There was a time, specifically, during the writing of the US Constitution, that political exigency required that the US create a dual legislative system (modeled somewhat on the bicameral British parliament). In one chamber, the US House, had proportional representation, with each Representative serving a constituency that was equal in population size with other constituencies. The other chamber, the US Senate, granted equal representation by state -- namely, two senators per state -- regardless of the size of the population of the state.
The founding fathers probably did not foresee the current situation, where a state like California has a population approaching 40 million people, and another state like Wyoming has a population of half a million.
Yes, it is a nice thing that small states get equal representation with large states in the US Senate.
But because states, unlike human beings, are artificial and inanimate entities, this arrangement has no justifiable grounding in any political philosophy. It is an accident of history that warps public decision making in favor of relatively rural states.
Historically, a similar situation was found in the so-called "Three-fifths compromise" between the northern and southern states at the time of the writing of the Constitution. In order to reach some form of compromise between the North and South, it was agreed that the political power of the southeast would be increased by counting each slave as three-fifths of a regular voter in terms of awarding representation in the US House. This problematic arrangement was eliminated by the Northern victory in the US Civil War.
No such solution seems to be in the offing for promoting proportional representation in the Senate.
What would a gradualist approach look like?
The House might provide one model. Proportional representation in the US House is based on voting within districts of roughly equal population.
Another model comes from legislative bodies in Europe. In most democracies, proportional representation is based on a parliamentary system in which the society at large votes for competing political parties, not for candidates, and the parties decide who the members of parliament (and their leader, a prime minister) is to be.
What might a hybrid system fusing these two approaches look like?
First, imagine three new "regional" seats were created in the US Senate.
Each of these three "regional" senators would represent a "district" with a population of 100 million citizens. This district would consist of contiguous land area and be somewhat unified in that sense and reflect the concerns of constituents, but the borders of this district would constantly change, so that regional differences and identity would not be reinforced too much. (E.g., one can envision the borders of the three regions constantly shifting in a clockwise direction. Or, alternatively states could vote on which region they wanted to belong to.) The candidates for the regional seats would be chosen by political parties or by the US Senate itself and voted on by voters in those temporary "regions" every six years.
Second, imagine also that two new "at large" seats were created in the Senate, the constituency of which was the entire United States. Candidates would be nominated by their parties or by the US Senate, and voted on by the entire country every six years.
There might not be that much resistance to such a scheme. In contrast, there is a movement to create six new states out of California; politically, this would be unacceptable to the Senate because California's two senators would be replaced by 12 new senators, each competing with the rest of the rest of the Senate for national resources.
In contrast, at-large or regional senators would represent all districts in the US, and would not be perceived as competing so starkly against the rest of the Senate.
This proposal would be a small, incremental, gradualist approach to tilting the US Senate toward a more proportional representation.
Hey, at least it's a start. And the marginal influence that these five senators would have might make all the difference in close votes where parochialism might have otherwise prevailed.
