>This is pointing to a feature and calling it a bug.
That depends on if you are a democrat of republican.
Democrats would probably prefer to have every state have equal population and make representation equal for all.
Republicans would probably prefer to keep the old system in place which gives land mass credit over individual people.
I'm not arguing for either one, but saying it is definitely a feature is in the eye of the beholder.
EDIT: I made a bad assumption about who would favor what system. In any event, the basic point stands that one group will think its a bug, while the other group will think it is a feature.
This doesn't jibe with the current House and Senate, where the equal-population represented House has a substantial Republican edge and the Senate has a majority of Democrats.
Edit: btilly below is right, the House isn't technically proportional representation, it's equal-population districts. Still, state by state representation doesn't seem to be breaking reliably for Republicans.
If the House is "proportionately representative" then how did Democrats win substantially in the popular vote in congressional races, while Republicans won the house by a solid margin?
In a perfectly gerrymandered system, the party in power can win using only 25.1% of the vote - and that's if all districts have equal population. You can get by with even less if the districts have imbalanced populations. In that "perfect" system, you draw the districts so that your detractors are 100% of the population in the districts you know that you're going to lose, and your supporters are 50.1% of the population in the ares you want to win.
In real life, of course, it's messier and you can't draw the lines quite so perfectly, but here's a link to the districts near Chicago - look how oddly-shaped they are, especially as you get closer to the city center. (They'll probably change again next election season, doubly so if the other party gets control.) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/IL
The same way that the reverse used to happen when the Democratic Party caucus had a majority in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. In those days, there was much higher turnout in Republican-leaning districts, but there were fewer of those districts, because Republican voters were concentrated into just a few congressional districts in most states by state legislatures that mostly had a Democratic majority. Now that the tables are turned, people from the other side of the aisle notice this as a problem, but always it takes "tide" elections to switch majority control of state legislatures, which then lock in place (until the next tide) advantages for the majority party in the drawing of electoral districts. This too shall pass.
The Republicans were able to control the house while losing the national congressional popular vote by being better able to redistrict their congressional seats in ways that were favorable to them.
This is why it is important which party controls State legislatures, those legislatures favor their own party when they draw the map.
Those 14 Senators are some of the most conservative in the Democratic party and some of them often side with the Republicans on key issues, and/or play the middle to get more of whatever it is they want.
Remember how hard it was for Obama to pass health care reform when he had 59 Democrats and Joe Lieberman?
Thats what the Senate + the filibuster does to our politics, it grinds it to a halt.
Edit:
First line should read: Some of those 14 Senators are amongst the most conservative in the Democratic party.
My thesis is simply that more rural states tend towards more conservative politics and when Democrats get elected in rural states they tend to be the more conservative members of the Democratic party.
Ben Nelson is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. During the health care reform bill he was a holdout until the end, threatening his own parties signature piece of legislation. He caved when his state was given a special deal.
But small states aren't all rural, and even some of the ones that are elect fairly liberal Senators. Vermont is the classic case, but Democrats from the Dakotas have been almost legendarily liberal, too. Hell, Tom Daschle was Minority/Majority Leader.
And liberal Republicans get elected from small states, too. Remember Lincoln Chafee?
Yes, the Senate is a massive structural advantage for the Republican party and it's policies in the US.
It is an advantage that violates the principle of one person one vote and equal representation.
People that believe in equal representation as a founding principal of democracy are justifiably outraged by this assault to democratic principles.
The Senate was a compromise to form the union at the start, and it has evolved with time. The 17th amendment gave the people the right to vote for their senators directly, previously state legislatures elected senators for the people.
The basic truth that all men are equal and there should be one vote for one man supersedes the privilege of some citizens, in some states, having more political power than other citizens in other states.
Citizens of large states do not deserve to be discriminated against in the legislature while at the same time subsidizing rural states. The rural states get more than they give in taxes.
It's just not right. The Senate, in it's current stage of metamorphosis, is a basic violation of democratic principles and the time has come to alter or abolish it. A quixotic cause to rally for no doubt, but a right and good cause for anyone that keeps a candle burning in the window, that one day America will live up to its promise and potential.
It's just not right. The Senate, in it's current stage of metamorphosis, is a basic violation of democratic principles and the time has come to alter or abolish it.
Does not follow.
Democracy is not the one true form of government. Constitutional representative democracy just has relatively few catastrophic failure modes.
I have to wonder if you'd feel this strongly about these particular principles if you knew about approval voting or what happens in countries with a unicameral parliament.
That depends on if you are a democrat of republican.
Democrats would probably prefer to have every state have equal population and make representation equal for all.
Republicans would probably prefer to keep the old system in place which gives land mass credit over individual people.
I'm not arguing for either one, but saying it is definitely a feature is in the eye of the beholder.
EDIT: I made a bad assumption about who would favor what system. In any event, the basic point stands that one group will think its a bug, while the other group will think it is a feature.