The Alito debate got me to thinking about the representative nature of the U.S. Senate. Yes, I know about its history and how it was set up as way for states to have a voice. But in my opinion, it's fundamentally anti-democratic and inappropriate for the modern era, as we'll see on the flip.
I took census data for July 2005 (estimated) and assigned each state's population according to its Senate delegation. For example, if a state has 2,000,000 residents and two Democratic Senators, I gave a population score of 2,000,000 to the Democrats. Likewise, if that state had one Democrat and one Republican, I would assign 1,000,000 to the Democratic Party and 1,000,000 to the GOP.
Adding it all up, one finds that Democratic Senators (including Jeffords) represent a total population of 149,237,080 Americans, or 50.4% of the population. Republican Senators represent 146,622,809 Americans, or 49.6% of the population. Yet due to the number of small states with solid GOP majorities, we have a Senate with 55% Republicans and 45% Democrats.
This obviously isn't news to anyone who follows American history and politics. The Senate isn't representational in the strict democratic sense and was never intended to be. But maybe that's something that needs to be changed.
FWIW, I'd be quite happy with abolishing the Senate and keeping the House as the main legislative body (perhaps increasing the terms from two years to four, making it more deliberative and resistant to electoral "passion"). I did the same comparisons for the House as I did with the Senate (e.g., a state with 1,000,000 residents with 5 House seats, 4 GOP, and 1 Dem would have 800,000 residents assigned to the GOP column and 200,000 to the Democratic). Here are the numbers:
Republican House members represent 156,360,989 Americans, or 52.8%. Democratic House members represent 139,498,894 Americans, or 47.2%. If you do the math, these percentages are almost right on target for the current make-up of the House. I'm not happy with the GOP majority, but at least it's representative of the population in a way the Senate is not.