In your post, Jody, you mention that, “You could elect 86 senators with a minority of the population, as the bottom 43 states have fewer people, in total, than the top seven states.”
If the always-reliable Wikipedia is to be believed, it has always been possible to elect a majority of the Senate with a minority of the population:
At the time of the Connecticut Compromise, the largest state, Virginia, had only twelve times the population of the smallest state, Delaware. Today, the largest state, California, has a population that is seventy times greater than the population of the smallest state, Wyoming. In 1790, it would take a theoretical 30% of the population to elect a majority of the Senate, today it would take 17%.
Another interesting observation is that seven states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming) currently have more Senators than Congressman. Not only do they have an outsized influence on the rest of the country by their election of Senators, they have a higher numerical representation in that deliberative body than they do in the House of Representatives.
February 25th, 2010 | 10:01 am
Well, this was the point of the senate. Was it not? It is a check against the heavily populated states, so they cannot tyrannize over the sparsely populated ones with their large number of representatives.
February 25th, 2010 | 10:15 am
And if I remember my elementary school American history right, this is as it was intended to be. First it was a way to get small states to ratify the Constitution. Why should RI give up sovereignty (held under the Articles of Confederation) to VA? Second, it reflected a distrust of direct democracy. In addition to a not-fully-democratic representation in the Senate, they also didn’t allow Senators or the President to be directly elected by the people. While Senators are now directly elected, thanks to an amendment, we still don’t directly elect the President.
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