The problem with the US Senate

The problem with the US Senate goes a lot deeper than the need for a 60% super majority to pass anything. That may be an issue for some of us, but there have been times that I've been glad for the ability of a minority to prevent passage of (what I saw as) ill considered  legislation. In the current Congress the immediate problem is polarization.

But more basic than that, the problem lies in the undemocratic nature of representation in the Senate. Each state, large or small (here I am speaking of population) has two Senators. This means voters in large states have their influence diluted relative to voters in small states. This means that a voter in Claymont, Delaware has the voting power of fifteen voters living five miles away in south eastern Pennsylvania.

This made sense when the Constitution was ratified; the states were sovereign, and equal in law. This fact was explained in The Federalist Papers (No. 62 by James Madison). But then the rational broke down. States started being admitted that had never been sovereign. In fact the only sovereign state to enter the union after the first thirteen I can think of is Texas (Vermont's claim is unclear, the California Free State was a mining town in the history I've read).

The 17th Amendment confirmed that each state was to have two Senators, and provided for their direct election and not election by the state legislature as before. So the Senators, since 1913, now represent the people and not the state as a sovereign entity. And that undermines the justification for unequal representation. There is no longer any justification for my neighbor in Claymont to have 15 times the voting power, and influence, in the Senate than I have. One man (or woman), one vote!