It’s been 34 years since Senate Republicans represented a majority of the U.S. population. Nevertheless, in seven of the 13 Congresses since then, Republicans were the Senate majority party. How can that be?
The elephont in the room: a senator from California represents more than 39 million residents; from Wyoming, less than 577,000. But both states have the same number of votes in the U.S. Senate.
“At the time of the founding, the biggest state was 13 times the size of the smallest state. Today…a few hundred thousand people in Wyoming have as much power as tens of millions of people in California or New York.”
The situation is worse than that Wyoming example. California has a greater population than the smallest 21 (of 50) states combined. No “one person, one vote” relationship is happening if you live in California.
One consequence of the Constitutional compromise that gave each state two senators: twice in this century the person who won the popular vote did not set foot in the White House. Our electoral college vote is rigged to favor minority rule because of the Senate’s non-proportional structure. Every state gets two senators. (Give the founding leaders a little break; there were no political parties in 1787.)
Al Gore conceded to George Bush in 2000 after the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount. Gore received 50,992,235 votes to Bush’s 50,455,456.
Hillary Clinton conceded to Donald Trump in 2016, despite receiving about 2.9 million more votes than Trump.
You have to reach way back to 1876 and 1888 to see that same unequal treatment, a minority-vote president.
Having almost two-thirds of the Court nominated by two men who did not win the popular vote is only one example of minority tyranny.
The minority rule in the Senate
It’s all too common to have a majority vote in the U.S. Senate that does not reflect the will of most Americans. There may be no more stark example than the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate manages nomination and confirmation of justices.
Of the six GOP-nominated Supreme Court justices, only one was proposed by a popular vote elected president, George Herbert Walker Bush. However, that nominee, Clarence Thomas, was confirmed by senators representing a minority of the populace.
Only one of the six justices received a confirmation vote that reflected most Americans: John Roberts. But he was nominated by George W. Bush, who did not win the popular vote contest.
Neil Gorsuch was “the first justice in American history” who was (1) nominated by a president who had not won the popular vote and (2) confirmed by senators representing less than half of the country. Two more followed: Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barret.
Look at Barrett as an example. The senators who voted not to confirm represented 13.5 million more Americans than the senators who voted for confirmation. Those voting to confirm represented less than 45% of the American public.
GOP-nominated Supreme Court justices and their confirmation votes
PresidentJusticeVoteSenatePercent*GHWB, 1991Thomas52-48D-5649%GWB, 2005Roberts78-22R-5565%GWB, 2005Alito58-42R-5550%Obama, 2009Sotomayor68-31D-5774%Obama, 2010Kagan63-37D-5760%Trump, 2017Gorsuch54-45R-5144%Trump, 2018Kavanaugh50-48R-5143%Trump, 2020Barrett52-48R-5340%Biden, 2022Jackson53-47D:48, I:259%*Approximate percentages; vote tallies from Congress.gov and population data from the Census.
This minority rule is not sustainable, and it’s going to get much more one-sided.
By 2040, if population trends continue, 70% of Americans will be represented by just 30 senators, and 30% of Americans by 70 senators.
Congress adjusted the Court up to nine members in … 1869. It was a post-Civil War change. The population was about 39 million; there were 37 states. Today’s population exceeds 334 million, and we have 50 states (plus the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico). Congress could do that today, if the GOP were a party of action and compromise rather than distraction and conflict.
Taxation without representation was one trigger for the Declaration of Independence, 04 July 1776, almost 250 years ago. Today’s newly announced royal presidency, endowed by an illegitimate Court, is equally untenable.
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Image by Kathy Gill, based on illustration from WhoWhatWhy.
