Someone submit a pull request to abolish the Senate, reform the House into a mixed-member proportional parliamentary system, mandate all state legislatures do the same, and replace the Electoral College with a ranked choice popular vote.
One of the worst things about growing up in America is being inundated with propaganda about how we should revere the founding fathers only to grow up and realize that much-revered Constitution is riddled with bugs and badly needs refactoring to accord with modern best practices.
The Senate was a negotiated compromise to get sovereign states to agree to join a federation. Obviously it gives some states more power — that’s the entire reason they agreed to it.
How do you expect to get them to agree to change it? I doubt people in Alaska or Montana think the Senate is a “bug”.
If you don’t think the structure of the federation works for your state, you can try to get your state to secede. That’s more logical, and more likely to succeed, than convincing others to vote against their own interest out of a sense of “fairness”.
>How do you expect to get them to agree to change it?
Believe me, I ask myself this question weekly. I don't know how it will happen, but the federation will not thrive without that change. In fact I would argue it is unstable currently.
>I doubt people in Alaska or Montana think the Senate is a “bug”.
I doubt people in Wyoming or Vermont consider the Senate to be fairly represent the federation. But you will rarely catch a politician admitting that. Oppressors will always opress, and that isn't my problem. It's theirs. The oppressed will always resist. Everything evens out in the end.
You cannot claim that people in NY State and California are oppressed, since their revealed preferences show them wanting to remain part of the federation. If people were unhappy with the current structure, you would see large and vibrant independence movements, whereas in actual fact those movements are a tiny fringe.
Despite its many problems, the US is one of the most prosperous, peaceful, and stable regions in the history of the world.
Without the Senate, the US simply wouldn’t exist (the smaller states wouldn’t have agreed to it), and North America would by now be a few dozen independent, competing, conflicting countries. It’s hard to imagine how that would be more stable than the current situation.
By the way, larger groups agreeing to give disproportionate power to smaller groups, in order to keep their union or federation together, happens all the time. Examples off the top of my head include Canada (where Quebec is massively overrepresented in the federal parliament), the UK (where England is the only constituent entity without its own legislature), Bosnia (whose three main ethnic groups split the Presidency equally despite having 50%/30%/15% of the population), and I’m sure there are many other examples...
The Bosnian example is particularly forceful, as this superficially “unfair” deal ended the bloodiest war in European history since WW2, in which more than 100,000 people died.
>their revealed preferences show them wanting to remain part of the federation
All of them? 20% of California is still 4.5 million people.
>America would by now be a few dozen independent, competing, conflicting countries
1. that is not proven. alternatives could have been chosen.
2. just because the Senate made sense among several mostly equal population states does not mean it makes sense today.
>Canada (where Quebec is massively overrepresented in the federal parliament)
And they have their own party. You cannot honestly believe that is an ideal situation.
>UK (where England is the only constituent entity without its own legislature)
The Scottish National Party exists, as do unionist and separatist terrorists in Northern Ireland.
>Bosnia (whose three main ethnic groups split the Presidency equally despite having 50%/30%/15% of the population)
Just because that makes sense for a young democracy does not mean it makes sense in California, a state with high cultural value given to equal voice and representation.
>this superficially “unfair” deal ended the bloodiest war in European history since WW2
Are you threatening war if California asserts its natural rights to self-governance? Unionization under threat of violence is not unionization. It is slavery.
One of the worst things about growing up in America is being inundated with propaganda about how we should revere the founding fathers only to grow up and realize that much-revered Constitution is riddled with bugs and badly needs refactoring to accord with modern best practices.
So you're saying we shouldn't revere the Constitution because it's not perfect?
Not since 1913 and the 17th amendment. The senate almost made sense when it was the states appointing their senators - now with direct election it is just a grossly biased legislative body where even in the smallest states each senator is meant to represent hundreds of thousands of people that no one can truthfully claim to do.
It's interesting to imply that the US Government should (or does) exist to serve the states instead of the people. The first three words in the US Constitution are "We The People".
For the record, I don't disagree with the existence of an upper house (in Australia we somewhat copied the US Senate design, though territories get fewer representatives than states). But its practical purpose is to facilitate less partisan discussion of legislation (and in Australia we only get that benefit because we have a preferential voting system). And it should be noted that many countries have abolished their upper house and become unicameral, and have continued to function just as well as before[1].
The number of representatives apportioned for each state does not dictate how they vote on any particular issue. The Senate has existed long before our current president.
The purpose of the Senate is to give all states equal suffrage in the legislature. Article 5 of the constitution states “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.“
> Someone submit a pull request to abolish the Senate
Unfortunately, that's basically the one amendment that the Constitution says is illegal to make. (Ignoring parts of the Constitution that are no longer in force.)
That said, you could first make an amendment making it legal to abolish the Senate, then make a second amendment actually abolishing the Senate. But obviously that may make things a lot harder.
> ranked choice popular vote
Note: I would advise against use of the term "ranked choice voting". This term is often used to mean IRV, effectively implying that IRV is the only way to hold a vote based on ranked choices. It isn't, and it isn't a particularly good voting method either (it's non-monotonic)! I'd suggest naming the specific voting method you mean if you have one in mind, or using another term -- an ordinal voting method, if that's what you mean, or maybe just anything other than FPTP, or maybe just anything satisfying a particular criterion such as being cloneproof...
One of the worst things about growing up in America is being inundated with propaganda about how we should revere the founding fathers only to grow up and realize that much-revered Constitution is riddled with bugs and badly needs refactoring to accord with modern best practices.