The US Senate has always been unrepresentative of the nation’s population. Every state, regardless of population, gets two senators. However, over the years the Senate has become even less representative as more people move away from rural areas and into urban areas.
This situation has real consequences for our democracy. One of those being that a majority of the senate represents just 18% of the population. The main reason the framers of the Constitution included unrepresentative institutions such as the Senate and the Electoral College was to prevent the tyranny of the majority. They wanted to prevent the majority from imposing its will on the minority. But what we have now is the tyranny of the minority. The 47 Senate Democrats who will be in the next Congress represent 52% of the population — a majority. Yet it is the Republicans who will have the majority in the Senate with 53 seats. The Constitution’s framers had wished to prevent the civil unrest that could arise from a far-off majority imposing its will on a minority in a particular region. They wanted people from across multiple regions of the country to be represented. But now there is a risk of civil unrest from the growing disconnect between the Senate and the people they are meant to represent. That risk will only grow if we don’t make some changes.
To guard against both the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority, I propose we create US senate districts proportioned by population. It will guard against the tyranny of the minority because everyone’s vote will count equally whether the voter lives in an urban area or a rural one. It will guard against the tyranny of the majority because we will still keep the Electoral College. We will still have the winner-take-all system of allocating electoral votes — this time for each senate district. As a result, a candidate for President will still have to gain support across multiple regions of the US in order to win the presidency. In this way, we can balance the rights of both the majority and the minority.