Sam Smith - The NY Times recently reran an article from last summer by Noah Millman in which he suggests breaking up the largest states in the union. The reason:
"Since 1980, about 40 percent of America's population growth has accrued to only three megastates: California, Texas and Florida. California has more than eight times the population of the median U.S. state; on its own, Los Angeles County would be the 10th-largest state in the union. The four largest states by population now make up roughly one-third of the population of the entire United States - more than the smallest 34 put together.
"This poses a critical problem for democratic legitimacy primarily because of the Senate. Those four largest states have only eight senators, while the 34 smallest states have a supermajority of 68. Because of the unusually large scope of power granted to America's upper house - the Senate not only is capable of blocking legislation but also plays a key role in approving many presidential appointments, members of the judiciary and treaties with other countries - such an acute disproportion of representation effectively disenfranchises much of America's population. Moreover, this disproportion cannot be rectified constitutionally, because Article V forbids any amendment to the Constitution that would deprive any state of equal representation in the Senate without that state's consent."
The reason this proposal has merit is that most other solutions - such as adding some sort of proportional population factor in the Senate - would never get passed because it would require a Constitutional amendment which require the support of the smallest states.
The problem with this proposal, however, is the difficulty in getting the big states to agree to such a division. For example, a plan to split California into three states was headed for the ballot in 2018 but knocked down by a judge who said further constitutional consideration was needed.
In short, no workable answer has come for this problem, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep talking about it. It is hard to call ourselves a democracy when such an unbalance in representation exists.
3 comments:
The Union was an interesting experiment. Unfortunately, few are willing to admit that it has outlived its purposefulness. There is some founded wisdom that you really can not represent a society of more than about 2 million individuals. Over that threshold, there are too many disparate beliefs to accommodate. Instead of Cali splitting into States, Cali should become it's own Country. I guess the baby step would be for them to cleave off along with Oregon and Washington. New England might be another obvious land mass. Until we reckon with reality, we will be forever at eachothers throats because the other side is just too X.
https://www.thirty-thousand.org/
If we started with having the election for the 2 senators in each state in the same year, states would be more representative of their citizens. Now we have 51% of voters getting 2-senators, and 49% getting no senators.
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