Annie Lowrey in the Washington Post:
But what if the 100-member Senate were designed to mirror the overall U.S. population — and were based on statistics rather than state lines?
Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets — with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.
Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.
Imagine trying to convince someone — Michael Bloomberg, perhaps? — to be the lonely senator representing the richest percentile. And what if the senators were apportioned according to jobs figures? This year, the unemployed would have gained two seats. Think of the deals that would be made to attract that bloc!
Or how about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators — 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate, with 17 currently in office. White men would have 36 seats. Black women, Hispanic women and Hispanic men would have six each; black men five; and Asian women and men two each. Women voters would control a steady and permanent majority — making, say, discriminatory health-care measures such as the Stupak Amendment and the horrible dearth of child-care options for working mothers seem untenable.
So in total, there would be 51 female Senators in this made-up world, compared to 38 who have ever been in the Senate in reality, or the 17 current female senators.
One thing that Lowrey didn’t bring up: religious representation. There would be fewer Jews in the Senate, alas — 2 (rounding up) rather than the current 13. About 50 senators would be Protestant, and 25 would be Catholic. 1 would be Muslim. About 15 Senators wouldn’t identify with any organized religion at all; I’m not sure how many of those would be openly atheist, or openly agnostic. (Source).
Wouldn’t this exercise make more sense with the House? I was under the impression that, traditionally and very generally, the House represented the people and the Senate represented the states. (I don’t mean literally represented, I mean “stood for” or “acted more on behalf of,” or something.)
Which doesn’t take away the interest such an exercise holds, of course.
The House, with their larger numbers, it could make it eaiser to truly represent the demographics. Although with 435 the math is no longer as easy.
Which is why I think proportional representation works better, like we have in most of Europe (with the notable exception of the UK). There’s no way you’d get stuck in a two-party situation with proportional representation.
Admittedly, it also has disadvantages: with parties often too small to gain a majority on their own, they often have to form coalitions – so you often end up with a weak compromise program that nobody wanted or voted for.
Reminds me of “The world as a Village” – a good children’s book that explains the worldwide demographics using a village of 100 people as a sample. Explains how many people are rich, poor, dirt-poor, starving, christian, muslim, hindu, english-speaking, spanish-speaking, mandarin-speaking, etc. for little kids.
There would be fewer Jews in the Senate, alas — 2 (rounding up) rather than the current 13
I’m tempted to snark that this “proves” that there is no anti-semitism in the US-sort of like Obama’s election “proves” that there is no racism. Because inevitably someone will try to make that argument and not see any problem with it.
Slightly more seriously, do you think that there is any particular significance to this relative over-representation or is it more or less good luck? My first guess is that most of the Jewish senators are from the northeast where the percentage of the population which is Jewish is higher than in the rest of the country. But that’s a complete guess.
Krupskaya, you’re right. Remember that the United States was formed by a voluntary compact among 13 independent sovereign states – the present Constitution being the second legal instrument defining the terms of that compact. The House was/is supposed to represent the people directly. The Senate is supposed to represent the States as entities, not the people. To that end the Senators were originally elected by their State legislatures. That changed with the 17th Amendment in 1912 (working from memory on both those …), so now the Senators are popularly elected. It was intended that the Senators would be more insulated from the will of the people and would provide stability and a check on the passions of the day that might sweep through the House.
You will find this and the succeeding 3 or so Federalist Papers a good introduction to what the purpose of the Senate is.
Deen:
Works better how? To achieve what end?
Krupskaya:
Actually, no – the intent was that the Senators, elected by the State legislatures, would literally represent the States. Read those parts of the Federalist Papers I cited and then do some Google searches on the origins of the Senate.
@Dianne
Jews tend to be over-represented in any elite, cerebral profession. Jewish doctors, lawyers, politicians, bankers… and that’s not getting into Hollywood. Obviously, it’s a hard issue to discuss because it’s the territory of so many antisemites, but it’s hard to deny the basic concept: Jews are apparently good at climbing to the professional elite. Whether that’s genetic, or cultural, or the product of some absurd international Jewish conspiracy is beside the point…. it’s hard to deny that they’re there, in spite of any antisemitic barrier.
Why should politics be any different? Consider the two-party system and how much of politics happens outside of the public view. Just because the final electoral process is up to the public vote, doesn’t mean all the dealing and climbing that led up to that point is exactly representative of the public will. So Jews disproportionately succeed in that process just like many others.
I don’t know off hand how many of the Jewish legislators started out as lawyers, but certainly Jews are over-represented in the legal profession, and lawyers are way, way, way over-represented in Congress.
That and we control the media. ;)
Thanks, RonF, for the info.
I’ll field that one: to actually represent the wishes of the populace.
Canada’s the best example, since Americans look at it and think they’ve managed to break the 2-party system… but really, Canada’s parties are functionally regional. Because of the myriad of parties, you frequently get really bizarre local results due to vote-splitting.
As a result, you have the case of the Bloc Quebecois (Quebec francophone party) and the NDP (labour-left party). Every election, the NDP gets far more votes as the Bloc, but far fewer seats.
For example, in 2006? 17% vs 10% gets them 29 seats vs 51 seats… that occurs because, outside of a few union strongholds, the NDP has no central base of support. Meanwhile the Bloc is entirely regional – they don’t even run candidates outside of Quebec.
This is compounded by the fact that, in Canada, urban ridings tend to be more populous than rural ridings, meaning that one rural voter has more power in the House than an urban voter… which is obviously relevant to a left-wing labour-union-driven party.
How does it benefit Canadians to give Bloc supporters nearly 3x as much representation per-voter than NDP supporters, simply by virtue of the fact that their party represents a region instead of a demographic or ideology?
Now, obviously I agree that protecting the views of political minorities is important, however you should choose to do so – in the USA, this means the Senate. But shouldn’t the main governing body be directly representative?
How is it that one man: one vote isn’t good enough?
Deen, your comment is quite bizarre. You like proportional representation because it breaks up two party systems, but you don’t like coalition governments because they don’t represent a single party’s vision? In other words, you want a system that has multiple parties but only allows one party’s policy platform to be reflected in legislation? Huh?
I don’t know that I agree with the contention that more women in the Senate would guarantee no Stupak or better child-care options. Plenty of women in this country vote in a precisely opposite fashion – being a woman is no guarantee that you support those things.
@Katie- Yes, that.
I nearly got thrown out of an intro Government class at Smith by my fellow students, once. The professor asked how Congress would be different if every single member was instantaneously and magically replaced by a woman. After about 5 minutes of hearing how we’d all have health care, no more wars, and a free puppy for every home, I raised my hand and said “It would depend on how many of the women were liberal and how many were conservative” and was damn near stoned for heresy.
As much as I appreciate the point illustrated by the mental exercise, I’m still asking what would happen if congresscritters represented their constituency with our existing lines. That’d be a sight.
@RonF:
As Silenced is Foo said, to offer a better reflection of the spread of all opinions in the country.
Mhaille – yeah, I think that’s why so many people have such a visceral reaction to Sarah Palin. She doesn’t fit the stereotype that liberals have of women.
SiF – I took a look at the Wiki for the Canadian Parliament. Standard disclaimer regarding Wiki aside, it doesn’t look at all like a model of democratic representation of the populace. The “ridings” – which (correct me if I’m wrong) seem to be the equivalent of our House of Representatives Congressional districts – are apparently not at all apportioned evenly on the basis of population. And the Senators are a) un-elected, b) apppointed for life and c) are apportioned unevenly, such that different provinces have different numbers of Senators. It frankly looks like kind of a mess to me, reflecting the various aspects of Canada’s history.
The U.S. model of government is not that of a purely representative democracy. It’s a Federal republic. We have multiple layers of government and functions that are not necessary to be dealt with at a higher level are supposed to be pushed down to a lower level. States are supposed to have a fair amount of sovereignty and thus autonomy. So the House represents the people directly and equally and the Senate represents the sovereign States directly and equally.
The Founders of this country (I’ll spare you all the usual formulation there) deliberately avoided creating a pure democracy. They were students of history and looked at the previous examples of such and found them wanting. They feared that the general public’s attention and judgement was all too readily swayed and diverted to trust a fully democratic model, and frankly over the course of my life I think this was a very sound move on their part. Hell, with the advent of modern technology, rapid communications, sophisticated marketing and sales techniques and the dominance of popular entertainment culture I think it’s gotten worse.
The system was designed to slant the tradeoff of “things that should get done may not get done or done as quickly as desirable” vs. “things that shouldn’t get done don’t get done” towards favoring the latter, sacrificing the former.
On the other hand, the Ledbetter equal pay act was opposed by every Republican in the Senate — except for all four female Republicans, all of whom voted for it, plus a single male Republican who soon after switched to being a Democrat.
So no, being a woman doesn’t guarantee a more pro-woman vote. But in at least some cases, it seems to make it more likely.
@Hugh:
There is no contradiction. The benefits of breaking a two-party system should be obvious. With more parties, you get a wider range of opinions represented in government. You also have more options to vote. This also keeps politicians more accountable, because if you don’t like what they are doing, there’s actually somewhere else where you could take your vote.
But I have to be realistic and point out that proportional representation won’t solve all problems in politics. That’s all I was saying. I’m not saying that a coalition governments can never work well. Coalition programs can be (and often are) a decent reflection of the opinions of a large majority of the voters. However, often a compromise can also be worse than any of the individual plans. If one party wants to move forward and the other wants to move back, the end result is all too often that hardly anything changes at all. Or, as they say, a compromise means that nobody gets what they want.
Of course, the problem of compromises is not unique to coalition governments. The US Democrats, for instance, are currently clearly making neither actual progressives nor Blue Dogs happy. The Republicans, on the other hand, are trying to please both moderate conservatives and the religious right, and probably failing at both as well (but lucky for them, they don’t actually have to run the country at the moment).
So all in all, I still favor a proportional representation system.
But then:
Seems to me that there’s at least 4 different opinions right there. So the opinions are getting expressed. Don’t forget that in the U.S. party system the party members are not locked into voting for their party’s position. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that seems to be unusual in parliamentary systems. So the U.S. legislators’ parties specific positions affect the individual legislators’ votes but does not prevent them from expressing a different opinion.