United States Population Map
Warning: this might be, as Paul Krugman might say, a bit wonkish.
There has been a lot of talk in recent days about minority rule in the United States. That includes a column in today’s Washington Post by Anne Applebaum where she points out:
For many years now the Senate, our senior legislative body, has been grotesquely out of line, too. The 40 million people who live in California get the same two votes in the Senate as the 740,000 people of Alaska. The 20 million people of New York state get the same two votes as the 755,000 of North Dakota. A system created in the 18th century, originally designed to protect smaller states against the larger ones, now has the opposite effect. The inhabitants of rural America have a far louder voice in Congress than the inhabitants of urban America, well out of proportion to their numbers. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the confirmation of Supreme Court justices.
There’s another stat I first came across months ago on Twitter via Norm Einstein that does an even better of driving this point home.
70% of the Senate will be elected by 30% of the population. That 30% of the population will be more white, more male, and more rural than the nation as a whole. Obviously this is not sustainable. Ever since I saw that tweet I’ve been thinking about a way to address the issue that doesn’t require a second American revolution. Here is what I’ve come up with:
The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia has 2040 population projections for each state. I used the current U.S. Senate and assigned the state “blue” status if both sitting Senators caucus with Democrats, “red” status if both caucus with Republicans, and “split” status if, you guessed it, one Senator for each party. For split states, each Senator gets credit for ½ of the population. As an example, Florida’s current population is just under 22 million. Rubio and Nelson would each get credit for 11 million.
Based on this method, I come up with 18 blue states representing 48% of total population and 19 red states representing 38%. That leaves us with 13 split states representing 14% (7% for each party).
I would then implement the following rule:
- Passing legislation (or confirmation) in the Senate will require support of Senators representing at least 60% of the total U.S. population.
Neither party would be able to pass legislation without some support from the opposing party. Democrats would control 55% and Republicans would control 45%. They would also have to get support of almost half of the “split” states. This would encourage the parties to compromise with states like Montana, West Virginia, etc. This would address concerns about small states getting bulldozed. At the same time, it wouldn’t allow a state like Alabama or North Dakota to dictate policy.
I’d also like to see the majority and minority of both Senate and House committees have co-chair privileges. To avoid an endless cycle of deadlock votes, the committees would still have to be split. Since Democrats would likely always control the higher percentage of the population, committee control might have to be rotated every two years. The co-chair privileges would ensure somebody like Chuck Grassely can’t abuse his powers as we saw during the Kavanaugh fiasco.
Let me add a quick note about fixing the House of Representatives. I’d like to continue distributing House seats based on state population. However, I’d like to get rid of districts and party-based primaries. Instead House races should all be statewide and use ranked-choice voting. I think we would still end up with representatives of a variety of regions (rural, urban, ethnic makeup, etc) because a candidate could focus on appealing to those different groups. They wouldn’t have to win the whole state. The benefit would this would eliminate partisan gerrymandering, would allow different ethnic and religious groups to be represented even if they are spread out around the state, and it wouldn’t penalize Democratic voters for living in urban areas.
If you’re not familiar with ranked-choice voting, here is a primer:
There are two final changes that would apply to both the House and Senate. Mandatory public financing of all federal campaigns (with matching incentives for small-dollar donors) and a statutory minimum of 1 voting machine for every 200 registered voters assigned to a polling location.
I have more ideas but that covers the one I feel are most important. I’ll admit that I’m not sure how much of this could be passed legislatively versus requiring a Constitutional amendment. Hopefully the former and not the latter because small states are not going to give up their power easily. Even the former might require an end of the legislative filibuster (but I’m okay with that if the system can no longer be so easily abused).
