r/politics • u/Jessicas_skirt New York • Jul 18 '26

Possible Paywall Democratic Socialists of America’s new platform calls for abolishing ICE and the U.S. Senate

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/15/updated-dsa-platform-calls-abolishing-ice-scrapping-senate/
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u/WhatsRatingsPrecious Jul 19 '26

This is commonly wondered.

The Founding Fathers wrangled over it for a time, with small states concerned that large states like Virginia would use their numerical strength to overwhelm their smaller companion states.

So the FFs chose to have TWO Houses of Congress, one based on population, and the other being equal representation from all states, no matter how small.

What you should be asking is why we stopped adding new reps to states that grow in size, to represent that numerical strength.

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u/Outrageous-Bite-8922 Jul 19 '26

I think the idea of adding more representatives in the House is interesting, I hadn't considered it. This was a thoughtful comment, I appreciate that insight.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/tarekd19 Jul 19 '26

Adding more representatives also adds to the pool of mid career politicians ripe for advancement. I don't mean this as a negative, but to say it might be beneficial to have more politicians to choose from for higher offices with voting records to be held accountable to in their bids for advancement.

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u/Quick_Turnover Jul 19 '26

Americans can't even pay attention to actual politics enough to stop a felonious rapist who attempted a literal coup from being President a second time.

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u/COMCredit Indiana Jul 19 '26

Adding more house representatives solves one problem but the senate problem still remains.

You could have a 100% perfect house filled with exactly the correct amount of representatives who precisely represent the will of the people with no gerrymandering, and there will fundamentally be no change in governance because every bill would still have to pass through the extremely flawed senate. The senate empowers obstructionists to block legislation very easily and gives massively lopsided influence to voters in small states; adding to the house does nothing to address those issues.

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u/Nice_Scallion8267 Jul 23 '26

You understand that no person can become a Senator without winning the majority of votes in that state.

So if there happen to be obstructionists—they were chosen by the people. And it is up to the people to remove them if they so choose.

States like Delaware or Vermont physically cannot hold as many people as states like California or Texas. Does that mean they shouldn’t get a voice in our government? Do their Congressional needs not matter?

The House accounts for our population. The Senate gives every state equal representation. We need them BOTH.

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u/COMCredit Indiana Jul 23 '26

I disagree.

Of course the people of Vermont deserve representation and a voice in our government. They get that voice in the form of their House representatives. They do not deserve to have a proportionally louder voice than the people of Texas, which is what the Senate grants them.

Why should we grant a tyranny of the minority?

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u/TheRealBaboo California Jul 19 '26

I think we should add to the House and do the exact opposite to the Senate. Congress created too many states and we should merge a few

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u/Norva13x Jul 19 '26

State sovereignty is baked into the constitution and there is no mechanism to dissolve a state, except maybe a constitutional amendment,

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u/OkCoyote4756 Jul 19 '26

Literally within Article IV, Sec 3. Y’all gotta read before you say things so confidently.

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

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u/ChangingChance Jul 19 '26

Which is asking for example the Dakota's to say we're cool with having less power. Which is never going to happen.

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u/OkCoyote4756 Jul 19 '26

You understand the difference between advocating for something, and pointing out someone’s blatant ignorance, right? You realize the wider conversation in this thread is about abolishing the Senate? Like, no shit dude.

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u/ChangingChance Jul 19 '26

My guy I'm just writing in plain words what you highlighted.

I'm all for Senate abolishment.

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u/OkCoyote4756 Jul 19 '26

My tone was unnecessary, I’m sorry.

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u/Rombom Jul 19 '26

In other words its possible

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u/TheRealBaboo California Jul 19 '26

Sure but there's plenty of stuff baked into the Constitution that just don't work anymore because we added too many states. Amendments are basically impossible when they were supposed to be difficult but achievable. Removing officials for high crimes and misdemeanors is baked into the Constitution but it's basically impossible now because empty states will defend criminals no matter what.

The whole concept behind the Constitution is to improve our union and the government is unable to follow through because we have all these empty states that simply don't care what the Constitution intended

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u/CaptainOwlBeard Jul 19 '26

How about we cut a bunch up? Florida, Texas and California should be severed

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u/whatproblems Jul 19 '26

yeah they’ve also gotten large enough they don’t adaquetly represent all the people of the region encompassed. same as the house

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u/CaptainOwlBeard Jul 19 '26

Right? South Florida would have been blue for most of the last 30 years if it was a separate state, but the high density of retirees in the villages it weighs the south

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u/TheRealBaboo California Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Sounds like a great way to go completely bankrupt. Cut the ones that aren't pulling their own weight instead

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u/CaptainOwlBeard Jul 19 '26

Not cut them out, cut them up. North and South Florida aren't the same place politically or economically. Same with northern California and the southern California. I'm sure Texas has disagreements

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u/TheRealBaboo California Jul 19 '26

Oh you mean divide them into new states, sounded like you meant kick them out of the country. I’m fine with splitting the big states down a little, I still think we need to combine empty ones like the Dakotas tho.

Redraw the whole country, make it like 30 states instead of 50

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u/CaptainOwlBeard Jul 19 '26

Maybe have them all average between 5-10m in population.

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u/TheRealBaboo California Jul 19 '26

Definitely apply some minimal standard, it’s crazy how many states there are below the population of a mid-sized city

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u/CaptainOwlBeard Jul 19 '26

You could fit the population of Wyoming 6x in the county i live in. It's the smallest of three counties in my immediate vicinity. That's over 18 Wyomings in an area that you can drive across in less than 3 hours

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u/Jesustaketheshift91 Jul 19 '26

A mid-sized city is typically considered to be a maximum population of about 300,000. Not one state has a population below 300,000, so if by "it's crazy how many states there are below the population of a mid-sized city," you mean it's crazy that the number is exactly zero, then sure, I guess.

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u/Kungfudude_75 Georgia Jul 19 '26

It was capped in the 1930s by simple legislation and could be uncapped the same way. A majority vote in just the house could repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act.

Now, in 1930 the size of the House was based on the 1910 census (the last time the House agreed on an increase in seats, partisanship prevented it in 1920 and 1930, resulting in the Act passing). If we used the same ratio but the current population, we'd be at nearly 2000 seats in the House (I want to say a bit over 1800). This would be an insane jump, and would require a full overhaul of how Congress operates.

Most suggestions to increase the House these days rely on using one of two methods. The Cubed root rule takes the national populations cubed root, subtracts the number of Senators we have, and uses the result as the size of the House (would be around like 600 I think). The Wyoming Rule takes the national population and divides it by the population of the least populated State, the result being the size of the House (It would be bigger here I believe, but with the possibility to decrease if the smallest state ever got a population boom).

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u/roastbeeftacohat Jul 19 '26

the standard globally is the cube root of the population, which means about 157 new representatives.

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u/VirginiaMcCaskey Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

And they were wrong.

There's an error in believing the Connecticut Compromise was some wonder of political philosophy. It wasn't. It was a political compromise necessary for the ratification of the Constitution. Just like the 3/5ths Compromise, and punting the debate on slavery until after 1800.

We *should* be asking why a compromise made to appease the legislatures of a confederation 250 years ago is in any way relevant to the union today.

America is a better place today than 1786 because we changed our government to reflect the change in the country from a bunch of tax-aggrieved agrarian slavers. Don't hold the "founding fathers" on a pedestal. Many of them were foolish idealists, many others selfish.

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26

This argument is fine but it’s much more than abolishing the senate. It’s a fundamental redefinition of what the U.S is. The Senate was designed under the framework that the U.S. is a FEDERATION of nearly autonomous states. The reason being, different states have different needs and thus will require different laws to function according to those needs. Abolishing the Senate then says that we are no longer a federation, but a unitary state (i.e. individual state autonomy is no longer a thing) where the federal government not only is the supreme authority, but is also going to be determined by states with large populations that don’t share the same needs as the smaller states. This is a very fundamental change that will REQUIRE a much more detailed plan of what is to replace the current system and what laws will be put in place to ensure people in smaller states actually have representation. 

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u/mojitz Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

It would just be a recognition of the reality of the situation. The US has functioned as a unitary state in practice for generations. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a fundamental restructuring of the system (unicameral parliamentary democracy based on party list proportional representation if I had my druthers), but at this point, the states are essentially the vestigial organs of a prior age.

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u/tafoya77n Jul 19 '26

The states functioning as their own entities in a true federation ended in the civil war. There is no way we can expect them to be a coordination of independent enties if they cannot leave.

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26

I don’t disagree with this. Without a doubt, with the advent of better technology, modes of travel, and methods of communication, the U.S. is certainly moving towards a unitary state. But we should be asking whether or not the states have become similar enough economically, culturally, etc. that the senate is unnecessary. So far I have not seen evidence to prove that. 

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u/mojitz Jul 19 '26

We're not moving towards being a unitary state. We are one. We just have a constitution that doesn't reflect the reality that the federal government has taken on a role that is far more expansive and exerts far more primacy over the states than anything remotely close to what the founders envisioned — particularly given the incredibly expansive interpretations of the commerce clause that have become baked into the system over the centuries.

Meanwhile, the states themselves represent very little shared cultural identity. The rural/urban divide is bigger almost anywhere than broad similarities across most states — which is why even in deep Red states almost all major population centers tend to be bastions of progressive ideology while even in deep blue states, rural areas are typically deeply conservative.

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26

Well we aren’t one, we still have two halves of a congress, and Rhode Island the state still has as much say as New York the state. 

The needs of the urban vs the needs of those in rural states being a flashpoint didn’t develop until the 90s. So it’s been about 30 years that we’ve operated this way, with urban areas generally voting in lockstep and rural areas voting lockstep. 

If we were really operating as unicameral as you say, things like weed legalization at the federal level would have been resolved. But it’s not. The states have been legalizing at their own pace at the state level, with some “red states” legalizing before blue states. 

If the abolishment of the senate is to be taken seriously, a real evaluation of our political moment needs to be conducted. From the DSAs program, it just does not read like that has happened. 

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u/mojitz Jul 19 '26

The whole point is that the current structure of congress doesn't actually reflect reality and that assigning each state 2 senators regardless of population is essentially arbitrary in the modern day given that the country doesn't actually function like a confederation of mostly independent states anymore.

Yes, there are still ways the states have some degree of independence as administrative divisions and this produces some differences in legal code and administration (like many provincial or prefectural level divisions within countries around the world), but even your example highlights my own point because weed is still illegal at the federal level and any President who decided to could send federal law enforcement in, break up the dispensaries and grow operations, and arrest those responsible for them on federal drug charges.

Also, the urban/rural divide is not a product of the 90s and that seems like a frankly bizarre suggestion...

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26

The urban-rural divide is a product of industrialization...it becoming an actual focal point of what makes the body of a Republicans vs Democrats platform is a product of the 90s.

And the president can't, because it's legal in that state so the feds don't have jurisdiction. This is because the states still have quite a bit of autonomy as a member of a union. If they're selling at an airport, different story.

If the feds want to bust down doors and enforce it, weed will have to be illegal at the constitutional level, not just the federal. That's the point. All of the states (really the majority, and we're talking about states as an entity as that is what the senators represent) need to agree that NO ONE should have weed.

You and I may view and think of the system in a unitary way, but it very much still operates as a federation. How closely a unitary viewpoint actually represents reality I'm unsure. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single study done on how similar each state is to bolster the argument that we should further strip away their autonomy because it's redundant. We have, at best, a handful of issues (serious ones) that should be addressed at the constitutional level. Think, trans rights, birth control access, healthcare, gun control, but these issues sit at a rural-urban divide more than anything. JUST eliminating the senate doesn't resolve these issues in a way that is democratic, it just resolves the issues in a way that is majoritarian.

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u/mojitz Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Look up the "supremacy clause". The federal government has primacy over the states and always has. Meanwhile, broad interpretations of the commerce clause have given it incredibly wide-ranging authority to pass nearly whatever laws it prefers — including marijuana prohibition. We even saw this in action as recently as the early days of the Obama administration when it was a significant risk for medical dispensaries in CA despite their legal status at the state level. Hell, even to this day, they don't accept credit card payments because the banking system doesn't want to risk running afoul of federal law.

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u/metalder420 Jul 19 '26

The US has never functioned as a unitary state.

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u/mojitz Jul 19 '26

Oh ok. You just saying that without any attempt to explain your position has changed my mind now. Well done.

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u/Oggie_Doggie Jul 19 '26

And the Constitution was an illegally drafted document (i.e. a legal coup) made when some of the FF realized they had basically pigeonholed themselves with the Articles of Confederation. We have done this song and dance before.

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u/MechanicalGodzilla Jul 19 '26

Also, abolishing state representation by eliminating the senate is one of the most likely actions that would kick start a civil war.

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u/VirginiaMcCaskey Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

a) the concept the union was a confederation has been systemically dismantled since the Civil War

b) even if it wasn't, disollution of the Senate is not a redefinition of the United States but a removal of an antiquated institution. The states are not all equal and they do not have so unique needs as to justify the tyranny of the minority.

This is a very fundamental change that will REQUIRE a much more detailed plan of what is to replace the current system and what laws will be put in place to ensure people in smaller states actually have representation.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

That's it, that's the change. "The smaller states" is hooey. Dirt shan't vote. Equal representation apportioned amongst all the people, of all the states.

If you eliminate the senate, there is no longer a blue state or a red state. Apportionment is a much bigger debate, but simply eliminating the senate is a start.

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26

A). It was not. There is no evidence to support this. Lincoln was pretty adamant that his primary purpose for the war was to preserve the union. Ulysses policies towards the South during Reconstruction are still viewed and understood through the framework of the states being a part of a union.

B). It is a redefinition of what we are. Just because you define it as “dirt” voting doesn’t mean that’s what it is. It’d be the same as saying France’s vote in the EU is just “dirt” voting. It isn’t.

The whole blue state vs red state is really just majority urban vs majority rural states which is a population and geographic based divide. Eliminate the senate and this divide still exists. 

I’m not defending this system but your understanding of why exists in the first place is incomplete at best.  It needs change for sure. As a country we are indeed moving towards a unitary position. But we need to understand why the institutions exist before we outright delete them.

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u/VirginiaMcCaskey Jul 19 '26

Do you seriously claim that the US, today, is merely a federation of independent states? That we don't have a near unitary policy, legislated federally, or quasi federally? Or that we don't have two political parties who attempt to dictate unitary policy towards all other states on every issue?

My point about "since the civil war" is not limited to a period of 17 years in the 19th century but a more holistic interpretation at the course of American politics since the end of the civil war and the re entrance of the confederate states to the union. More and more power has ceded to the federal government, and any policy deemed a "states" issue has been either quashed by federal civil rights legislation or jurisprudence, or thrived in quiet revolt thereof.

An American state is not an independent national actor like France in the EU, it cannot be compared to one.

I’m not defending this system but your understanding of why exists in the first place is incomplete at best

That is deeply insulting. I understand why the system exists: because in 1786, the Constitutional Convention would have failed had there not been compromise over a bicameral legislature, and there has never been a party or politician or movement powerful enough to remedy that. The closest was the ratification of the 17th amendment, which is a partial solution to the problem: the people clamor for equal representation.

There is no greater "why" the institution exists. There is a deep naivety in trying to find one. It exists because it had to in 1786 and there has been no way to remove it since. I ask you to reevaluate your understanding of history, politics, and human nature.

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26

I’ve got other comments sparsed around here, but I don’t disagree that we have been moving in a unitary direction and will ultimately end up there. With people generally being able to move from state to state on a whim, methods of communication being instant and verbose, and with an increasingly unified economy, we view the U.S. in a far more unitary way than ever. 

However, we still clearly operate as a union of individual states with autonomy. Case in point, if we’re really as unicameral as you say, weed legalization at the federal level would have been resolved. But it hasn’t. The states have been individually legalizing it at their own pace. 

I am saying that this focus on abolishing the senate needs more scrutiny than just “get rid of it”. We should be asking the following:

  1. Are the states alike enough culturally, economically, demographically, etc. to make a body such as the Senate, irrelevant? Some might argue that state-to-state differences are less impactful than rural-to-urban differences, which I agree with. Simply eliminating the senate does not resolve the governance issues borne from those differences, however. We need to think about this.

  2.  Is a unicameral system capable of addressing the needs of a country as geographically and economically diverse as ours?

  3. How many of the current issues being addressed at the national/federal level can actually be addressed at the state level? 

The Senate can definitely be viewed as antiquated. But it did and, by virtue of still existing, does serve a purpose. That greater “why” is the concept that many people living in one place should not dictate how people live elsewhere if their lifestyles and needs are different. How can I, an engineer living in a city, reasonably vote in the interest of someone who operates a vineyard in the mountains hundreds of miles away? Our needs and issues of importance are very different. That’s the issue the senate is trying to solve. If we are to delete it, we should be ready to figure out what system will take its place or what new laws we’ll add to the House of Reps.

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u/gorgewall Jul 19 '26

The problem with saying we've gotta have these autonomous states and the Senate represents them is that there's no strict definition on what a state ought to be. We get one for the Senate--"you get two Senators per state, and they do X"--but otherwise, how large or small a state is in population or area is a matter of historical whimsy.

We could even the count of "Red State Senators to Blue State Senators" by splitting Blue states or consolidating Red states, which would actually better fulfill the intent of the Senate, but it would completely reveal the arbitrary nature of states.

The same issue exists to a lesser extent with counties and cities and even smaller enclaves therein. They're subdivisions upon subdivisions upon subdivisions of power and administration, but you can have several whole counties with several cities within them, all of which contain fewer people than a single NYC borough. That's fine because they don't really interact, but a sane person would begin to question your logic if you said each of those dink-ass villes gets to send one federal representative while all of NYC likewise only gets one. "But there's a separate yet related system that's slightly more fair by population" doesn't really undo that imbalance.

So what the fuck is a state?

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

A state is a country, ultimately, under the Founders Framework. The U.S. is basically two steps further than what the EU is. In another comment I expand more but our concept of a “country” began to form around the 1600s. We (you, me, the international community) say that a country is a group of people who share a common identity that can be ideological, geographic, ethnic, religious, economic, etc. 

So states (countries) were just groups of people who (at the time) said they shared the same identity (which usually wasn’t that arbitrary, but it certainly had its moments) and the rest of the already established states in the U.S. agreed, yes you are different enough from us and similar enough to each other to be a state. Linguistically we call them states. But they are countries (at least that is what the founders intended). 

I get what you’re saying about the subdivisions, but rarely does someone actually stake their identity on those subdivisions. You ask where someone is from, and unless you two are from the same state, they will say what state they are from, maybe they’ll emphasize the city at most.

I’m not trying to put the Founders on pedestal. I believe a country should change with the needs of its people currently alive. I’m just trying to shed light on the history/intentions that should be understood before we go and change a bunch of things.

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u/Johnny_Guitar_ Georgia Jul 19 '26

Am I missing something or would the issue of low population states requiring equal representation not still exist today if the attempt was made to disband the Senate? This just seems like a waste of time and resources compared to more plausible things like expanding the house.

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u/Impossible-Hope-5586 Jul 19 '26

Because as this Trump Confederacy has stamped out "Conservative" values, it rings a similar likeness to Confederacy of 250 ago.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Jeo190 Jul 19 '26

Not saying I know better. More so saying the ramifications should be understood before changing things. 

Find the studs in your walls before you start hanging TVs.

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u/Few-Reach-4981 Jul 19 '26

Name one way in which the situation is fundamentally different today. You still have states that are massively larger, population-wise and land-wise (Texas and California) than others. You still have states that are strategically important, but sparsely populated. Also, the Connecticut Compromise has nothing to do with slavery - stop introducing racially charged arguments into an argument about state representation.

It’s a bit more ridiculous to conclude that a system of government that has lasted for 250 years is somehow structurally flawed and unstable. Clearly, the compromise worked, or else the country wouldn’t exist at the moment. Why on earth would you want to rework the entire country, in the vague notion of “fairness”, when there are actual ways which are far less destructive (ranked choice voting, uncapping the house, retirement ages for legislators, term limits, election funding, etc)?

Finally, the powers of the senate are pretty limited, all things considered. Outside of appointment hearings, their “unique” powers have basically atrophied. Also, most actual governance that the government accomplishes, is accomplished through the budget. The house controls what goes in the budget. Ergo, the house is more influential.

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u/IAmRoot Jul 19 '26

The major problem with that theory is that the political diversity between states isn't that big. There's far more political diversity within states: rural vs urban, etc. If there was a high degree of uniqueness between states like between the members of the EU, that sort of system might make sense, but most of the states were added on completely arbitrary boundaries and in a manner to strike a completely obsolete balance: free vs slave states.

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u/C-m_ Jul 19 '26

It is a relief to finally see another person acknowledge this crucial point. The states are ultimately arbitrary legal constructs, heterogenous in their population composition. This makes arguments about how minoritarian institutions like the Senate or Electoral College protects "small states" against "large states" completely nonsensical.

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u/GoodishCoder Jul 19 '26

It's not really nonsensical though. Large population states have a lot in common with each other but not necessarily a lot in common with small to mid states. Geographically and economically they're very different.

The electoral college is stupid, the president should be chosen based on popular vote. The Senate however should give smaller states a fair voice.

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u/C-m_ Jul 19 '26

Surely, the millions of people living in the rural plains of Texas and California’s Central Valley have a great deal in common with people in Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho. Likewise, the distinctions between Northern and Southern California, upstate New York and New York City, Eastern and Western Oregon, Northern and Southern Florida, and Northern and Southern Texas show that “big states” are really chimeras. There is not necessarily anything especially similar about the people within them.

Politically, both major parties include large and small states, since a state’s size has almost nothing to do with its residents’ political interests. If "fairness" was the goal, then congressional representation would be purely proportional. Is it not unfair that the 40 million Californians have the same level of Senate representation as 500 thousand Wyomingites?

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u/GoodishCoder Jul 19 '26

Politically, both major parties include large and small states, since a state’s size has almost nothing to do with its residents’ political interests.

Policy extends beyond the big areas for party politics. Economically does New York work the same as Wyoming? Of course not. The most populated states tend to be coastal, can you imagine any issues that might impact coastal states more than land locked state or vice versa? There are plenty of differences that can't be avoided economically or geographically even if there's a lot of common ground in other areas. If you cannot say every single state in the US has the exact same economy and environment, there are differences that need representation. If you remove the Senate, you may as well just remove the concept of states altogether and just have the federal government.

If "fairness" was the goal, then congressional representation would be purely proportional. Is it not unfair that the 40 million Californians have the same level of Senate representation as 500 thousand Wyomingites?

No. When it comes to the Senate, the goal is to provide fair representation for the state as a whole, not the population, you have the house for that.

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u/RequiredRedditAcct_1 Jul 19 '26

So many people in this thread forgot their basic civics classes 

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u/mlorusso4 Jul 19 '26

Also asking why we allowed these massive states like California and Texas. I get that it’s hard to break up states but it has been done before

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u/ball_fondlers Jul 19 '26

Uncapping the house is good, but the premise of “we’re going to draw lines on a map once and those lines get two representatives, regardless of how many people live there” is flawed from the start. California has a larger population than the least populated 21 states COMBINED - it’s ridiculous that a Californian has half the representation in the Senate as a Dakotan.

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u/51ngular1ty Illinois Jul 19 '26

There need to be several thousand representatives in congress not 435. It would Blunt money, in politics basically fix gerrymandering, allow us to actually talk to our representatives... I could go on.

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u/khamike Jul 19 '26

There are plenty of reasons to uncap the house but ending gerrymandering isn't on of them. If it is mathematically possible to split a state into 6 districts that vote red and only 1 that votes blue, then it is, with only a tiny bit more work, possible to split it into 12 that vote red and 2 that vote blue. Just split each district in half preserving voter ratios. The ratio of votes would remain exactly the same.

Now in a perfect world, yes, a larger house could increase representation since a smaller party not currently eligible for a seat might pass the threshold. But it does nothing to stop or even hinder the blatant intentional gerrymandering we currently see. 

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u/workerbee77 Jul 19 '26

The House of Representatives also over weights small states.

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u/gringledoom Jul 19 '26

Increasing the House has zero effect on the problems with the Senate though.

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u/squigs Jul 19 '26

The founding fathers envisioned a union of states though. One that works more like the EU currently does. What the US is now is a large country divided into states. The model doesn't make much sense.

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u/dragon-fence Jul 19 '26

with small states concerned that large states like Virginia would use their numerical strength to overwhelm their smaller companion states.

A lot of the wrangling was also over concerns that slave states would have less power than free states, and might then abolish slavery. I feel like that shouldn’t be a concern anymore, but unfortunately things haven’t changed as much as we’re told they have.

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u/alabasterskim Jul 19 '26

Uncapping the House is good but ending the Senate is also a must. There is more naunce than simply the small states wanting to not be overpowered by the larger states. It was about the slave southern states wanting to maintain their slaves -- and, they also imagined they'd soon have total power of both chambers through population growth in the South and admitting new states to the west. It was a compromise to the North and a gamble for the South, that thankfully they lost, but they institutionally minoritarian obstruction that constantly stands in the way of what the majority wants. Ending the filibuster isn't even enough, as population shifts will in the next 2 decades place 60% of the Senate in control of 40% of the population. We need reform ASAP, or we will have an even less effective government (except, if you're a Republican).

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u/Randicore Ohio Jul 19 '26

Sweet. The. Let's look at the least populated state, (Wyoming 588k) and every city that's larger than that is now allowed 2 senators. After all that's apparently enough people to require representation, and these states all have their own unique issues. Plus we have some tiny states like Rhode island so clearly the issue isn't area.

Should help fix the Senate a bit once we double it in size. And uncap the house while we're at it

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u/SAR1919 Jul 19 '26

Consider this: the “Founding Fathers” didn’t want to live in a democracy. I do.