John Dingell: Abolish the Senate

[DrScholl]

Its also very, very peculiar that Democrats are just now finding a problem with the Senate.  I don't remember this when we had Majority Leader Harry Reid from 2010-2014?

You're right. Republicans are out of control and that is why the Senate needs to go. They do not need a legislative body that automatically favors them based on geographic boundaries that are not based on population. There is no need to meltdown though, since the Senate isn't going anywhere.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Technically, since every state that was eligible to ratify the 14th Amendment has now done so (by 2003), the principle of 1 person, 1 vote derived from the equal protection clause could legally be applied to the US Senate.

All it would take at this point is a simple act of Congress to clarify this, and to specify a replacement mechanism, and it would be wholly constitutional.

[AndyHogan14]

Technically, since every state that was eligible to ratify the 14th Amendment has now done so (by 2003), the principle of 1 person, 1 vote derived from the equal protection clause could legally be applied to the US Senate.

All it would take at this point is a simple act of Congress to clarify this, and to specify a replacement mechanism, and it would be wholly constitutional.

You're right. According to Reynolds v. Sims, states modeling the federal system is completely and totally unconstitutional...therefore, it would stand to reason that that principle should be applied to the federal government now that all states at the time of reconstruction have ratified the fourteenth amendment. That is definitely a legally sound argument as far as I am concerned.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Technically, since every state that was eligible to ratify the 14th Amendment has now done so (by 2003), the principle of 1 person, 1 vote derived from the equal protection clause could legally be applied to the US Senate.

All it would take at this point is a simple act of Congress to clarify this, and to specify a replacement mechanism, and it would be wholly constitutional.

You're right. According to Reynolds v. Sims, states modeling the federal system is completely and totally unconstitutional...therefore, it would stand to reason that that principle should be applied to the federal government now that all states at the time of reconstruction have ratified the fourteenth amendment. That is definitely a legally sound argument as far as I am concerned.

The only reason why the US Senate could be considered constitutional past that point is because the Constitution required unanimous consent from the states to amend that segment. That is no longer applicable, and it stands to reason from that point that the US Senate is now unconstitutional.

[Badger]

The notion of "small states" being protected from "large states" is a bit of a weird concept in a post-17th Amendment world... since, uhh, states don't "vote," people do. 

This times 100

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv


There is no way you could use this amendment to say the present allocation of the 14th amendment is unconstitutional

[emailking]

I mean, define "all" of its power. I would think a purely advisory Senate like the UK House of Lords or the Canadian Senate would be silly, but there's no question you could do that.

No I think there's very much in question. In fact, I don't think you could do it without all states agreeing.

And, yes, clearly they would need to make that section non-amendable for it to be non-amendable. The Constitution has a built-in amendment process, and, unless something is specifically carved out, it's amendable.

No, that's a ridiculous position in this case. Again, what even is the point of listing what can't be changed if in practice you can change it anyway?

What's carved out as non-amenable is adjusting the Senate balance without all 50 states, and the slavery position that has expired. It is self-evident that you can't amend the carve out.

Personally, I think even a clause saying that the clause itself is not amendable would be unenforceable because, once amended pursuant to the amendment procedures to remove that clause, it's no longer in the Constitution and thus no longer operable, i.e., you can't actually make something non-amendable even if you are very blatant about it. I also think as a policy matter making any part of the Constitution completely unamendable is simply an unacceptable circumstance and should be viewed as nonjusticiable. But I am not sure a court would agree with me.

Yeah, they wouldn't.

But if we go down the rabbit hole of your example, you couldn't start the amendment process for such an amendment because that would unconstitutional.

But it would never arise in the first place because Constitutions aren't written by mathematicians, and aren't meant to be interpreted with formal axiomatic logic.

[emailking]

The amendment process is itself amendable.

Possibly. It would depend on the nature and degree of the change, and is untested.

That means that you can amend the part where it says, about the amendment process, that you can't get rid of states' representation.

No it doesn't mean that. And you can't do that. See my previous post above.

[AndyHogan14]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv


There is no way you could use this amendment to say the present allocation of the 14th amendment is unconstitutional

Then the reasoning in Reynolds v. Sims must be incorrect. If representation based on geography is unconstitutional for the states, it stands to reason that it is unconstitutional for the federal government as well.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv


There is no way you could use this amendment to say the present allocation of the 14th amendment is unconstitutional

Then the reasoning in Reynolds v. Sims must be incorrect. If representation based on geography is unconstitutional for the states, it stands to reason that it is unconstitutional for the federal government as well.

It was not unconstitutional for the federal government in 1964 because of the unanimous consent clause of modifying the Senate. Unanimous consent has since been met as of 2003.

[Ichabod]

The entire point is still to protect small states from the laws of a small number of mega states. The states have some independence of one another and the senate is the chamber of Congress meant to represent their interests. The people’s house is meant to represent the interests of the large states. Our constitution is set up that way purposefully and just because one party or the other has a disadvantage in that chamber for a time doesn’t mean you should abolish it.

But gl pushing that as a policy platform in...senate races. Lol.

A worse thing that a dictactorship of the majority is a dictatorship of the minority ...

[7,052,770]

Very interesting how none of the condescending "muh Senate is necessary to prevent the tyranny of large states" advocates a similar system in their own state legislatures, where the big cities dominate the state senate at the "expense" of less populated rural counties.

[Free Bird]

Very interesting how none of the condescending "muh Senate is necessary to prevent the tyranny of large states" advocates a similar system in their own state legislatures, where the big cities dominate the state senate at the "expense" of less populated rural counties.

Says the guy whose state was subsisting off the government teat thanks to Ted Stevens for 40 years

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

The entire point is still to protect small states from the laws of a small number of mega states. The states have some independence of one another and the senate is the chamber of Congress meant to represent their interests. The people’s house is meant to represent the interests of the large states. Our constitution is set up that way purposefully and just because one party or the other has a disadvantage in that chamber for a time doesn’t mean you should abolish it.

But gl pushing that as a policy platform in...senate races. Lol.

Any argument that considers states as meaningful and independent entities is still colossally stupid. We're at a point with mass communication, mass culture, nationalized politics, etc. that there's no reason to consider states as truly independent collections of constituencies rather than some arbitrarily binned groupings of people. Put another way: we're at a point where most states have a large amount of variance within their constituencies, to the point that the differences among states are becoming meaningless so long as you know a person's education level, race, and gender. There isn't much difference in the political leanings or the between Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport Iowa, or between Fairfax County, VA and Prince George's County, MD, between Wendover, Nevada and West Wendover, Utah, etc. But the current representation system we have treats ridiculously them as totally separate political entities. So, any type of system which tries to do some fair weighting of "states" as if they had some sort of meaningful political identity is trying to weight something which isn't well defined enough to be meaningful. Keeping a system of political representation which is based on trying to balance out some weird political variables that don't really exist is horrible and indefensible when it creates massive inequalities in other ways, e.g., giving the 40 million people of California as much political representation in a major body of Congress as a state that's almost 1/80th its size.

I don't really care about the Connecticut Compromise. It's a product of a bygone era with incredibly different political needs and realities, and its mere existence isn't a sufficient argument for why it should continue to be followed. It's telling that all arguments in favor of incredibly biased systems of proportionment are justified by arguments that are ultimately "this is the way it is", or "this is the way it was", without ever giving an argument for why that is right or desirable.

[Reaganfan]

This is why the left acts so cocky with election results: They don't believe they lose, when they lose. If it's not gerrymandering, it's voter fraud. If it's not voter fraud, it's Russia. If it's not Russia, it's voter I.D. laws.

I believe the way the left sees it, is that the popular vote should choose the President. That is not and has never been the way we elect Presidents. Period. So they feel that America elected the following:

President Bill Clinton
President Al Gore
President George W. Bush* (He should have never been re-elected because he didn't win the first time)
President Barack Obama
President Hillary Clinton

So basically, they feel that any decisions made by President George W. Bush and President Donald Trump are almost illegitimate, due to their loss in the popular vote. They also feel that Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh should have been liberal judges.

Then, to add the icing on the cake, they cite polls as if they're the second coming. "Polls show America stands with us on guns, abortion, gays, war, economics, ect ect".

Keep in mind, these polls have been flawed in the last five or six years, often giving them false hope. President Hillary Clinton. Governor Andrew Gillum. Remember the Parkland Florida Roundtable thread? Remember the salivating about how "done the GOP was" in Florida? Tell that to Governor DeSantis and Senator Rick Scott. How about my new Governor, Mike DeWine?

The point is, they are obsessed with polls. Beyond obsessed. As we win elections, they watch polls. It's actually quite pathetic.

I think that's the jist of the left. They think they won even when they lose. I don't know what more they need. A simple popular vote victory?

[Unbeatable Titan Susan Collins]

Its also very, very peculiar that Democrats are just now finding a problem with the Senate.  I don't remember this when we had Majority Leader Harry Reid from 2010-2014?

[AndyHogan14]

This is why the left acts so cocky with election results: They don't believe they lose, when they lose. If it's not gerrymandering, it's voter fraud. If it's not voter fraud, it's Russia. If it's not Russia, it's voter I.D. laws.

I believe the way the left sees it, is that the popular vote should choose the President. That is not and has never been the way we elect Presidents. Period. So they feel that America elected the following:

President Bill Clinton
President Al Gore
President George W. Bush* (He should have never been re-elected because he didn't win the first time)
President Barack Obama
President Hillary Clinton

So basically, they feel that any decisions made by President George W. Bush and President Donald Trump are almost illegitimate, due to their loss in the popular vote. They also feel that Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh should have been liberal judges.

Then, to add the icing on the cake, they cite polls as if they're the second coming. "Polls show America stands with us on guns, abortion, gays, war, economics, ect ect".

Keep in mind, these polls have been flawed in the last five or six years, often giving them false hope. President Hillary Clinton. Governor Andrew Gillum. Remember the Parkland Florida Roundtable thread? Remember the salivating about how "done the GOP was" in Florida? Tell that to Governor DeSantis and Senator Rick Scott. How about my new Governor, Mike DeWine?

The point is, they are obsessed with polls. Beyond obsessed. As we win elections, they watch polls. It's actually quite pathetic.

I think that's the jist of the left. They think they won even when they lose. I don't know what more they need. A simple popular vote victory?

Is it so much to ask that a vote in Wyoming is not worth 68 times more than my own simply because of their geographic location?

What is pathetic, is that certain elements of society absolutely refuse to see that we have a major problem in this country with a tyranny of the minority. While I believe that there should be minority rights, it is ludicrous to think that the minority should be able to veto everything the majority wants simply because of an archaic system that is extremely flawed and was actually quite controversial when it was adopted. Just because something has been a certain way for a long time does not mean it is right or just.

Quite frankly, I could not care less what Florida or Ohio do within their state borders. That said, if we are to have a national government, it should be representative of the people regardless of political subdivisions. Again, why should a vote from Wyoming be 68 times more valuable than my own? It is an affront to democracy and republican principles and it is sad that more people cannot see that.

[alancia]

I think, from my point of view as a foreigner to the US that a reform of the Senate is necessary. Here in Argentina we did the same thing in 1994, amending the composition of the upper chamber to represent a more 'democratic' distribution, so to speak.

I think what would be good for the U.S is what I call an 'inverse' representation of the states, to give more saying in the decision making of the American democracy to more 'worthy' states, so-to speak. Under this 'inverse' system, Wyoming would get 55 Senate Seats, while California gets 1.

It may sound unfair at first, but in reality this proposal would level the playing field so that less populated states aren't intimidated by the bigger population of the most overcrowded states.

[7,052,770]

Its also very, very peculiar that Democrats are just now finding a problem with the Senate.  I don't remember this when we had Majority Leader Harry Reid from 2010-2014?

LOL, Democrats have been saying this for years, including times when we had 60 senators and you know it.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Abolish the Senate, double the size of the House, introduce mixed member proportional, abolish the Presidency and have the executive chosen from the House as in a parliamentary system.

[Coastal Elitist]

Its also very, very peculiar that Democrats are just now finding a problem with the Senate.  I don't remember this when we had Majority Leader Harry Reid from 2010-2014?

LOL, Democrats have been saying this for years, including times when we had 60 senators and you know it.

I can't say I've heard that before. Sources please

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Abolish the Senate, double the size of the House, introduce mixed member proportional, abolish the Presidency and have the executive chosen from the House as in a parliamentary system.

No thank you!

"And don't tell me about London and Berlin, god save us from the mess they are in".

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv


There is no way you could use this amendment to say the present allocation of the 14th amendment is unconstitutional

Then the reasoning in Reynolds v. Sims must be incorrect. If representation based on geography is unconstitutional for the states, it stands to reason that it is unconstitutional for the federal government as well.

Reynolds is incorrect and the court should have never denied to the states, what the constitution reserves for itself to engage in at the federal level. This is the product of a majority that itself was keen on overwriting the explicit word of the Constitution and presumed as a matter of progress that the US Senate would one day be abolished or reformed, just that they themselves didn't view themselves as having the power to do so.

The ruling should have required that at least one chamber of each state represent its people in accordance with one man, one vote, not both.

[Sir Mohamed]

Why not a system as in US states, where both house and senate members are elected for districts? Maybe 120 senators and 600 house members?

Regardless, the next Dem trifecta should admit PR, DC and Guam as states.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Why not a system as in US states, where both house and senate members are elected for districts? Maybe 120 senators and 600 house members?

I support the Cube Root Rule for House. Which is 675 for the 2010 census.