The way Congrese and elections were designed made a lot of sense in the 1780s/90s but don't make as much sense today.
http://www.dcte.udel.edu/hlp/resources/newnation/pdfs/PopEstim.pdf
http://www.infoplease.com/us/states/population-by-rank.html
If you look at the population variances, the top state in 1790 was slightly less than 10 times larger than the smallest. Today that difference is over 66 times as large. There three other states that are about 20 times larger than eight other states.
It's one thing to give even the smallest states a say in government. It's quite another to grossly skew the government in their favor as we do today.
Even in the House smaller states are dramatically more represented than large states per capita. There's no justification for this. The House should be enlarged to make this more equitable. Here's an idea, you take the smallest state and then make an appropriate balance.
If you did that today, we'd go from 435 Members of the House to something around 500.
The Senate wouldn't do the same thing, but should be expanded. At the time of the Constitution Delaware was slightly less than 10% in population than Virginia. Today there are five states that are more than twenty times as big as Delaware and Delaware is only the sixth smallest state. TX is more than 27 times bigger than DE.
I understand the need to give small states more of a say in the Senate but not as much as exists today. Maybe a solution here is to give each of the five biggest states four Senators and the next five largest three each. This would expand the Senate to a total of 115.
If you want to maintain the value of the VP's position in the Senate, we could do four or six states in the next group.
The numbers could be negotiated, but you have to start somewhere.
http://www.dcte.udel.edu/hlp/resources/newnation/pdfs/PopEstim.pdf
http://www.infoplease.com/us/states/population-by-rank.html
If you look at the population variances, the top state in 1790 was slightly less than 10 times larger than the smallest. Today that difference is over 66 times as large. There three other states that are about 20 times larger than eight other states.
It's one thing to give even the smallest states a say in government. It's quite another to grossly skew the government in their favor as we do today.
Even in the House smaller states are dramatically more represented than large states per capita. There's no justification for this. The House should be enlarged to make this more equitable. Here's an idea, you take the smallest state and then make an appropriate balance.
If you did that today, we'd go from 435 Members of the House to something around 500.
The Senate wouldn't do the same thing, but should be expanded. At the time of the Constitution Delaware was slightly less than 10% in population than Virginia. Today there are five states that are more than twenty times as big as Delaware and Delaware is only the sixth smallest state. TX is more than 27 times bigger than DE.
I understand the need to give small states more of a say in the Senate but not as much as exists today. Maybe a solution here is to give each of the five biggest states four Senators and the next five largest three each. This would expand the Senate to a total of 115.
If you want to maintain the value of the VP's position in the Senate, we could do four or six states in the next group.
The numbers could be negotiated, but you have to start somewhere.
