The people ought to be more indifferently proportioned…
From An Agreement of the People, for A firme and present Peace, Upon grounds of common-right and freedome (1647):
I. That the people of England, being at this day very unequally distributed by Counties, Cities, and Boroughs, for the election of their deputies in Parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned, according to the number of the inhabitants; the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down before the end of this present Parliament.
Today, Senators representing 37% of the population in the U.S. can apparently control the agenda and outcome of this nation’s legislature.
— “Political math: 37 > 63,” by James Fallows in the Atlantic (ht, Andrew Sullivan).
Update — The title of this post, quoted from the 1647 “Agreement of the People,” is pretty funny taken out of context. But “the people” refers to the whole population, or to be more precise, the body-politic of the United States.
So how might the people be better proportioned? Here’s a map showing new boundaries for fifty states, each with about 5.6 million, which would mean that the two senators from each state represent about the same number of people:
Neil Freeman’s map is included in a follow-up post by James Fallows in his blog at the Atlantic.
You gotta love some of those names. “Brownia” is presumably named for the abolitionist John Brown. And like the Quakers’ Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the proposed state of Philadelphia encompasses southern New Jersey and maybe a bit of Delaware.
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July 6th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
there is no mention of what the PEOPLE in those ‘zones’ think. how many do you suppose would not mind having their identity- that is, growing up and having family history in one state- eradicated one one day never to return? very few. yet considerations like that should be obvious. whoever came up with this map should print it out on 36″x48″ paper, roll it up, and …
July 11th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
It’s not like it’s really going to happen, bob.
In England when the ‘Agreement of the People’ was written, some of the districts that sent members to parliament had almost nobody living there, while larger towns and cities were grossly underrepresented. A century later, with the new U.S. Constitution, a House of Representatives was formed that would proportion ‘the people’ more evenly. A Senate was included to give certain powers evenly to all the States, even those like (today) Wyoming and Alaska where voters would have disproportionate effect.
And now, with the 60-40 filibuster rule, Senators representing 37% of the county’s population can block initiatives such as reforms to banking and finance. And that’s how it is.