I recently caught part of an NPR interview with Sanford Levinson, law professor at the University of Texas and author of Our Undemocratic Constitution, which – as the title suggests – discusses the ways in which the design of our government hinders true democracy.
Being a dyed-in-the-wool politics & government geek, I find this subject quite compelling. As such, I thought I'd undertake a moderately ambitious project, and dedicate the next few days' precious, precious diary entries to it, and, more specifically, how the situation might be improved upon.
Obviously, any discussion of such massive reform is pretty far-fetched – the steps needed to enact fundamental Constitutional change are virtually insurmountable. But it makes for interesting discussion, IMHO. And, hell, you have to start somewhere, right?
So, the Senate. I started with this because I feel that it is the most fundamentally undemocratic branch of elected government (note the word "elected" – I'm coming for that ass, Supreme Court).
The first, and most egregious, problem is that every state has two senators. That means that Wyoming, with about 500 thousand people, has the same level of representation as California, with 36 million. Essentially, that means that voters in Wyoming have 72 times more clout than those in California when it comes to matters senatorial. That hardly seems fair. Now, someone might accurately point out that the Founding Fathers intended for each state to have equal representation in the Senate. To that someone I would reply, "Don't be such a frigging know-it-all." I would then go on to suggest that the Founding Fathers also "intended" for only white, landowning males to vote and that each black person was, in fact, only 3/5 of a person. Even the really tall dudes. So maybe the intentions of a group of wealthy, aristocratic landowners whose ethnic diversity ran the gamut from English to Scottish shouldn't necessarily be taken as gospel 200-plus years after the fact.
The fact is that the Senate, and the country's expectations of it, have changed. As designed, the Senate was intended to represent the states as distinct entities – not the people who lived in those states. That's why senators used to be appointed by state legislatures. But that ended with the 17th Amendment in 1913, which made the Senate directly elected. At that moment, senators stopped representing the state and started representing the people. This is as it should be. The problem is that they don't represent the people equally. People who live in states with lower populations are more represented than those from states where people actually want to live... er, I mean, from states with larger populations.
So, how can it be fixed? I have a couple of suggestions.
- Make senatorial representation proportional. There are approximately 300 million Americans, and approximately 100 senators (I don't count that asshole Mike Enzi as a whole senator – he knows why). That means that each senator should represent about 3 million people. This could be achieved two ways:
- States with large populations could get one senator per 3 million residents. So, for example, Iowa would have 1, Massachusetts 2, Florida 6, etc., etc., all the way up to California with 12. The problem with this system is that not all states have enough residents to "qualify," and of the remainder not all have populations neatly divisible by 3 million. The obvious solution (after reluctantly ruling out forced population shifts to comply with my anal-retentive need for mathematical order) is that some states would share a senator. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, for example, have a combined population of roughly 3 million, so might share a senator. The wrinkle here would be ensuring that "multi-state" senators' constituencies were contiguous. Fortunately, most of the sparsely-populated states are in the same geographic regions (and, coincidentally, many of them are rectangular), making the task somewhat simpler. Another problem is that states which did not get their "own" senator might pout. Crybabies. So that brings me to...
- Senatorial districts could be drawn irrespective of state boundaries. This may be the better choice, if only to shut Vermont and North Dakota up. By this method, senators would be elected from über-districts of 3 million residents that may or may not be contained entirely within the borders of one state, depending on what makes most demographic and geographic sense. This way an urban area like Kansas City, which falls in two states, would comprise one senator's district. The obvious problem here would be gerrymandering – but I'll get to that in a later diary, so just hold your horses.
- Senators could be elected "at-large." This is pretty simple – in a nationwide election the 100 people with the most votes become senators. This could help promote representation of ethnic and political groups that might otherwise be ignored. Certainly there'd be more minority senators under such a system. I'm no mathematician, but shouldn't a nation with a 13% black population have 13 black senators out of 100? Instead there's only one. And his mother was white. So really there's only half a black senator. Is that what they call "fuzzy math?" The downside I see to this idea is that geographic areas and/or large groups might be over-represented. Also there are probably enough Trekkies out there to elect a "Star Trek" senator. And that would just be gay.
- The two senators from each state would be the top two vote-getters. This would be the simplest system to enact because it's the least significant change. Each state would continue to have two senators, but they would be elected at the same time, and the two positions would be filled by the two candidates with the most votes. And each party could only put up one guy (or gal) to avoid "stacking the deck" – I'm talking to you, Pan-Sexual Peace Party. While this would not eliminate the problem of smaller states being over-represented, at least it would allow voters who would otherwise be unrepresented to have a voice in government.
So those are my ideas. I'll leave it to the reader (assuming there are any) to decide whether they're half-assed or comprised of a fully formed ass in its entirety. I will say this, though: I was not nearly as drunk as it may seem when I came up with them.
(And please, I hope no one takes offense at my language or crude humor. I only meant to be facetious, not to offend anyone. Except Mike Enzi. That prick.)