• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Congress>
  3. senate>

Four ways to remake the nation's map so power in the Senate is remade, too

Kristin Eberhard
February 02, 2021
blank U.S. map

It may be time to redraw state lines, writes Eberhard.

Joseph Clark/Getty Images

Eberhard is the director of democracy and climate policy at the Sightline Institute, a progressive think tank focused on the Pacific Northwest. Last fall it published her book, "Becoming a Democracy: How we can fix the electoral college, gerrymandering, and our elections."


One person, one vote. That's the dream of American democracy — and, sadly, the myth. The most powerful American lawmaking body patently violates that principle.

The United States Senate was explicitly designed to be undemocratic. It represents states, not people. Population-wise, some states are the size of large cities, others the size of large countries. If Wyoming were a city, it wouldn't even make the list of the nation's most populous 25 municipalities. But more people live in California than either Canada or Australia. Wyoming and California each get two senators, meaning some voters have 70 times more Senate representation.

Half of the nation's people have only 18 senators representing them, but there are 52 senators from the 26 smallest states, home to just 18 percent of Americans.

The skew isn't random. White Americans have, on average, nearly twice as much representation in the Senate as Black and Hispanic Americans. How can this be? The largest states — California, Texas, Florida and New York -- are among the most racially and ethnically diverse. Most of the smallest ones — Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Maine and Vermont -- are homogenous. Seven of the 10 least populated states are also among the whitest top 10.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

It matters. Wyoming, where 89 percent of the people are white, receives 50 times more in federal expenditures than California, which is only 40 percent white. Vermont's Rutland County receives about $2,500 per person in federal largesse, while the folks in New York's similarly-sized Washington County get $600. (To remind: Vermont's 600,000 people, 94 percent of whom are white, have two senators. So do the 19 million New Yorkers, 58 percent of them white.)

Unlike many other countries — with undemocratic upper houses of the national legislature that are less powerful than the lower, "people's houses" — our Senate exerts near-total control over federal legislating: The Senate version of a bill prevails over the House-passed version, at least partially, 82 percent of the time. And the Senate is the exclusive gatekeeper for all treaties and nominations, including the Supreme Court.

The Senate should represent people, not states. But to simply mandate equal representation, we'd have to chuck the whole Constitution. That's not happening. Ours is the most difficult to amend or update of any such charter in the world. Not only that, but Article V guards the Senate against alteration, saying each state must agree before being "deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."

The only way to make the Senate more representative within the constraints of the Constitution is to right-size the states. And the Constitution gives us four options to adjust for dramatic state population disparities.

Add states. Nearly two and a half centuries after American revolutionaries fought for representation, more than 4 million American citizens remain deprived of Senate representation — the people of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands and Washington, D.C. Offering statehood would be fair to their citizens. If all the potential new states have majorities of people of color, their senators would help balance out the Senate's disproportionate whiteness.

Subdivide states. Congress could give blanket permission for any state with more than 13 times the population of the smallest state (the original ratio between the largest and smallest colonies) to break into smaller states, so long as no resulting state is smaller than the smallest state. Thirteen times the population of Wyoming, now the smallest state at 580,000 people) is 7.5 million, which would now comfortably accommodate more than three new states from a subdivided Texas and more than five states spawned by California.

Combine states. Congress could give blanket permission for any state with less than 1 percent of the national population to join an adjacent state or part thereof. Right now, that would apply to the 21 states that are each home to fewer than 3.3 million residents. Several sit side-by-side, creating an opportunity to join together. They'd still be small states. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont combine for 3.3 million people; there are altogether 3.4 million in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming; and merging Nebraska and the Dakotas would yield a state of 3.6 million.

Redraw the whole map. If we really want to dream, imagine Congress grants all states the opportunity to participate in a collective redrawing of boundaries. States would opt in by the next census, at which time an independent redistricting commission would take into account history, culture and communities of interest to set state lines that make more sense to the people living there and that result in more equally sized states — say, all within a range of 1 million to 5 million people.

States resulting from this process would have more unified sets of values and policy priorities, and their residents would feel better represented by their leadership. For example, many residents of eastern Oregon are already eager to join Idaho, which matches them in geography, economy and culture better than coastal Oregon.

Some political magic would be required for right-sizing the states. But all these options could be accomplished without a constitutional amendment. They require building the right alignment of political movements and enough momentum to tip a series of ordinary majority votes in state legislatures, the House and the Senate.

It's not an easy path, but not impossible. A first step is to raise awareness about the lopsided power held by the Senate, especially during the push for other reforms such as removing the filibuster — the very thing, ironically, standing in the way of D.C statehood and a Senate that looks a little more like America.

From Your Site Articles
  • Democrats take step toward partisan gerrymandering in N.Y. - The ... ›
  • Obama is not the gerrymandering reformer he's sounding like - The ... ›
  • High court to voters: You deal with partisan gerrymandering. - The ... ›
  • Democracy reform starts with small steps - The Fulcrum ›
  • Amy Scott-Stoltz works to end partisan gerrymandering in SD - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • What If, America – Maps by Neil Freeman ›
  • The U.S. Map Redrawn as 50 States With Equal Population | Mental ... ›
  • Why Oregon conservatives want to redrew the state and join Idaho ... ›
  • What the U.S. map should really look like - The Washington Post ›
senate

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
16h

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
16h

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
16h

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Lawrence Goldstone
02 February

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Katherine Kapustka
02 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Videos

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
16h

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
30 January
Recommended
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed
Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcasts
Video: The dignity index

Video: The dignity index

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Big Picture
Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Big Picture