A More Representative Senate

Annie Lowery wrote an interesting op-ed in The Washington Post this weekend imagining worlds where senators represented income brackets or demographics rather than states:

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets — with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.

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Or how about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators — 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate, with 17 currently in office. White men would have 36 seats. Black women, Hispanic women and Hispanic men would have six each; black men five; and Asian women and men two each. Women voters would control a steady and permanent majority — making, say, discriminatory health-care measures such as the Stupak Amendment and the horrible dearth of child-care options for working mothers seem untenable.

What about a Senate in which voters cast ballots for candidates campaigning to win over a certain age group? Thirteen senators would vie for 18-to-24-year-olds, who strongly support measures such as the cap-and-trade climate bill and marriage rights for gays. Nearly all of these senators would be Democrats. Americans over 65 would control 16 seats — and would be mostly Republicans interested in protecting Medicare and the broader status quo. The baby boomer bubble would be largely in the eldest category, though its stragglers would round out the segment of voters, probably split between the parties, that is edging up on retirement. Thirty-six senators would serve 25-to-44-year-olds, and 35 senators 45-to-64-year-olds — and would be likely to push the very issues now on the table, including health care, entitlement viability and tax breaks for the middle class.

I agree with Lowery that the current bicameral structure leaves much to be desired. I also think she’s on to something in trying to figure out senate designs that are more representative of the people. But I have a feeling that a lot of these ideas, in practice, wouldn’t solve every problem.

Lowery is right to write that one failure of our democratic system is the skewed power of smaller states (population wise) but she doesn’t acknowledge that if there were more senators representing a certain income brackets that would result in a whole bunch of new problems. Also, off the top of my head, in a world of “income senators,” I can picture there being a majority of senators advocating for tax cuts instead of the more appropriate deficit spending during a budget crisis.  And we see such populist poolicy stances gaining traction in our system al the time.

So the problem isn’t only that our current system isn’t adequately representative, it’s also that the public needs to be better informed.

On the other hand, a more representative system would probably allow for the culture of filibustering and the rule of the minority to end and that would be a serious improvement.

–Daniel Strauss