State Representation, Pure Democracy, or… Maybe Both?

You are witnessing a struggle for the future of the Senate. Not control of the Senate. What the Senate is and even whether it continues to exist. If that sounds epic, it truly is! And it matters to you. On one side are people who want states represented in the Senate. On the other side are people who want a nation governed through pure democracy. The victor determines how laws are made in the United States, which means they determine which laws get passed.

The Senate may look like an old sloth of a legislative body, and, actually, it is, but people have competing visions for how laws are made in the United States, and the Senate is in their focus. How did the Senate, of all things in government, become central to this contest? Well, first, a little history.

A Little History

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Constitution of the United States:
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Declaration of Independence,
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The 13 colonies won their independence from England by fighting as one. At the end of the war, the colonies could have gone their separate ways as independent nations. But no colony could defend itself alone against the far more powerful European nations, the superpowers of the day. European nations controlled all the land south, west, and north of the colonies, as well as the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The former colonies formed the Articles of Confederation in an effort to stand together. But the national government proved to be weak and ineffective, so representatives of the states came together to discuss a replacement. From that convention came the Constitution.

The states needed a common government to provide for their mutual defense, but great distrust existed between the states. People identified with their state more than with their nation. Small, rural states feared being dominated by the larger, richer, more populous states in the House of Representatives. States in 1789 really were like nations, with different religions, economies, and even languages. Even seven decades before the Civil War, states were deeply divided over slavery. So the framers formed the Senate, providing equal representation to each state and offering a deliberative response to any wacky ideas passed in the heat of the moment by the House.

When ratified in 1789, the U.S. Constitution provided representation to the states in the form of two “ambassadors” in the Senate. State legislatures chose their state’s senators. Senators represented the interests of their home states, like ambassadors in the United Nations today represent their home nations.

A little more than a century after ratifying the Constitution, the American people ratified the 17th amendment to the Constitution, giving you the Senate you know today, with senators popularly elected by the people of each state, like the House of Representatives but with a bigger district.

And Today...

And today, another century later, we find ourselves again discussing amending the Constitution to restructure the Senate. You are being offered a choice among at least five options.

Popular election of two senators from each state (current)
Elect 100 senators from large districts of equal population not limited by state boundaries
Give 100 senators proportional votes in the Senate based on state population
Eliminate the Senate
Repeal the 17th amendment, so senators represent states

What’s so wrong with the Senate we have today? Depends on whom you ask. The current structure of the Senate satisfies neither those people who prefer state representation nor those people seeking pure democracy.

As one reformation group ramps up its efforts to remake the Senate, the countering reformation group will rise up to oppose those efforts. The American people will, eventually, need to choose one or the other. Although, as discussed later, the Representation Amendment does offer a good compromise between the two factions.

Senators Don't Represent States

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The Invention of
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Senators do not represent their home states. Senators represent voters in a district that happens to be defined by the boundaries of their home states. On the surface, the distinction appears minor. But to whom your senator owes his or her allegiance makes a huge difference. You vote for the two senators who represent your district, not your state. Your senator owes you, not your state, for that seat.

On the other hand, your state legislators spend their days negotiating trivial details on hundreds of bills proposed each year, giving them extraordinary insight into the competing interests of the people, industries, and government agencies within their state. Your state legislators would choose a senator who would help them advance their agenda within your state government.

See the difference? A senator chosen by the state legislature becomes an extension of the state legislature at the federal level, more akin to an ambassador. A senator chosen by the voters becomes a politician seeking favor with voters before the next election. (Not that the people elected by state legislatures are not politicians, but the relationships and agendas are different.)

In the list above, one option is to leave the Senate as it is. You know already what that looks like. The states have no representation and the representation of voters is distributed unevenly, so it seems everybody is unhappy. The next three choices move Congress more toward pure democracy. The final item listed above returns the Senate to its original purpose, as a forum for negotiations among states and with the American people.

100 Senate Districts

The American people could make the Senate a national version of the House of Representatives, with 100 districts of equal population. For this to work, the 100 Senate districts must cross state boundaries. The appeal of this proposal is that every American is equally represented in the Senate.

When the American people ratified the 17th amendment, to elect senators by popular vote, they introduced an inequality unpopular with those seeking pure democracy. Two senators from California represent almost forty million people, but two senators from Wyoming represent only about six hundred thousand people. Remember, your senator represents a district, not a state, according to the 17th amendment. The California senatorial district contains 66 times more people than the Wyoming senatorial district. Wyoming residents get a more personal relationship with their senators than do Californians.

This proposal keeps the Senate, keeps the 6 year terms, and keeps the 100 seat limit. Making the Senate districts so they each contain the same number of people equalizes representation in the Senate while retaining the popular vote.

However, the proposal to create 100 Senate districts creates its own problems. If you think redistricting in a state every decade is a political fistfight, wait until that redistricting applies nation wide. Will redistricting of the Senate seats be done by the Senate itself, or does the House of Representatives have a say?

Here is another issue to resolve. If the American population is 320,000,000 people, then each of 100 Senate districts holds about 3.2 million people. The population of Hawaii is about 1.44 million and the population of Alaska is only 735,000. So, one Senate district will include Hawaii, Alaska, and some city in California to group 3.2 million people in one district? Do the people in that district have enough in common to be represented in the Senate as a single unit?

The third question to come to mind is this: Do you have pure democracy with two chambers of Congress blocking the majority vote of the other? The logic of making the Senate more House-like seems flawed if the goal is pure democracy.

Proportional Votes By Population

Another proposal that retains 100 senators in the Senate, with 6 year terms, is to give each senator votes in proportion to the number of people in the state. Using the numbers provided above, each California senator would get 66 votes on a piece of legislation and each Wyoming senator would get one vote. Why would Wyoming even bother sending a senator to Washington, DC, if that senator’s one vote never changed the result of any Senate vote?

So, the fatal flaw to the proportional votes framework is the likelihood no state that loses influence in the Senate will vote to ratify the constitutional amendment. Of course, states ratified the 17th amendment, revoking their federal representation, because the people wished it, so never say never.

Proportional votes certainly democratize the Senate. But is this “enough democracy”? The Senate and the House must still agree on legislation. Senators serving six-year terms will still squash legislation passed by the majority of members of the House. Proportional voting in the Senate certainly moves closer to the stated goal of the people who advocate pure democracy, but falls short. The possibility still exists of a scenario like what we are experiencing today, where a single senator in the majority party blocks legislation passed in the House.

Eliminate the Senate

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For supporters of pure democracy, elimination of the Senate should be the ultimate goal. A single voting body, the House of Representatives, will decide all legislation, and the Senate will not exist to block or amend it. “No one would drop a single tear,” stated Stephen Colbert after suggesting eliminating the Senate to guest Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Proponents of eliminating the Senate would likely be in favor of expanding the number of seats in the House. The exact number of people to assign to each district would be a point of contention. With House seats still counted by state, the possibility remains some smaller states will have fewer people in a district than are in districts in larger states. Will the House of Representatives be overhauled when the Senate is eliminated? How close to perfect is good enough?

Switching the government of the United States to a democracy is a foundational change. Proponents focus on the equality of every person being represented exactly on par with every other person. That is a commendable objective. But the American people need to consider the potential downsides. Pure democracy goes by other names, including “mob rule”. You’ve surely heard the old adage, “Democracy is three wolves and two sheep voting on the lunch menu.” Without the Senate, the majority in the House has nothing to block the passage of laws oppressing the minority, more so if the majority can override a presidential veto. And, ultimately, the majority has the ability to set the rules by which the majority is selected.

The House of Representatives controls all aspects of the federal government.

The Senate today approves Supreme Court justices and other federal judges, and ratifies treaties. The Senate votes to convict (remove) a president impeached (indicted) by the House. Those duties fall to the House if the people eliminate the Senate. If members of the House of Representatives want to remove a president, they could vote to impeach one week and the next week vote to remove.

Pure democracy appeals to many people, but stop to consider the ramifications of a legislative body without checks and balances. Congress will overwhelm the executive and judicial branches if it has the means.

Repeal the 17th Amendment

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Pure democracy is not the goal of people who seek to repeal the 17th amendment. People want to repeal the 17th amendment to the Constitution because they see states as deserving a say in writing the federal legislation that directly affects them. They see the need for representation of individuals as already being handled just fine by the House and see direct representation in the Senate as redundant.

Each state is different because the people living in each state have different priorities and beliefs. One state offers high taxes and many services, and another state offers low taxes and few services. One state bans firearms and another state has few restrictions on the possession of firearms. A state bordering another nation or having ocean access has different concerns than a state surrounded by other American states. The American people have 50 states from which to choose, so they can live in the one that best matches their personal beliefs. But every state has one thing in common, and that is that none of them have any input into the language written into federal laws.

States must wait for legislation to become federal law to counter the law by filing a lawsuit. Only in the courts do states get a say on federal legislation. Once the people repeal the 17th amendment, states can negotiate what goes into legislation before it becomes law, and as a result states should need to take the federal government to court to reverse a harmful law less often.

As mentioned earlier, senators do not represent their states. That does not mean senators will intentionally harm their states. But how many times can a senator write unpopular legislation critically needed by the state before that senator risks losing in the next election? Sometimes, the people want things that harms their own state. If the senator represented the interests of the state, the representative of your state and the representative of you can come to a mutually agreeable settlement. In the Congress today, the representative of you in the Senate and the representative of you in the House come to an agreement that benefits only you.

When the American people ratified the 17th amendment, the United States was a militarily weak, generally isolationist, and poor. The states as they existed in 1913 are not the states that exist today. Those states are rich, powerful, and internationally connected. The Senate may not have mattered to the states a century ago, but it certainly matters now.

The Representation Amendment is the Middle Ground

The Representation Amendment is the middle ground between the people who want pure democracy and the people who want states represented in the Senate. In a way, both sides get what they want, within limits. The Representation Amendment maintains the checks and balances within Congress, preventing both the people and the states from dominating the other.

Following ratification of the amendment, the state legislatures select ambassadors to send to the Representation Senate. The 50 almost-nations (states) gain a well-deserved voice on the international stage, but now they have the means to affect trade. States participate in crafting the rules for international trade outside the borders of the United States and environmental regulations, transportation infrastructure spending, and an infinite number of small factors affecting their residents within the borders of the United States. But states cannot raise people’s taxes in the Senate, as that right stays with the House.

The Representation House expands to include enough seats that you will be represented in just about every possible way. House members will be of all ethnicities, religions, economic levels, education levels, professions, and whatever other distinctions differentiate people. The House will be too diverse for any one faction to control the majority, and for each piece of legislation, the representatives must truly talk and compromise to pass bills.

In the Representation House, the majority truly does write the legislation. The real majority, not the political parties or a small group of leaders. Using the system of voting prescribed in the book, The Representation Amendment (Because We Don’t Have Enough People In Congress And The People Already There Are The Wrong Ones), the House evolves legislation acceptable to a majority. The House offers the type of pure democracy many people today want.

The Senate and the House will be at odds. That is not a bad thing. The members of each chamber of Congress have different agendas. But the legislation that comes out of the Representation Congress, with the compromise between thousands of representatives of the people and the hundred ambassadors of the states, gives you the legislation you need without you having to worry about any extreme faction taking over.

The Representation Amendment balances the interests of the people and the states, provides the means for states to interact with nations as equals, and democratizes the House to where the people get what the majority wants. When you hear your friends talking about how to improve the Senate, remember to mention the Representation Amendment as the middle ground.

Here are a few examples of proposals to restructure or eliminate the Senate.