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Originally Posted by Cannon Shell
His opinion that the senate is "immoral" based on 2 seats per state makes no sense unless there is a definition of immoral that has some hidden meaning. The idea that the Senate being voted on by legislatures rather than individual voters being changed could be compared to changing Senate representation along population numbers is like comparing apples to oranges. One just changes who votes, the other completely changes the system of govt and creates a second House of Reps. It makes no sense.
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I agree that scuds employs a fairly loose definition of "immoral" in his analysis of the Senate. However, saying that making changes to a state's representation in the Senate would "create a second House of Reps" is completely and obviously false. Senators serve 6 year terms and are elected by the voters throughout the whole state rather than just a congressional district. If the apportionment was changed - but those aspects of the Senate remain unchanged - the two houses would still be fairly different.
Also, if people wanted to keep the Senate significantly smaller than the House, that could probably be done too (obviously I mean hypothetically speaking, since none of this will ever happen). Let's say they changed the Senate so that the ten largest states received 4 senators. The next fifteen largest received 3 senators. The next fifteen largest received 2 senators. And the ten smallest states only got one. That would only increase the senate to a total of 125 members, and while it would not completely erase the disparity in representation that currently exists in the senate, it would rectify it considerably.