Perspective: CA Assembly/Senate shouldn’t make appointments proportionally

Neil Mammen of the SJ organization Values Advocacy Council addresses mounting concerns that ex-residents are California-fying other, currently right-leaning, states. Rather than encouraging migration to left-leaning territories, Mammen suggests that enforcing two-rep state limits would prevent more populous areas from controlling elections. This originally appeared in The Stream.

In each state’s capitol, the State Assembly and the State Senate are appointed proportionately to the population of the state. So, as states’ liberal population grows in the city centers, those areas naturally end up with more assembly members and more senators, until they take over that state’s capitol. These population centers then control and run the entire state. Liberals attract more liberals and repel conservatives, so once the cycle sets in, there’s no stopping it. It feeds on itself and then spreads.

Now, you notice that’s different at the Federal Level. U.S. representatives are elected proportionally, (as California grows, other states lose representatives), but that’s not the case in the U.S. Senate. In the Senate, every state gets 2 senators. It doesn’t matter if it’s California with 37 million or Idaho with 1.8 million….

Why is this important? Because the founding fathers didn’t want the most populous states to control the country. It’s part and parcel of the Electoral College — which liberals are of course eager to abolish. But it’s a great balancing method for U.S. politics.

And it could be great on the state level, too. What if we could change a state’s Senate allotment?

This article originally appeared in The Stream. Read the whole thing here.

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