We’ve regularly amended our Constitution to meet the needs of a changing society, and it’s time to do so again by abolishing the U.S. Senate.
The Constitution grants the same number of senators for every state, regardless of population size. California’s 38.8 million people get the same representation as Wyoming’s 584,000 people.
Roughly 168.8 million people live in just 10 states, meaning just 20 out of 100 Senators represent 52 percent of the population. This unequal representation isn’t democracy. It goes against democracy’s founding principle of “one man, one vote.”
The Senate theoretically allows 20 percent of the population, or 52 senators, to enact laws for the entire country.
Filibusters can somewhat insulate unequal representation. Senators can talk a bill to death unless 60 members vote for cloture on it. They can’t pass anything these days without cloture, but even the 60 senators from the 30 least-populous states represent about 27 percent of the population.
It’s unlikely senators from states such as Wyoming and Vermont, the two smallest states, would ever vote the same anyway. In theory they could, though. A system needs to change if a minority of the population can control an entire country.
Smaller states already receive more federal dollars per capita than larger states. New Mexico, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama and Montana received the most federal funding. They’re also five of the smallest states in the country by population.
Louisiana is notorious for draining the federal government. We receive $1.37 for every dollar we send, and 42 percent of our state’s budget comes from the federal government.
The Senate is undemocratic by design. Our Founding Fathers feared the mass public and decided they needed a body to protect government from the people, so they created the Senate. It was supposed to insulate government from public opinion, but our government demonstrated its ineffectiveness to us. They created one of the worst and most undemocratic systems.
Our Founding Fathers weren’t the untouchable, perfect geniuses we romanticize in our history and political science classes. They were slave-owning native killers who didn’t bathe as regularly as they should have.
They lived in a time when racism and sexism were normal and expected. Consequently, only land-owning white men could participate in government.
We’ve since realized our founders’ ignorance on most issues and amended the
constitution over time to reflect a more perfect society. We need to do so once again to remove the outdated upper house.
The House of Representatives isn’t a pillar of democracy either. Gerrymandering and incumbency root deep in the lower house’s institution. State legislators draw districts to protect parties and incumbents instead of drawing districts to match the demographics of said state.
The U.S. also elects representatives via plurality voting, where a candidate with the most votes wins. In other words, a candidate in a three-person field can win the election with only 45 percent of the vote.
Some states, like Louisiana, have run-off elections in scenarios like the one above. The top two candidates go through a second round of voting to eliminate a plurality victory.
Most states enacted run-off elections to suppress voter turnout, not to increase voter representation. We’ll never truly be a representative democracy until we have multi-member districts with either a proportional voting system or a single transferable voting system.
Other developed nations have either abolished their upper houses or greatly reduced their powers. The House of Lords in the UK, for example, has become a largely ceremonial body. It has the power to stall bills, but it can’t completely halt legislation. Beyond that, the House of Lords has no real power. Our Senate should at least become a ceremonial body.
The undemocratic principle of the Senate doesn’t have a place in modern government. America should do like most other industrialized nations and either abolish its upper house or greatly
reduce its power.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.