The US Senate system is broken. Roughly half of Americans, some 169 million people, live in the nine most populous states. Together, those states get only 18 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate. The current Senate setup assigns two senators to each state regardless of the population they represent. That alone makes a mockery of representational government. It also means that to pass anything under simple majority rules, assuming support from the sitting vice president, those 18 senators would have to attract an additional 32 votes from other state senators even though they themselves represent over half the country.
On the flip side, it is possible to pass a bill out of the Senate with a coalition of members who represent a small fraction of the total population — around 18 percent — but who hold an absolute majority of the seats. And this is before we get to the filibuster, which imposes a more explicit super-majority requirement on top of this implicit one. The US Senate system is broken, at least in terms of anyone’s idea of representative government, where everyone has an equal shot at influencing legislation.
Today, the Senate is a distinctly undemocratic institution that has worked, over the past decade, to block policies favored by a large majority of Americans, and even by a solid majority of senators. While there’s no immediate hope of changing that system, a clear-eyed analysis of the chamber’s structural faults can help answer one of the key questions of American democracy: Who, or what, is this Senate system supposed to represent?
The current equal state representation – two senators per state – has never been equitable: “In 1790, Virginia, the most populous state, had roughly 13 times the population of Delaware, the least populous, with a difference of about 700,000 people.” But as the country has grown larger and more diverse, the disparities have grown greater. The population difference between the states is now so large that a resident of the least populous state, Wyoming has 68 times the representation in the Senate as does a resident of California, the largest state by population. In fact, a state actually gets less representation in the Senate chamber the more it attracts new residents. That’s absurd in any sense of democracy.
There is not just a disparity of representation; there is a disparity in who is represented as well. The most populous states — including not only California but also New York, Illinois, Florida and Texas — tend to be the most diverse states, with a large proportion of non-white residents. The smallest states by population — like Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire — tend to be the least diverse. And the structure of the Senate tends to amplify the power of residents in smaller states and weaken the power of those in larger states. When coupled with the potential for — and what is in truth the reality of — minority rule in the chamber, you have a system that gives an almost absolute veto on most federal legislation to a pretty narrow slice of white Americans.
In 1913 the United States adopted the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the direct election of senators at the ballot box rather than their selection by state legislatures. This change disrupted the logic of the Senate. Before that amendment, each senator was a kind of ambassador from his state government. After the amendment went into effect, each senator was a direct representative of the people of that state.
If each member was a kind of ambassador, then you could justify unequal voting power by pointing to the equal sovereignty of each state under the Constitution. But if each member is a direct representative, then it becomes all-the-more difficult to say that some Americans deserve more representation than others based on arbitrary state borders.
This brings us back to our question: Who, or what, is the American Senate system supposed to represent? If it is supposed to represent the states — if the states are the primary unit of American democracy — then there’s nothing about the structure of the Senate to object to.
However, that is not the case, at least in common knowledge; the people are the primary unit of American democracy. As James Wilson of Pennsylvania observed during the Philadelphia Convention, the new national government was being formed for the sake of individuals rather than “the imaginary beings called states.” And as we’ve expanded the scope of democratic participation, we have affirmed — again and again — that it is the people who deserve representation on an equal basis, not the states. The Senate system is broken and does not reflect this American basis of its democracy.
There is no realistic way, at this moment, to make the Senate more democratic except, perhaps, by reversing the 14th Amendment, which is highly unlikely. But if we can identify the Senate as one of the key sources of an unacceptable democratic deficit, then we can look for other ways to enhance democracy in the American system.
I know that, given the scale and scope of this problem, that’s a pretty pathetic strategy, but we have to start somewhere.
