President Trump doubled down on his comments suggesting Iran could hit Los Angeles and San Diego during a rally in Texas on Wednesday, adding that the U.S. would not let such a scenario play out. &…
The founders did not have a situation in which we have nearly 40 million people in one state, and 588K in another, and I don’t know if they anticipated such a situation, either. I don’t know that the Senate should be abolished, but it could use adjusting.
Maybe you start adding Senators for states above a certain multiple over the lowest state’s population. If you are 20x more population than Wyoming (least population), you get a Senator. For every 5x times above 20x, you get one more.
California has 67 times more people in it than Wyoming. Something like this would give them 1 for the 20x + 9 for the rest (47 / 5), which would bring them to 12 Senators. That’d still be only 6x more Senators, but at least it would not be so wildly out of sync with how many people we are talking about.
That, or we combine states like Wyoming with several others that hardly have anyone in them.
The founders did not have a situation in which we have nearly 40 million people in one state, and 588K in another
They did. When Kentucky was admitted to the Union the population was around 73k. The official population of Virginia was 747,610. Virginia had 10x the population of Kentucky when Kentucky was admitted.
Admitted in 1792. Five years after the Constitution. Eight years later in 1800, they were at 220K and 807K. Seems like it didn’t maintain 10x for very long. Assuming the census before being admitted was even accurate, but maybe there really was some kind of land rush in those 10 years.
Still a long way off from one state having 67 times another, and maintaining that kind of wild disparity for decade upon decade. I’m supposing that if Virginia-Kentucky grew to that level - or even stayed at the level of 10x - in the lifetimes of the founders, they might have commented on it, though.
At what point does that become untenable in a supposed democracy? Maybe anything under 10x is something that can be tolerated. 67 just seems cartoonish, and I don’t see that ratio changing any time soon.
If you point at 10 people standing in a square somewhere, and say they get 2 people to represent them, while this other set of 670 people standing in a different square also get 2, most people would find that rather baffling.
The founders did not have a situation in which we have nearly 40 million people in one state, and 588K in another, and I don’t know if they anticipated such a situation, either. I don’t know that the Senate should be abolished, but it could use adjusting.
Maybe you start adding Senators for states above a certain multiple over the lowest state’s population. If you are 20x more population than Wyoming (least population), you get a Senator. For every 5x times above 20x, you get one more.
California has 67 times more people in it than Wyoming. Something like this would give them 1 for the 20x + 9 for the rest (47 / 5), which would bring them to 12 Senators. That’d still be only 6x more Senators, but at least it would not be so wildly out of sync with how many people we are talking about.
That, or we combine states like Wyoming with several others that hardly have anyone in them.
They did. When Kentucky was admitted to the Union the population was around 73k. The official population of Virginia was 747,610. Virginia had 10x the population of Kentucky when Kentucky was admitted.
Admitted in 1792. Five years after the Constitution. Eight years later in 1800, they were at 220K and 807K. Seems like it didn’t maintain 10x for very long. Assuming the census before being admitted was even accurate, but maybe there really was some kind of land rush in those 10 years.
Still a long way off from one state having 67 times another, and maintaining that kind of wild disparity for decade upon decade. I’m supposing that if Virginia-Kentucky grew to that level - or even stayed at the level of 10x - in the lifetimes of the founders, they might have commented on it, though.
At what point does that become untenable in a supposed democracy? Maybe anything under 10x is something that can be tolerated. 67 just seems cartoonish, and I don’t see that ratio changing any time soon.
If you point at 10 people standing in a square somewhere, and say they get 2 people to represent them, while this other set of 670 people standing in a different square also get 2, most people would find that rather baffling.