[EM] Democratizing the Senate (II)

[Alex Small]

I came up with a proposal that conforms much more easily to Article V (no
state shall lose its equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent).  It
isn't an ideal democratic method, but it is a step in the right direction.

Elect half of the Senate on the basis of one per state, elected by the
people.

Elect the other half at-large by PR (party-list would probably be easiest,
but that's a detail) with this caveat:  Every state's votes are weighted to
give each state equal suffrage.  So, if 17 seats are up for grabs, each
state would report how many seats it would assign to each party.  Average
over the states (weighting each state equally).

I realize that the equal weighting of the states isn't perfect democracy,
but I maintain 4 things:

1)  By essentially doing PR on an "average state" you represent multiple
interests.  I don't think it can be any more distorted than the current
Senate, and may often be more proportional than the current Senate.
2)  The average state may actually be reasonable in practice.  Consider
that in the 2000 election the 2 major parties were essentially tied in the
House, Senate, and President races, so three very different methods of
election all reflected the same party situation.

Moreover, suppose that in a hypothetical country the electorate is pretty
homogenous in a geographic sense:  If one area is 20% in favor of party X,
so is another.  If the country were divided into 2 parts, and each elected
the same number of members to the legislature via PR, the same result would
be obtained as in a nation-wide PR election, even if the two districts had
different populations.

This is not a method to be recommended when starting from scratch, but
given the constraints in the Constitution it's probably the easiest
improvement to implement.  Moreover, as regional differences blur due to
migration within the US, immigration, national media, etc. the distortions
are likely to become smaller.

3)  Progress is about improvement, not perfection.
4)  The world has not yet ended, despite the current arrangement, so an
improvement is not likely to be a precursor to Armageddon, civil war, or
the second coming of the Spice Girls.

Alex

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