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by howdy
Tue Apr 02, 2019 9:24 am
Forum: Federal
Topic: Should we abolish the Electoral College?
Replies: 26
Views: 17105

Re: Should we abolish the Electoral College?

Soccerdad1995 wrote: Mon Apr 01, 2019 7:09 pm This seems to be a hot button of the Progressives. The underlying premise here is that the Great Compromise was a mistake, and that it is unfair to give less weight to the votes of Citizens in more populous states, which the current system does. But I hardly ever hear talk about the other part of this compromise, namely, adjusting the number of US Senators. After all, if it is unfair to give my vote less weight simply because I happen to live in a state like Texas with a large population, then surely it is also unfair to have less proportional representation in the Senate for large states as well.

If we keep the number of Senators at 100, that would mean that we give states one Senator for each 1% of the total population they hold. Using 2019 population data from http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/ yields some interesting results, such as:

Only 39 states populations round to 1% or higher. So 11 US states, and the District of Columbia, would have no representation in the US Senate.

52 of the 100 Senators would come from just 9 states.

The 2 most populous states (California and Texas) would control 21 of the 100 US Senate seats.

While I welcome the elimination of Senate seats for liberal strongholds like New Hampshire, Vermont, and Hawaii, and as a Texan I would "benefit", I do not support either idea. Rather, I think that it is important to give weight to the opinions of folks in small states, in both the Senate and Presidential elections.


Texas and California control 20% of the house seats and California, Texas, New York, and Florida control 31%.

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