Is That Legal?

We all learned in civics class (I hope) why the Senate was set up as it was, with the metaphor of the hot tea from the cup (the House) that cools in the saucer (the Senate.) Our civics teachers left out alot of the politics that led to that arrangement, much of it related to slavery. (Garry Wills has written a good book that addresses the history on this.) But when the decision was made to set up the Senate in this way, and intentionally give voters in small population states more power in the upper chamber than their fellow citizens in highly populated states, the difference between the most populous state state and the least populist state was just a fraction of what it has become, in both absolute and proportional terms.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau the 1790 census showed that Virginia had 747,610 people, more than any other state. Little Delaware had only 59,046 people, the least of any state. So in 1790 the people of Delaware were, in effect, 12.7 times "more represented" in the Senate than were the people of Virginia. (Senators were appointed then and the method of counting slaves was a cruel distortion, but still the framers had accepted the arrangement that all states would have two senators regardless of size. They did this for many reasons, but certainly that included a legitimate desire to "protect" less populous state, and the more dispositive political imperative to get the votes of small states to ratify the entire document.)

According to Census Bureau estimates for July 2005 the population of most populous California is 71 times that of least populous Wyoming (36,137,147 vs. 509,294)

The original "mulitplier" of 12.7 given to small states was a stretch, and certainly not "democratic" and it had the stink of slavery all over it. Now we have multiplied the multiplier almost six-fold, so half a million people in Wyoming have as much to say in the Senate as 36 million Californians, and one of their Senators can stop anything that the other 99 and their 300 million constituents might want. I like the filibuster - it prevents the Senate from doing every dumb thing that might do well in focus groups, but the original idea is distorted.

Here is what it get us:
- when agricutural interests come into conflict with other interests, ag usually wins
- public transportation will never be properly funded - what good is a subway in Wyoming?
- everyone has to pretend that Mike Enzi is a serious person
- Republicans who predominate in the smallest states, will for the foreseeable future, be able to gain a majority in the Senate without anything approaching a majority of votes cast by citizens
- in our nation of about 300 million, states containing an aggregate of about 38 million people get to pick half the Senate
- states containing about 30 million people (10% of the total) get to pick enough senators (41% of th total) to stage a successful filibuster
- a Republican-skewed Electoral College - states get two votes for every senator, one for every House member. That means that Wyoming has one electoral vote for every 169,764 people, while in California its one electoral vote for every 657,039 people. Without this distortion, even stealing Florida might not have been enough to win in 2000.

Well, that's the bad news and it can't be remedied by constitutional amendment because the fix is in - as commenter Russell has reminded me, the Article V process for amending the Constitution provides that "...no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."

So this is my long-winded way of saying: Democrats better turn out, because you need more votes to win.