So how do we reform the Senate to make it more representative?

[True Dough]

Fifty Republican senators will be able to thwart most of his legislative agenda, even though Democratic senators represent 41 million more Americans. The Supreme Court is likely to block many of his executive actions, even though a majority of those justices were appointed by Republican presidents who came to office after losing the popular vote and were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the population. And more than 50 million Americans live in states like Wisconsin, where Republicans control the legislature despite getting fewer votes and will pass another round of gerrymandered maps and new restrictions on voting to entrench minority rule for the next decade.

This isn’t about which party wins elections, but whether democracy itself survives. Some anti-democratic measures were deliberately built into a system that was designed to benefit rich white men: The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause. But these features have metastasized to a degree the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated, and in ways that threaten the very notion of representative government.

In the past decade, the GOP has dropped any pretense of trying to appeal to a majority of Americans. Instead, recognizing that the structure of America’s political institutions diminishes the influence of urban areas, young Americans, and voters of color, it caters to a conservative white minority that is drastically overrepresented in the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandered legislative districts. This strategy of white grievance reached a fever pitch when domestic terrorists emboldened by the president occupied the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. But that unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results is a mere prelude to a new era of minority rule, which not only will attempt to block the agenda of a president elected by an overwhelming majority but threatens the long-term health of American democracy. “The will of the people,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, “is the only legitimate foundation of any government.” And now that foundation is crumbling.

No one has benefited more from minority rule—and done more to ensure it—than Mitch McConnell. For six years, he presided over a Senate majority representing fewer people than the minority party, the longest such stretch in US history, until the January Georgia runoffs gave Democrats a razor-thin majority. Now he’ll do everything he can to obstruct Biden’s popular mandate. Two days after the presidential election, sources close to McConnell told Axios that he would block Biden’s Cabinet appointees if he considered them “radical progressives.” McConnell didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s victory until 42 days after the election, when the Electoral College finalized it.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/the-insurrection-was-put-down-the-gop-plan-for-minority-rule-marches-on/


This is such an overwhelming problem. We need a Stacey Abrams in every state, for starters!

[jimfields33]

1. The house represents the people

The senate represents the state.

Making the house larger should be done.

[NYC Liberal]

13. Originally. That's why Senators were elected by state legislatures.

But then the 17th Amendment was passed, so Senators don't really "represent the states" anymore.

I agree we should increase the House size though.

[Crunchy Frog]

15. What does that even mean at this point?

Can you even point to a time in living memory when someone running for Senate didn't claim that they would represent the interests of the people they were asking to vote for them?

Do they pass fundamentally different types of legislation than the House?

Is there some way in which they mainly affect geographical regions rather than people?

I honestly don't get this claim.

[qazplm135]

2. we have to win

we have to get POC and young people to come out in droves. Why is Mississippi sooo Republican when the state is almost 40 percent AA? We have to figure that out.

Why is Texas still Republican? Why aren't we reaching Hispanic voters in the state?

Why haven't we figured out how to reach Cubans in Florida?

This isn't a knock on the party. Moves have been made in GA, AZ, VA, and to some extent NC. CO is now pretty blue. NV is trending to becoming blue. But we have a lot more work to do. A lot more.

[dutch777]

9. To this exact point, I recommend the article by Stacey Abrahms in yesterday's NYT.

[StarfishSaver]

3. Vote for Democrats

[aeromanKC]

4. Add DC and PR as states.

[WHITT]

5. Well

you could make D.C. a state, then make Puerto Rico a state, the make the U.S. Virgin Islands a state. Also kill the filibuster.

[servermsh]

6. Just read a small part

I want to take issue with this part of the article:

The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause.

This is not correct. Many Framers, including James Madison (the "Father" of the Constitution) desperately wanted proportional representation in the Senate. However the small States were fearful of the large States' power, and just absolutely refused that.

The Electoral College wasn't some part of a "Grand Design". It was more compromises between opposing visions. They assumed, after Washington was eventually gone, that basically each region of the country would try to elect someone "local" that they knew. They did not foresee organized parties or faster communication across the States. It's also why they didn't seriously consider something like a national popular vote. They assumed voters would only know prominent people in their own State.

In addition, they wanted the Electoral College to come into existence and then dissipate so that the current President couldn't attempt some influence on them.

Of course one thing we can do today is make Washington D.C. a State. And see if Puerto Rico wants to do that, too.

[DFW]

14. Thank you. I was hoping someone would spot that

I can‘t believe Mother Jones would let something so ridiculous pass. As if James Madison had even imagined in his worst nightmares that there would be states like Wyoming and North Dakota. The 2-senators-per-state policy was to keep small colonies like Delaware and Rhode Island from refusing to join the new USA for fear of being trampled by big states like Virginia and New York.

Mother Jones should stick to facts instead of rewriting history.

[RicROC]

7. fold the Senate into the House of Rep.

I think it is important for an entire state to elect a representative or two. The Senate does that now. But the Senate is obsolete and unbalanced.

I suggest the Senate be folded into the House making Congress a unicameral body.
For example, a state which is alloted x # of Reps, must reserve two of those seats for their two Senators.

There will be issues to be decided to abide with Constitutional roles, which are only given to Senators.
Senators would have different term limits than the Reps.

[Steelrolled]

8. Easy peasy

Just make a major change in the constitution. The only tricky part is getting the majority of states who will lose power to agree to it.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

10. I have a multi-point plan

Step 1-combine North and South Dakota into just Dakota. We don't need two states with less than 1 million people. Hell, the two of them together will still only come in at #39 among the states in population.
Step 2-All states with a population of less than 600,000 (I'm looking at you Wyoming) people only get 1 senator. Why should a state with the same amount of people as a mid-sized county in New Jersey get 2 senators. Their extra senator gets elected at large and is awarded according to a national popular vote.
Step 3-Puerto Rico and DC are now states.
Step 4-We get 1 million people to move from each of CA, NY, PA, NJ, MA & IL to Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and Alaska immediately shifting the balance of those states to majority democratic.
Step 5-reinsitute civics education in middle school to end the epidemic of dumphuckery regarding how the US actually is supposed to work that is currently plaguing the electorate.

Those steps should insure a much different senate. Of course, these recommendations are for humerous purposes only. Don't bother commenting, "But the constitution says...." It's just a joke-sort of.

[True Dough]

11. Interesting

But what's the incentive for Step 4:

Step 4-We get 1 million people to move from each of CA, NY, PA, NJ, MA & IL to Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and Alaska immediately shifting the balance of those states to majority democratic.


Just their sense of civic duty?

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

12. Get people from the states that are the most educated to populate the states that are the least.

Good jobs and cheap real estate should abound.

[Crunchy Frog]

16. Realistically, I see the country becoming more and more undemocratic.

Eventually the country will fracture because it isn't sustainable in the long term.

I honestly don't see a scenario where we come out of this in one piece.