RESHAPE THE SENATE...ALREADY

Brooklyn native Barbara Boxer achieved bragging rights in 2004 to winning more votes - 6.9 million - than any Senate candidate in American history. Her accomplishment can probably be attributed to her staying power and the ongoing growth of her adopted state, California, which is home to 36 million people.

Larry Craig retired in 2008 after 18 years in the Senate representing Idaho, where 1.4 million people live. His departure follows his perceptible overtures to an undercover police officer in the next toilet stall in an airport restroom in Minneapolis.

While Craig distinguished himself in a distasteful manner, Boxer has distinguished herself as a commanding figure in the Senate. In a world that is historically unfair, Boxer and Craig exercised exactly the same level of clout for their respective constituents during the 16 years that they simultaneously spent in the Senate chamber; Craig was first elected to the Senate in 1990 and Boxer was elected two years later.

This contrast exemplifies, if to an extreme degree, that the constitutional requirement of two Senate seats for each state does not work in a democratic system. It allows all the smaller states to exercise far more clout than the larger states. The House of Representatives’s seats are allocated proportionately, but not power in the Senate.

Not only are Senate votes tainted by this system but so is the Electoral College vote and the Senate rule permitting filibusters. A Senate majority takes 51 votes, yet as few as 41 senators can block legislation with the filibuster. Worse, a majority of the 26 least populous states could control the legislative process.

We could eliminate the Senate entirely and allow the House to take on powers that it currently lacks. However, a plan described below would leave smaller states with one senator apiece and expand the number of senators in larger states.

Minority groups have long been harmed by this system. In his book How Democratic is the American Constitution?, Yale professor emeritus Robert A. Dahl recounts that the House passed eight anti-slavery measures between 1800 and 1860; all eight were defeated in the Senate. The South also exploited its Senate power to end Reconstruction “and for another century it prevented the country from enacting federal laws to protect the most basic human rights of African Americans,” Dahl wrote.

Boxer represents the second largest Jewish population in America, at 1.1 million, which includes her, and Craig represented a tiny Jewish population, 1,100; South Dakota’s Jewish community is the smallest at 295. The greater Jewish populations are concentrated in the larger states which have been historically shortchanged - New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, southern Florida, California and Illinois.

Like most minority groups, Jews have been jeopardized over bread-and-butter issues including prescription drugs for the elderly, Social Security, education, health care and the economy. Jewish support for Israel has yet to be threatened.

Already, the 2010 Senate campaigns have begun. Democratic operative J. B. Poersch has been sending e-mails urging his minions to galvanize to produce a filibuster-proof Senate. Poersch will almost certainly get his wish. Senate seats held by Republicans in 11 states are somewhat vulnerable. Figure on Ohio and New Hampshire falling to the Democrats.

Currently, Democrats hold 56 seats and are supported by two progressive-leaning independent senators, while Democrat Al Franken is waiting out a court battle in Minnesota.

If Democrats solidify their power, they could at least dispose of the filibuster and, naturally, the Electoral College, and go on to transform the Senate structure. Practically speaking, President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress will probably benefit politically from any changes in this system, but what is crucial is that the American people will benefit.

This has long been my personal view as a citizen, and I was pleased to find myself in good company with Professor Dahl, who wrote in his book: “Because the votes of U.S. senators are counted equally, in 2000 the vote of a Nevada resident for the U.S. Senate was…worth about 17 times the vote of a California resident. Surely the inequality in representation it reveals is a profound violation of the democratic idea of political equality among all citizens.”

Even Constitution signer and eventual President James Madison doubted this arrangement, saying, “The states were divided into different interests, not by their differences in size, but by other circumstances,” according to Dahl’s book.

A more proportionate scheme to reshuffle the Senate would reduce the number of senators for states as politically disparate as Wyoming and Vermont - respectively, the first and second least populous - to one senator each, and boost the amount of senators in large states to at least three.

However, states with a multiple number of senators would no longer be represented on an at-large basis. Instead, each senator would exclusively represent a separate district equal in population to the districts represented by the state’s other senators.

Pennsylvanians might reap the most benefits from this arrangement. Senator #1 might represent Philadelphia, its suburbs and other surrounding counties, which is a moderate to liberal region; the second senator might represent central Pennsylvania, which is ultra-right; and the third for western Pennsylvania, a swing area.

No longer would any senator in Pennsylvania need to navigate among so many competing constituencies with impossibly opposing priorities. Senator #1 could not survive politically without a centrist or liberal voting record. The ultra-conservative Rick Santorum, ousted in 2006 as voters trended liberal, could have counted on a lifetime job if central Pennsylvania was his sole constituency.

Senators would also be able to resist partisan pressure because party leaders will automatically understand that each senator will likely represent a more narrow constituency. Sen. Arlen Specter is expected to face a risky primary challenge next year after voting for the stimulus package.

The Philadelphia and Pittsburgh senators would certainly get a break in traveling. Approximately one-third of Pennsylvanians lives within a 50-mile drive of Philadelphia. Specter, for example, could forgo trips to Erie and Johnstown and have more time to meet with constituents who reside no further than Allentown or Reading.

The arrangement would open the door to multiple parties or independent senators. Around Philadelphia, voters might be able to elect a progressive independent rather than a Democrat or a moderate Republican. Two independent senators now serve there, and independent candidates were elected as governors in Maine and Minnesota.

The Senate can eliminate the filibuster because it is a Senate rule, but Constitutional requirements would, on the surface, thwart removal of the Electoral College and reshaping of the Senate. Perhaps the 14th Amendment, which mandates “equal protection of the laws,” voids the unwieldy process to change the Constitution. Worth looking into.