on the filibuster

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by miraja2

I don't think that a person needs to "go back to civics class" just because they disagree with the way Senate seats are apportioned. I certainly understand why the Senate was constructed the way it was - much as I understand why the electoral college was created - but that doesn't mean I can't wish that these things could be changed now.
After all, there is also a reason that state legislatures (rather than voters) were the ones who elected U.S. Senators for decades in this country. Eventually people made the case that this system was undemocratic and should therefore be changed (which it obviously was). Something tells me that if DT had been around at that time, and someone came on here and argued that voters rather than state legislatures should elect U.S. senators.....they would have been told that they must just not understand why the always brilliant authors of the Constitution set up the system the way they did, and if they wanted to make that change they might as well decide everything by having an opinion poll.

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.

[miraja2]

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.

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.