Imagine that you have a nation that is one thousand square miles in size. Ninety percent of the nation is taken up by a city of ten million people. The other ten percent is empty desert and wilderness, populated only by a grizzled hermit named Jim. Tasked with inventing a representative political system for this country, you say, “Well, looks like there are two areas here, so I’ll draw a line between the city and Jim’s land, and I’ll give each an equal number of representatives. When the ten million city people want something they will have to negotiate with Jim, who has a power equal to all of them combined.”
Stupid, right? Yes. This is the United States Senate. This is quite literally the design of the U.S. Senate…
The senate should exist. Giving small areas extra power is a fine compermise. The biggest problem with the senate is not that it gives disproportionate representation, that is the point of it, but that there are many small non-state areas that cannot benefit from it. They should have two senators each if they choose to accept it.
DC is probably the most notable non-state area of the us. Give them statehood if they want it. There are 5 inhabited territories, each of which should have two senators and statehood should they choose to accept it.
The us also has 326 Indian reservations. They are all small inhabited non-state parts of the us. They should each get two senators and statehood should they choose to accept it.
Giving every segment of the united states a place in the senate will fix the issues with it. The most underrepresented places in the senate are not the largest ones, like California as the article claims, but those parts of the country that do not have senators at all. This is a solvable problem.