I’ve seen several posts and articles like this, making the claim that it’s unfair that every state gets two Senators (heavy sigh, ssmdh)….
When the Founding Fathers brought forth onto this country the Constitution, their aim for Congress was simple: one House of Congress (US House) where each state would get a representative per 30,000 people living in it (but at least one House member, no matter what); the other House (US Senate) with equal representation. Originally, it was the state legislatures that determined whom a state’s US Senators were. The 17th Amendment changed that, and, starting in 1914, direct elections of US Senators commenced.
However, in adhering to the Constitution in regards to the US House, the number of House Representatives grew to a point where a “work around” was needed. It was decided that US House membership would be “capped” at 435 members, with the US Census determining what percentage of US House members are from each state. The “capping” meant that the US House would not expand to its size as per the Constitution originally. Were it not for the “work around”, there’d be more than 10,000 US House members. Imagine what that would be like.
In a Facebook note I wrote two weeks after the elections last year called “ENOUGH, PEOPLE!” (since transferred offline and deleted online), one of the nine reasons I detailed for Hillary Clinton’s “loss” was that compression to limit US House membership to 435. Since the Electoral College votes from a state are equal to the number of legislators that go to Washington, DC, it turns out that the lesser-populated states’ voters have much more electoral power than those from higher-populated states in Presidential elections. The fact that Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million would have meant, if there were more than 10,000 electors from the Electoral College, a yuuuuuge Electoral College victory for Clinton. It wouldn’t have been a 50-state sweep, but, Comrade Trumpski/Dolt 45 might have won a thousand or so EC votes.
You must realize that Republicans realize all of that above ^^^^^ The people at the National Popular Vote compact effort have been trying to get state legislatures to approve their measure, which would simply give all of a state’s electoral college votes to the popular vote winner. So far, 11 states have approved it and the NPV people say that it’ll go into effect once enough states that equal at least 270 Electoral College votes approve it. My plan, however, would be to use another “work around” by having each state have one elector per 30,000 people plus the two from the Senate, but just for the purposes of the Presidential election. My plan, however, has an much-slimmer chance of becoming a reality than the NPV Compact does.
I, the Fascist Hunter, will also remind everyone that one of the two tenets of political Conservatism (PoliConism, which is inexorably linked to Authoritarian types of government such as Fascist regimes) is upward political power redistribution, aka, ruling as a minority (the other tenet is upward wealth redistribution). After the 2010 midterms debacle, the GOP went about doing just that, gerrymandering every political district they could to amass and keep more political power. Not to mention their voter suppression tactics to keep the power they just received after the 2010 midterms.
While the explanation of it is complicated, the simple fact of the matter is this: because political Conservatives (PoliCons, all GOP now) control the GOP, 90% of the wealth and 98% of the media in this country, they essentially control politics, even though the GOP truly represents no more than 15% of this country’s population. Meanwhile, Democrats truly represent at least 85% of this country’s population. That includes the two-thirds VOTING supermajority of the GOP, the Moderates and Progressives. But, since all GOP politicians are PoliCons or PoliCons in moderate clothing, they only represent the superminority of this country.
If you try to tell those ^^^^^facts/truths to the Moderate and Progressive Republicans, they go through what I call “The Progression”, which has three steps. The first step is cognitive dissonance, which is a slightly insane denial of the truth and facts of matters political because it makes them uncomfortable. Thanks to Comrade Trumpski’s administration, already the most corrupt Presidential administration in this country’s history (after just six months!), most Republicans have to skip that first step and go straight to the second, which I’ve nicknamed the “Siren Song”, false equivalency. Not only are the Moderate and Progressive Republicans really “pitchy” singing the Siren Song, so are the “Kissin’ Cousins” of the GOP politically, the “Firebaggers” (Libertarians). It’s very easy to spot the false equivalency “parrots”: they’re the people who make the bogus claim that the Democrats and Republicans are the “same”. PoliCons, however, skip the first two steps and move to the last, projectional hypocrisy. Projection is the worst form of hypocrisy and a psychiatric ploy whereby they make bogus claims about others that actually apply to them. When the Firebaggers make those false equivalency claims, they show themselves to be projectional hypocrites because, of all of the political parties in this country, it’s they and the GOP that are most alike, not the GOP and Demos. All “third” or “minor” parties have to sing the Siren Song to get support. While the “Green” Party claim to have many of the same philosophies as the Democrats do, they don’t back up those claims with action. Instead, they act like Republicans.
Say what you want about how “unfair” it is that each state gets two US Senators. The real problem is that the US House representation doesn’t actually represent the country as its constituted. That, my friends, is the REAL problem. Once enough people, especially Moderate and Progressive Republicans, realize that the GOP and Firebaggers are Fascists and Fascism-suborners, respectively, and act accordingly, something will be done about it. However, those Moderate and Progressive Republicans act just like “The Proles” from the Orwell novel “1984”, having the power to overthrow (by legal means) the PoliCon minority of their party (and overall superminority) but not having the willingness to do so. To quote Comrade Trumpski, “sad!”