All of us viscerally know that the senate filibuster rules are undemocratic. It is undemocratic because in the extreme case senators representing about 11% of the population can prevent a bill from becoming a law by not voting for cloture. That is senators representing 31 million of the 281 million. These would be the 40 senators representing the 20 least populated states. One way to make it more democratic is to require enough senators who together represent at least 40% of the population in order to prevent a bill from cloture. Let us call this the Super Majority Filibuster Option. Follow me below the fold for analysis.
Small state senators like Joe Lieberman and Kent Conrad have disproportionate power. If 11% of the population can prevent a bill from becoming a law, how could that not be the tyranny of the minority. How far away are we from monarchy at this point.
Take a look at the population breakdown of all the states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
To get 40 senators, you need both senators from the 20 least populated states to filibuster a bill. According to the above table the population of the 20 least populated states is about 31 million people.
I am not unsympathetic to a system that requires more than a simple majority. If we say that representation of 11% of the population is too small, then the question is what is a fair percentage. Make it fair by requiring enough senators who together represent at least 40% of the population in order to prevent a bill from cloture. The 40 senator rule unfortunately gives the illusion that the representation of 40% of the population is preventing cloture on a bill. In other words, it leaves the impression that about 110 million people may be represented in the filibuster while in reality that may be far from the truth.
Another way to look at this is that sometimes even if you are representing more than 50% of the people, you may not be able to filibuster a bill because all the senators opposed to the bill are from states with large populations. 14 senators from the seven states of CA, TX, NY, FL, IL, PA, OH represent more than 50% of the population. They are not even close to being able to filibuster anything.
As things stand the 60 senators who caucus with the Democratic party represent 194 million people or more than 69% of the population. Say we say that we need only senators that represent above 60% of the country's population. Then we will have senators representing up to 28 million who may chose to not vote bills for cloture and still not prevent votes from going to the full senate for vote. With this amount of cushion, we can lose Senators Lieberman, Conrad, Nelson, Bayh, Landreiu, Blanche Lincoln and still get cloture.
From the pure optics point of view, this will not look as bad as the reconciliation process requiring only 50% of the senators. Personally, I am not for a simple majority to rule in the senate. At the same time, I am also not for a minority of 31% of the representation preventing cloture as is the case today.
For a treatise on the filibuster rules and the constitutional option aka nuclear option, please read http://www.law.harvard.edu/...
Unfortunately, I do not have the percentage of population that prevented cloture for a bill on average for all the filibusters that were ever done. This may help seal the argument.