This is pure speculation. I started by wondering if there might be a constitutional amendment to revise the allocation of Senate seats that would have a chance of passing and also would help to somewhat rectify the gerrymander inherent in the current constitutional system. Okay, I know that the chances of constitutional reform of the senate are close to zero, but it’s still amusing to think about such things, just like it’s amusing to think about beam-me-up transporters or faster-than-light travel. If you don’t like speculative fiction, don’t bother reading this diary. If you do, stick with me.
The current system of two senators per state is, arguably, the original gerrymander. It’s also a provision that makes the Senate the place where ideas go to die. Since 51% of the population lives in the ten most populous states, the Senate is profoundly undemocratic. Senate rules, especially super-majority rules, exacerbate the undemocratic nature of the institution.
Reform is a challenge, though. Any amendment must be approved by three quarters of the states, and those 40 less-populous states are unlikely to give up the obvious advantage they have in the senate. My idea, therefore, is to supplement the current system by creating regional groupings of states, each of which elect regional senators. The states would get to keep their two-senators-per-state, but each region gets two new senators.
The US already has distinctive regional cultures—socially, economically, linguistically, and politically. see, for example, this article. These cultures don’t follow state boundaries, although they do follow emigration patterns. This speculation is based partly on the idea of these disparate internal “nations.” I note in passing that genuine internal nations, the various Native American Nations, are not included in the above-cited web page.
So, suppose we clustered states into eight distinct regions, each electing two senators. For purely arbitrary rules, the regions should be contiguous, not divide states, and be roughly similar economically and socially.
Adding sixteen senators would help somewhat with the undemocratic nature of the Senate while still respecting regional differences. Adding more regions inevitably does a better job of both increasing the democratic nature of the senate and respecting regional differences. With eight regions, California nearly qualifies all by itself as a region at 12.11% of the US population and thus would get four, not two senators. This by itself is a significant improvement.
Just as an experiment, I tried to create eight regions that met the above criteria. I got the following:
Northeast (13.4% of 2007 US population): Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, New York Connecticut, New Jersey
MId-Atlantic (12.6%): Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina
Southeast (12.6%): Floriday, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama
East Central (12.1%): Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee
West Central (12.4%): Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas
Gulf States (12%): Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas
Southwest (13%): California, Nevada
West (11.8%): New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii.
Most have reasonable regional similarities, except for the catch-all, low-population mountain and western states. I only spent about 30 minutes on this exercise, so doubtless there would be better maps. More regions would work better, too, except that more regions would require California to be divided between two regions since by itself it has nearly one eighth of the US population.
Again, this is just speculation with zero chance of actually happening. If you enjoy speculation, have at it. I’ll close wiih a map of my Super-Senate regions.