Plan B Forum

In 2016, there were 34 Senate seats up for grabs. In those 34 states, 40.4 million people voted for a Republican senator and won 22 seats. 51.5 million voted for a Democratic senator and won 12 seats. So based on this, a Senate seat costs 1.83 million Republican votes or 4.29 million Democratic votes.

Given that the Senate has 'advise and consent' power this seems a little lopsided.

Yup, but that's what the senate is intended to be, giving all states the same number of senators regardless of population.

How those numbers breakdown are always going to be a function of what states are holding Senate elections in any given year, (and what the population is in those states) and how those elections are structured...

The 2016 numbers that you cite for example, are greatly affected by the fact that California had a seat up, and with the nutty open primary system that's been imposed, also had two Democrats in vying for the seat in the general election (Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez)

What that means is that every single vote that was cast in the California Senatorial general election was cast for Democrat; over 12 million votes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... rnia,_2016

Oh I well understand that's what the constitution says; and I also understand that with CA in the mix there will be a disproportionate result. But still when you see those bald numbers (similar to the cost of an EC vote being much higher for Democrats than for Republicans) it is obvious that the framers of the constitution in 1787 did not (and could not) foresee the urban rural split and how it might affect these counts.

ex-khobar Andy wrote: But still when you see those bald numbers (similar to the cost of an EC vote being much higher for Democrats than for Republicans) it is obvious that the framers of the constitution in 1787 did not (and could not) foresee the urban rural split and how it might affect these counts.

Quite the opposite, they saw this quite clearly and their intent was to have the process be decided on a state by state basis, rather than a pure national democratic vote.

Beat me to it, LR...

At the time of the Constitution's adoption you had states with lesser and greater populations just like today...

The reason Senate representation was set up as it is, was to serve as a check on the ability of the more populous states to exert free reign over the interests of the less populous. This was worked out in The Connecticut Compromise of 1787, during the negotiations to establish the Constitution:

The Connecticut Compromise (also known as the Great Compromise of 1787 or The Sherman Compromise) was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. It retained the bicameral legislature as proposed by Roger Sherman, along with proportional representation in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equally between the states. Each state would have two representatives in the upper house.

Full article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise

Yes in general terms you are correct: but two things. At the time the constitution was promulgated, the most populous state VA had about 30 times the population of the least TN, while now the ratio between the most populous CA and the least WY is about 70. In 1790 7 of the 13 states had less than the average population, but in 2010 34 of 50 states have less than the mean population. So there is much more tail and much less dog now than there was in 1790. To put it another way: the statistical peak in 1790 was more or less Gaussian, but is now very skewed.

Secondly, if we go with original intent Hillary would be VP and in line to succeed Trump if he were successfully removed. I don't disagree with the Twelth Amendment but I would love to see how an originalist like Scalia would handle that.

I would think most strict constructionists accept any amendment of the constitution as proper because that is what the founders intended to allow the country to make changes; they just reject that interpretation of the courts should prevail over original intent (despite a 200+ year history of jurisprudence to the contrary), unless, of course, it suits their purposes (especially in the social arena).

Here's a number I've not seen before too also... 3456789209374.335534