends there are in the actual population versus the population implied by the Senate.

And yet which chamber has actually passed a comprehensive bill on immigration?

The Senate was also the first chamber to pass the thirteenth amendment way back in the Civil War. Because of the Senate's nature, it is more willing to compromise because its purpose is as I said, designed to encourage states to join together to ensure each other's interests are protected and that instills a greater sense of comity then the majoritarian House has historically functioned as. The House is also far more partisan and far more political because it is up every two years instead of every six years.

Yeah, you're absolutely right about what chamber has passed what. I'm less interested in looking at and extrapolating things about the current membership of the Senate, as I am about looking at how the pseudo-population implied by the Senate twists the electorate around. There are few enough Senators that it's really easy to get seemingly anomalous or idiosyncratic results in reality.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #68 on: December 03, 2014, 09:35:45 AM »

Rather than abolish the Senate, I'd like to limit its power.  When it comes to ordinary legislation, unless it directly affects State governments, it should as most be able to offer comments and suggestions and have a limited period (say twenty session days) in which to do so.  Thus budget bills and most other "must pass" legislation would only need to pass the House unless they included provisions involving the States.  Not only would this help eliminate a stumbling block, it would provide an incentive to reform programs that are currently structured as Federal-State joint programs where both sides can take the credit for the good they do while blaming the other for any problems associated with the problem.  Those programs make it difficult for there to be clear lines of responsibility.  A lot of the problems with the ACA are precisely because key provisions were enacted as joint responsibilities with no good fallback if States chose to not dance to the tune of the Federal piper.
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SteveRogers
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« Reply #69 on: December 03, 2014, 01:55:11 PM »


Or better yet, get rid of districts and use proportional representation.

Technically even under a PR system you'd probably still need to divide most states up into a few districts, but they'd be much larger ones with much less potential for gerrymandering. You don't really want to make California into one 55-member district. You'd want to break it up into ~5 districts. 

Irrelevant. Even if it were deemed Constitutional (see the equal representation clause of Article V), we would need 38 states to go for it, which would mean convincing small states to give up some of their power for a higher principle. This is a very high hurdle.

anyway, Beet is correct here.  we won't be able to abolish the Senate legally under the current constitution.  it would take a social upheaval and/or a new constitutional convention, or the devolution of the US into multiple countries.


Debatable. "No state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the senate." If the senate is abolished, each state gets 0 senators instead of 2 senators, so they all still have equal suffrage in the Senate Tongue
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emailking
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« Reply #70 on: December 03, 2014, 02:41:16 PM »

Depends if you define none as a state of existence or not. I would argue a state does not have equal suffrage if it does not have suffrage, certainly at least under the intent of the clause. As the article points out, the Senate was constructed in this manner so that large states could not trample of smaller states.

Regardless, I was glad to see the article actually pointed this out as a serious stumbling block, as opposed to other proposals I've read. The we have Sabato, who says we can just amend Article V (to change the balance of representation, not even just to abolish). I find that silly.
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ElectionsGuy
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« Reply #71 on: December 03, 2014, 03:25:12 PM »

I don't really have a position on this issue, but I think its silly that a California Senator represents 66 times more people than a Wyoming Senator. Some reform needs to happen, but of course it won't.
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Joe Republic
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« Reply #72 on: December 03, 2014, 03:50:53 PM »

It was a big mistake for the court to rule as it did with Reynolds back in the 1960's. The Senate is not designed to be OMOV and applying a different standard to the State Senate's on the basis of the 14th Amendment only serves to create a contradiction between Article 1 and the 14th amendment.

Illinois would be much better if it had a State Senate by county. As it is now the South and Central parts of the state's can litterally get crapped on and that will increasingly be the case now that Southern ILL is just as Republican as Central ILL and thus Democrats have no incentive to appeal to that region. Everett Dirksen warned about this back then regarding Illinois.

So... permanent Republican supermajorities in about 40 states' Senates?  Cute fantasy!

I'm sure Delaware's state Senate would be tons of fun with its three members.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #73 on: December 03, 2014, 04:24:47 PM »

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

But the implication is that a Senate is suppose to be proportionate to population at all and the US Senate is most certainly not. It makes no sense that the court should create a double standard regarding the structure of a Senate within the Constitution, particularly when Article 1 endorses a Senate that is not proportional for the very reason of creating balance of interests. The Court completely abandoned that in 1962 and has thus created one problem in the solving of another.

Proportional representation is balanced... That's the point. Disproportionate representation is what is unbalanced. I mean, it depends on what you're trying to balance. States or people? The former was created by the latter, to serve the latter. Even Hobbes, the great champion of the State, put his argument in terms of what it could do for Man. Even the worst dictatorships set up a state only to serve some person(s), if only the dictator himself. In the United States, the states were created largely arbitrarily; they do not reflect any long standing religions, languages, ethnicities, or cultures; their only rational basis is the fact that they exist, as accidents of history. Human beings, on the other hand, are the basic building block of society and each have the same intrinsic moral worth merely by being human. It's no contest.

The Senate is not going to be abolished because the Constitution has made it impossible (and because it is politically out of the question), but let's not pretend there is any good reason for arbitrary representation "by state."

 You balance interests of different groups of people because a dictatorship of the simple 51% majority nationwide could also lead to division as interests specific to a particular region are ignored. Like agricultural issues in small states or hurricane preparedness along the Alantic coast.

But on what basis are we to define different "groups of people"? Why agricultural interests over say, physicians' interests or manufacturers' interests? And if that is the aim, why define it geographically? Why not set up a special protection for farmers? There are more farmers in upstate New York and Texas than in Idaho. Society is full of interests specific to small groups of people. Disabled people are less than 1% of the population. How are their interests to be represented? Should we carve out a Senate seat for them? Splitting things according to geography doesn't solve this problem. The geographic argument only makes sense if you think there is sone thing intrinsic in the land as currently apportioned among the states itself, that merits representation. Clearly there is not, nor is there any for state senate and house districts, which we redraw all the time.

It is not that you have to ensure every last group is represented, but that one group cannot dominate and control the others without having to join together with some other group. Thus is the source for the greater willing on the part of the Senate to compromise.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #74 on: December 03, 2014, 04:31:38 PM »

It was a big mistake for the court to rule as it did with Reynolds back in the 1960's. The Senate is not designed to be OMOV and applying a different standard to the State Senate's on the basis of the 14th Amendment only serves to create a contradiction between Article 1 and the 14th amendment.

Illinois would be much better if it had a State Senate by county. As it is now the South and Central parts of the state's can litterally get crapped on and that will increasingly be the case now that Southern ILL is just as Republican as Central ILL and thus Democrats have no incentive to appeal to that region. Everett Dirksen warned about this back then regarding Illinois.

So... permanent Republican supermajorities in about 40 states' Senates?  Cute fantasy!
Where did I ever mention such should be extended to the lower house in those state's? Roll Eyes I said the exact opposite just a few posts ago. The big states would have a split legislature forcing compromise and better policy outcomes and ending partisan gerrymandering.

I'm sure Delaware's state Senate would be tons of fun with its three members.

Where did I say Delware should be by county? I said Illinois, historically divided between two regions one of which has the power to dominate the other and cause its interests to be ignore would be better served with a legislature that balances the two regions (Chicago dominated House and Downstate dominated Senate).

Overall the decision should be left to those state's how best to structure their legislature provided at least one chamber is proportional to population.
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