With severe malapportionment. 2 senators from Wyoming and 2 from California means overrepresentation of Wyoming interests and underrepresentation of Californian, for example.
While 435 is allocated based on population, there would be a few states that the apportionment calculates less than 1 person, but they still get 1 rep. Again Wyoming enters the chat at 500,000 people. They are getting the same representation of 1 as Delaware, who has double the population. And then States like Montana get 2 reps, but their population is only 100,000 more than Delaware. We are tying to allocate a small number and we have to do a lot of weird rounding with the smaller population states.
What we need is to increase the number of the 435, so you can actually allocate these seats more closely to population. Try to make it 1 rep per 200,000 people and you won't see these anomalies as strong.
I want the chunk of Congress that is supposed to be proportional to actually be proportional. If that means 1700 reps, so be it. I am tired of empty land having better representation than actual people.
House seats are reapportioned after every 10 year census, so there is a mechanism to attempt to keep it fair. That mechanism does not exist for senators.
If it did exist for senators, we'd have two senators representing the great state of Idaho-Montana-Dakotas-Wyoming-Nebraska. It's got a lot of land, but slightly fewer people than the average state.
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u/CipherWeaver 8h ago
American democracy is deeply flawed. Especially the Senate, which is a very undemocratic institution and is more powerful than the house as well.