Democratizing the Senate (II)

[Adam Tarr]

Demorep may be a doomsayer, but he has a point here.  Convincing people of 
an extreme change to the way people are elected to the Senate would be a 
tough task.  Moreover, this would require a Constitutional amendment, as it 
conflicts directly with the 17th Amendment:

"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from 
each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator 
shall have one vote. The electors in each state shall have the 
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the 
state legislatures."

Finally, it's not clear how much of an improvement this would be.  It would 
give better proportionality in terms of party representation, but it still 
gives some states a disproportionate power.

I agree with Demorep that the abolition of the Senate is the best 
solution.  But this requires a Constitutional amendment, which is unlikely 
to pass in current conditions.  Barring a Constitutional amendment, I still 
see a possible solution, albeit also an unrealistic one.  The Senate could 
vote to reduce the number of Senators needed to pass a bill.  I think this 
would be entirely Constitutiional; the Constitution never specifies the 
number of Senators needed to pass a bill.  The only mention of this is:

Article one, section 5:  "Each House may determine the rules of its 
proceedings..."

It seems to me this implies a simple majority of Senators (read: those from 
larger states) could amend their procedures for passing substantive issues 
through a simple majority vote.  So, if you could convince the Senators to 
do it (or more realistically, elect Senators that promise to do so) then 
they could vote to require, say, only a third of the Senators (33) to pass 
any given bill.  This would make it VERY easy to pass a bill in the Senate, 
and would essentially make the House debate the "real" debate.

This is analogous to what happened in the UK, where the House of Lords was 
never abolished but has gradually lost its power, to the point where it is 
no longer significant.  We copied the Brits when we made a bicameral 
legislature; so we can copy the Brits and take it apart.

Honestly, I don't consider any of this to be remotely 
realistic.  Single-winner reform & multi-winner districts for the House; 
these are the causes where our efforts can actually budge public opinion.

-Adam

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