The Atlantic, October 15, 2018: The People v. the U.S. Senate
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 50–48, with one senator absent and one abstaining. Only one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voted with the solidly Republican majority, which represented just 44 percent of the country’s population. Indeed, when Americans last voted for their senators (over a period of six years), Democrats won the popular vote by more than 8 percent. It’s that disproportionality—and the reality that a majority of the country’s population is represented by just 18 senators—that is driving concerns about the Senate’s ability to function as a representative body in a changing America.
Some, mainly on the far left, have suggested simply abolishing the body in its entirety, though the idea is not mainstream. But both those who want abolition and those who want more modest, but nonetheless significant, changes agree: The Senate is increasingly unrepresentative of the American populace.
The Republican Party has an inbuilt advantage in Senate races. Since Democratic voters tend to cluster in cities and their inner suburbs, Republicans are more spread out over large geographic areas. While rural strength in a state like New York or California counts for little in Senate races dominated by large coastal cities, the abundance of sparsely populated, geographically vast states in the West and Midwest is a big help for Republican domination in the chamber.
Malapportionment is unconstitutional in the United States, says the University of Missouri political scientist Peverill Squire, except when it applies to the Senate, and that creates a power imbalance.
The problem is still a substantial one, particularly for those who emphasize the principle of one person, one vote. The problem with the idea rests in the Constitution. Representative Don Beyer of Virginia, a noted proponent of electoral reform who has introduced a bill in Congress to radically alter the way the House is elected, summed up the issue: “We’re not America; we’re the United States of America.” The Senate’s equal representation, in this view, mirrors that of the United Nations, where Monaco and China each get one vote. Since each state is constitutionally viewed as co-equal and sovereign, it cannot be subjugated to the will of another. But whether that reality has continued relevance is debatable.
Those who want to eliminate the Senate wholesale argue that the ship has sailed on states as sovereign entities. The federalism, they contend, fundamentally undermines basic democratic due process and the voting rights of actual people. “The principle of democratic governance is one person, one vote, and the Senate is the opposite of that,” says Sean Monahan, a former member of the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America. Daniel Lazare, a journalist who specializes in American politics and has written three books on constitutional issues, argued in Jacobin in 2014 that the Senate is “one of the most cockeyed systems of minority rule in history, one that allows tiny coteries to hold the entire country ransom until their demands are met.”
