It seems to me that proportional House + Senate with 2 senators from each state is a good way to ensure proper representation for states large and small, even in a future federal European Union. What do you guys think? Particularly the smaller states, do you feel you are represented enough by your two senators?
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I feel like I’m represented too much. Because my state is small, it’s easier to control by bad people and too much power makes it dangerous.
I like the concept in theory, but I dislike that the House of Representatives was capped. In my opinion, the House should’ve kept growing as our population grew. As it stands now, states that should be represented primarily in the Senate also hold considerable sway in the House.
The system is fine. The House is proportionate to population. They could add members beyond the current 435, but it would stay proportional.
The entire point of the Senate is to ensure that only broadly popular legislation passes at the national level. Our government was always intended to be most effective at the state and local level and minimal at the national level.
If people can’t get federal legislation passed, keep trying….but go pass it in your own state. California does this all the time and it seems to work better than have California and another state trying to cram unpopular polices down the others throats.
You have to remember that our states are the size and population of European nations. There’s no reason the US federal government needs to be anymore powerful than the EU. Just like the EU stops working when Greece and Germany get too bossy with the other.
Well, in order to answer your question we’d have to look at the impact of what those senators are doing, which, for us to do so, requires them to have done something.
So generally small states are way over represented in Congress. Obvious in the Senate but because each state gets at least one representative in the house the very smallest states also get an electoral advantage
Small states are over-represented. It’s the large states who get screwed in Congress.
There are 37 states with fewer people than just the city in which I live. That’s 74 Senate votes compared to my two.
Not good for me. That’s wildly disproportionate.
I wish we would double the representative and senator counts to bring our people and their legislators closer together. Other than that, I’m happy with the way things work.
I don’t think any American, democrat or republican in any state truly feels represented. Our elected officials never listen to the people.
Wyoming has just under 588,000 people. They get two Senators. California has over 40 million people, and more land mass than the country of Italy. They also get two Senators. At the federal level, the only elected politician more powerful than a Senator is the President.
I dunno, man. I don’t think the Founding Fathers saw this coming.
This is a strange question, just because you SEEM to be under the impression that smaller states have less representation when they actually have a lot more. People in the least populous states and rural areas of all states better thank their lucky stars that we have the system we have because it gives them WAY more voting power than people in the most populous states and and people in urban areas. Wyoming has 3 elected officials in Congress (2 senators and a representative) for a total of 1 vote for every 168k people. California has 55 officials but only gets 1 vote for every 652k people. You literally have 4 times as much voting power theoretically by living in Wyoming compared to living in California. And in a similar (but slightly different) way, rural populations almost exclusively have more voting power than urban populations.
So they are already making out like bandits and have a grossly unfair advantage.
Yeah. I mean I don’t really like my senators but that we have as many as Massachusetts or New York does make you feel as though your state won’t be ignored. That and being the nation’s first primary
I feel everybody is underrepresented in Congress. On average each US Representative has about 700,000 constituents.
The House should grow as population grows. House members are more and more disconnected with their constituents and more and more prone to being beholden to large donors.
I don’t know if you know this, but our founders took that into account. My question for you OP is, do you have a country with a bicameral legislature that is even worth a damn?
I doubt we would want to stay together as a country if California dictated all of our laws.
No. I feel represented.
I do think the senate should be chosen by the state legislatures though, and not elected through a popular vote, like the house is.
The senate is supposed to represent the state, which is why each state has equal say in that house of congress. The house represents the people, so that one should be from a popular vote within the state.
Repeal the 17th amendment.
Nobody is represented in congress anymore. At least nobody but lobbyists.
Not really no, but that’s less to do with the number of representatives and more to do with the fact that my fellow Montanans elected some real jackasses that are only interested in the needs of a small, very loud portion of their constituents
I do not feel represented because I live in a red state and I am blue. The electoral college is what makes me feel underrepresented, not the number of representatives in Congress. We all have two senators.
Effective Congressional representation (House or Senate) is MUCH more a function of competence plus seniority by the relevant member than state size (even in the House).
Senate that’s probably more obvious, but even in the House.
Off the top of my head, there have been some pretty powerful House members from pretty small states in the past few years.
Today Louisiana is on the smaller side of House delegations and is home to both the Speaker and the Majority Whip.
Until all the Jan 6 fallout took her out, Wyoming was home to the GOP Caucus Chair.
Don Young amassed a fair bit of power as the sole member from Alaska.
There’ve been a number of powerful small state members as Chairs over the years.
The only real benefit a larger state member has in amassing power over a smaller one is in coalition building; that’s a little more important on the D side versus the R side because of how Committee assignments and Committee leadership are picked.
Plus it’s less your state’s overall delegation size but more your state’s delegation size within your party. That said, while if you can pull the support of Texas or Florida or California, you’ve got a good base, it’s worth noting, though, that small state members will often work together across state borders to advocate for small state members in much the same way in those situations.
Wyoming (97,089 square miles) has a population of about 584,000. My state of New Jersey (7,355 square miles) has a population of 9,500,000. So which state truly deserves more senate representation? Also, New Jerseyans (combined) pay multitudes more taxes to the Federal government than those from Wyoming.
Even Washington DC’s population of 702,250 is bigger than Wyoming’s and DC gets ZERO senators and their only representative is a delegate with limited voting privileges.
A bigger problem is bigger cities talking for the whole state. I live in Illinois and even though Chicago brings in lots of revenue, their short sited policies that are ok for their city become state laws in a state that’s area is mostly rural farmland. Chicago’s views don’t represent me nor most of the state.
The premise of your question is bizarre. People from smaller states have far more power in Congress, particularly though the Senate, than people from more populous states.
Don’t mind me just living in D.C. with no representation in Congress.
Yes and no, my state doesn’t have representitives that represent the section of the state I live in well, but as far as the make up of congress, we are more than well represented.
The Senate is wildly unfair to people who live in populated areas. Country folk’s vote counts as dozens of mine.
New England had always held a
Majority in Senate.
Small states are definitely represented lol. I think you should be asking if large states are since they only have 2 senators with let’s say 10 times the population.
Small state votes are worth a ton more. It’s absurd.
Wyoming is the most over represented state in the country.
Often not, because senators and representatives are usually more beholden to the party than they are their state/district constituents. In the Trump era, that’s on steroids. They aren’t listening.
Marylander here. One half of our 2 senators are solid, but the lines in which our districts are drawn up traditionally make my area less important than the dc suburbs. It is what it is.
People in small states are vastly overrepresented in Congress and thus wield significantly more power with their votes.
Small states are overrepresented in the senate. Alaskans, for instance, only have to write letters to 3 people to influence Federal policy.
Large states are overrepresented in the house. Californians problems are everyones problems.
Medium states get ignored unless it is election season and they can swing the vote. Who cares about Ohio’s issues 99% of the time?
I think the Senate is fine, if broken by the procedural filibuster, but the House of Representatives is broken. According to the Constitution, there’s supposed to be a reapportionment every 10 years and historically, that included adding seats as the country’s population grew. But ever since 1920, the size of the House of Representatives has been fixed at 435 (apart from the late 50s when Hawaii and Alaska became states and had their single representatives until the next reapportionment). This means that a state can grow in population and still lose seats, results in smaller states being over-represented in the Senate and breaks the Electoral College (which should probably be abolished, but that would require a Constitutional amendment and that isn’t happening any time soon).
The result is that the average Congressperson now represents something like 600,000 people, which means that, as a citizen, you have almost no interaction with your representative and everything has to be mediated through special interests and pressure groups. As a representative, it means you have to be constantly raising money because elections are getting more expensive and terms are so short. State legislatures also get to draw districts and will gerrymander them to ensure safe or safer seats for their party. It’s virtually impossible for anyone not in the two major parties to be elected and increasingly, even primary challenges and flips between major parties just don’t happen.
If it were up to me, I’d want one representative per 100,000 people, grouped into multi-member districts elected through proportional representation. (The Electoral College would also be proportional by state instead of absurd Maine-Nebraska rule.)
The way we’re setup is each state gets 2 senators, and that part of congress is meant to be calmer and find balance more than the House, where the number of representatives is based on the population.
With this system, you have a more volatile and political body in the house, balanced with a calmer, compromise-focused Senate. This is one of the most important checks and balances we have in our government.
I would feel more represented if my state hadn’t been gerrymandered to eliminate my representation in congress.
It’s odd. I’m overrepresented in the Senate (I have 2 senators for my 2 million people, when CA also has 2 senators for its 40 million people), but I am underrepresented in the House (2 representatives for 2 million people, CA has 54 representatives for 40 people). I think my state has the worst ratio of representatives to population. But, the senate is SO far skewed, and is the more important chamber, that it really is irrelevant in the House.
The less populated a state is, the more over-represented they are, simply because every state gets two senators regardless of population, whereas our congressional representatives are apportioned based on population.
Maine here. We are over represented if you think about it. Our population is 1.3 million (growing significantly though!)
We have the same number of senators as California (32 million). We have 2 house members, which I think it’s fair based on population.
I actually think this hurts large states more. Although it gives New England a lot of power because we have 6 small states and 12 senators with a fraction of the population of other large states.
We are also an extremely blue/liberal part of the country.
If anything, those people are completely OVER represented
As a resident of a small state (Nebraska), I feel that small states are unfairly over represented. The whole system comes from when former colonies saw themselves as separate countries (i.e. states) and were protective of their power. It has resulted in a system which limits the voice of the individual.
In theory? Yes. In actuality? No, because they do’t hold town halls and don’t listen anymore. They just do whatever tf they want and my fellow citizens let them keep getting away with it. I dunno that I would call TN small, but LA certainly is.
The people in large states are underrepresented.
Well I’m a Democrat and most of the people who are supposed to represent me in Congress seem to think they only represent the people who voted for them.
I’m from a middle-sized state and don’t feel represented. Why? Because I don’t consider myself pompous, uncaring, unintelligent, shortsighted and maniacal.
I don’t have any representation because my city isn’t considered a state. It sucks.
Obligatory no because I live in DC
As a small state resident, I feel adequately represented in the House and overrepresented in the Senate. It does seem a little silly that my state of 2 million people gets equal representation in the senate as a state like California with nearly 40 million people.
This seems a ridiculous question – small states are disproportionately over-represented. If anyone should be pissed its Californians and New Yorkers.
NO
Small states have way more representation.
If the cap on hiuse seats were lifted California woukd have waaaayyyy more reps due to their population. It’s currently held back, while many small states have the “correct” amount.
Small as in population or small as in area? Historically the Senate was supposed to be the representation of state governments but that changed after they started letting people vote directly on Senators. I think it’s an anachronism.
Interestingly, both the house and senate seats have stayed the same for a very long time, despite the countries population drastically increasing. My great grandparents and even grandparents got personal written correspondence from their reps (senate and house both). We still have the letters in our family papers. We don’t get that anymore. I am in a somewhat smaller state population wise (Minnesota) and even here it’s very rare to get personal responses from any reps, even on a local level. I live in a small town in a rural area, so on a state govt. level I do usually hear back from them. But not my federal reps. I just found it interesting how much less accountable they are to people now, and I do think some of that is due to the huge increases in people that they represent.
My representative doesnt even live in my district
That’s why we have the Senate.
DC license plates literally say “end taxation without representation” so yes. I do.
Why not ask the people of Washington DC. We have no representation in the senate and our rep in the house cannot vote. We literally fought a war over this and yet…
Also, Puerto Rico.
Honestly I feel like the smaller states are what’s holding this entire country together
My state, New Hampshire, has two senators and two representatives in Congress. I feel that we are definitely represented in Congress. While each of our representatives has considerable power, our two senators have many times more. Larger states are unhappy with the senate as currently constituted but that’s not going to change, short of a revolution that abrogates the current constitution.
Don’t forget, there are TWO forms of representation in our Congress.
Each state gets two Senators, who are members of the Senate. Since each state gets the same number, each state is represented equally in the Senate, regardless of size or population.
Each state has a different number of Representatives, who are members of the House of Representatives. The number of Representatives is based on population. So states with more people, have more Representatives.
For laws to pass, it has to be approved by BOTH bodies, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The two mechanisms ensure that, in one body, each state has equal say, but in the other body, states with more citizens have more say. Both are considered fair by different definitions.
I think you’ll find, from the other comments, that even many Americans don’t understand this.
I’m in a large state and don’t feel represented by any part of my govt at all
Senators don’t represent the population, Senators represent the State. In fact, by the original Constitution they weren’t even elected; they were chosen by the State legislature.
The population of a state is represented by their elected Representatives in the House of Representatives.
Small state American here. I love it. Our interests (Nevada) would be completely steam rolled by the other states with out it. The founding fathers completely nailed this one.
I don’t know that any American feels represented by the current Congress.
I’ve lived in a small red state, I lived in a big blue state. I lived in Alaska, I lived in Europe. I’d say our elected officials represented me about the same in each of those instances.
I don’t even feel represented by Congress in a large state.
I’m an American in a big state and I don’t feel represented in Congress.
No average American is represented in congress.
Americans in large states don’t feel represented in congress either
Utah is the 30th most populous state. I don’t feel well represented, but it’s an ideological thing rather than a population thing.
Smaller states are overrepresented in Congress, because of the Senate.
Is that bad? Depends on who you ask, obviously.
But certainly the mere possibility of winning the presidency by winning 50% + 1 of the votes starting from the states with the smallest populations for a total popular vote of ~25% is… not ideal.
People seem to forget that our government was not designed as a true democracy, it was designed so that people in smaller states wouldn’t have their concerns completely trampled over by other much larger states. We’re purposefully a democratic republic
I don’t think anyone feels represented. I certainly don’t.
No.
If you mean smaller by population, you have that backwards. It’s the states with larger populations that underrepresented, both in the House, to a lesser extent, and very much in the Senate. The 750K citizens in Wyoming get two Senators, exactly the same as the much more populous states. I cannot comprehend why you’d think this was unfair to the small states. (And, of course, dirt doesn’t vote.)
By “small states” do you mean small in size or small in population? There is a big difference there.
Absolutely not.
Nobody feels represented. That’s how democracy works
Smaller states are over-represented.
Grotesquely overrepresented. Well, not me, but my horde of troglodyte neighbors certainly were. I no longer live in that specific small state, and the first slightly less small state I lived in was, unlike the one I refer to, not one of a dozen cookie cutter homogeneous pits of ignorance and manufactured grievances.
The rural masses of ditto machine replicas all think they’re such individualistic and underrepresented mavericks. Nothing could be further from the truth.
They better. We’re way overrepresented, says a small state resident.
It helps some but larger states like California and Texas and New York have much larger say in federal politics. It’s funny because people from those states whine about the electoral college. It’s set up the way it is for the exact same reasons as the bicameral legislature.
At least not with my rep and senators who ignore anything I send to them and routinely vote against the well-being of their constituents.
No, because the Congressional districts were gerrymandered to ensure that Republicans win districts that should be blue.
I would feel far more represented in all of them if I was a billionaire.
I moved from California to Rhode Island. My representation in Congress increased by an order of magnitude. I also run into my representatives at the grocery store now so that feels neat.
Honestly, smaller population states are OVER represented.
Small states are over represented. Not under represented. In terms of Congress person per thousand residence, small states have a much higher number compared to places with a large population.
I live in Nevada and I used to live in California so I went from an extremely populated state to a very sparsely populated one. My individual vote actually carries more power in national elections now that I live in a less populated state. As the resident of a swing state, I get so many calls and texts for political surveys around elections. It seems like everyone cares about my vote here.
In California, I was living in a remote, rural, conservative county within a deep blue liberal state and nobody gave a crap about my opinions or my vote. I knew that no matter what, all of California’s electoral votes were going to go to the democrat every single time, as long as I live. I still voted, but I knew it didn’t matter. If a resident of that county voted red, it didn’t matter because it was a deep blue state and if a resident of that county voted blue, it didn’t matter because it was a deep red county. California is just a big hunk of automatic blue votes when it comes to national elections and candidates don’t do much campaigning there because they already know what is going to happen.
Here in Nevada, I feel like my vote matters when it comes to national elections more than it ever did in California. To be honest, it didn’t matter in California at all. Here, candidates come all the time. Both candidates came here several times in the recent election. I was receiving several requests per DAY for surveys.
The US was founded as a democratic republic, not a strait democracy, which even many Americans themselves don’t understand, so you see a lot of people who complain about less populated states having too much power in national elections. The “republic” part takes precedence over the “democracy” part, which is why the Senate is the higher house where each state gets two representatives and the House of Representatives is the lower house where States get representatives proportional to their population. The US is called the United States of America first a reason. It’s a union of many individual states. The main fundamental difference between the two major political parties is obvious from their names. Democrats want a stronger central FEDERAL government ideally ruled by the mass of all people in the country, a democracy, thus they are called DEMOCRATS. Republicans want stronger individual states ideally each ruled by the people of those states, a REPUBLIC composed of democratic states, thus they are called REPUBLICANS. That is the the tension on which the political system in the country is based. Each has its pros and cons. In a straight democracy, a few highly populated states on the coasts would rule the entire country and the people living in less populated states would have little to no power at all. That would be a problem not only because it wouldn’t be fair on principal, but because there would be no account for the diversity in cultures and regions in the country. The beliefs, needs, and worldviews of someone living in the rural Midwest are going to be different than those of someone living in Los Angeles. It would be wrong to complete disregard those of the person in the Midwest simply because not as many people live there. In a straight republic, individual people’s political power would vary too wildly and small populations could end up having too much power over much larger ones.
In an attempt to create balance our forefathers decided on a hybrid system of a democratic republic.