The goal isn't about guaranteeing that all states have X number of votes; the house and the senate vote separately on things. For a bill to pass the house and the senate requires:
1. A majority vote by the house whose members are allocated by population and therefore (ostensibly) represent the general population
2. A majority vote by the senate whose members are allocated by state and therefore (ostensibly) represent the will or needs of the states themselves.
As an example of why that distinction is relevant, consider Rhode Island. With a population of 1.1 million people, 100 reserved seats plus one seat per 500k would give Rhode Island 4 votes. Meanwhile, California's population of 38.9 million would give it 70 votes. That prohibits effectively representing Rhode Island as a state in any meaningful way.
As it is now, vote-by-population could allow a small number of states with the majority of population to out-vote the entire rest of the country, passing a law that states that all healthcare should be made free and the states have to pay for it themselves. Large states with strong economies and large tax bases might be in favor of that, but smaller and less populous states with weaker economies would go bankrupt.
Thus comes the senate, where a majority of states can decide that the law is inappropriate or against their interests and vote against it.
The distinction I think that most people from outside of the US probably don't fully understand is that, unlike in a lot of countries, each state is its own economy, government, politics, etc. rather than one sort of unified government that covers the whole country. Many of them see the federal government as not much more than a necessary evil to help the independent-but-united states coordinate themselves and prosper together. I remember someone once saying that it used to be "The United States are..." and not "The United States is..." and that kind of gives you an idea of the separation.
The best comparison might be the EU, where you could imagine the large, rich countries with large populations wanting to pass a vote that the smaller, poorer countries might chafe against. Imagine an EU resolution that said that all countries must spend at least 70 billion euro on defense; fine for large countries like Germany which already do, but absurd for a smaller country like Malta. The senate exists to prohibit that sort of unfairness in the US federal government.
Additionally, the Senate in original form was actually selected by the states (or rather, their governments). Direct election of Senators only came about in the early 20th century with the 17th Amendment.
And this whole discussion gets further complex when you consider the US uses an antiquated indirect system to elect the President (who in our government is more akin to a Prime Minister in many parliamentary systems than the ceremonial president in those same systems).
In the US, each state gets a number of electors who elect the President. The number is based on the number of Sentators plus the number of House members. So the smallest states are guaranteed 3 electors no matter how out of proportion that count may be.
The consequence of this is in my lifetime, Republicans have won the Presidency twice with a minority of the popular vote (and thrice with a majority)...
2000 - George W Bush won with 47% of the vote to Al Gore's 51%.
2016 - Trump won with 46% to Clinton's 56%.
Reagan, Bush Snr, and Trump (2nd term) won with majorities of the popular vote.
Notably, a Democrat has NEVER won the presidency with LESS than a majority.
For those of who are both residents of moderately sized states, and also lean left on political issues, this certainly feels like a massive structural problem.
> The distinction I think that most people from outside of the US probably don't fully understand is that, unlike in a lot of countries, each state is its own economy, government, politics, etc. rather than one sort of unified government that covers the whole country.
This is exactly how I see how my country and EU works. I feel like this is something I am intimately familiar with.
> Thus comes the senate, where a majority of states can decide that the law is inappropriate or against their interests and vote against it.
What mechanism causes the senate to be more resilient to those issues than a unified Congress?
Before 1913, State's legislatures would elect their US Senators. Since 1913, Senators are directly elected but to longer terms than their peers in the House, as a way to make them less beholden to the whims of the zeitgeist and more stable in their consideration of "what serves the state" in that they do not face elections immediately and the results of their work are meant to be evaluated over a longer period. -- this is the intent, reality may bear out differently
> What mechanism causes the senate to be more resilient to those issues than a unified Congress?
The Senate is limited to two seats per state. With the current 50 states, that makes 100 members. So only 51 seats need vote against a bill they feel would harm their states. As the Senate is divided up, a very populous state (California) receives two, just like a very small state (Delaware) receives two, so each is on "equal footing" with the other states. [note that "small" here refers to population, not land area]
If everyone was all mixed together into one bowl, then a populous state like California (52 house seats, plus 2 senators for 54) is 22% of the total votes needed for a simple majority, all by themselves.
Also, states have their own militaries. Some states even have multiple. All states have an Army National Guard and some have and Air National Guard. Those militaries can be federalized, but normally pertain to the state. Some states even have other military branches such as Texas, which has a State Guard which cannot be federalized.
>Couldn’t it also work by guaranteeing each state X seats and then the rest Y seats are set according to census data on population?
Yes. If you call the "X" club the Senate and the "Y" club the House of Representatives, this is exactly how our bicameral legislature works.
edit: Their votes count for passage in their chamber, not equally weighted against eachother. If you mean Y seats equal seats by population but with a minimum X, then that's how the House works. Any proposal to make the senate proportional starts to ask why we're not unicameral because then you basically have 2x house of reps but with different voting district sizes.
Point is, they would not have different roles, but instead work as a single house which votes on issues and laws and then delegates the result to the executive branch. No dual ”clubs” or houses with separate votes or separate elections.
Part of the point of the split when the US Congress was designed was to intentionally make it difficult for bills to pass, because they had to pass votes in two independent houses, that (presumably) were focused on differing agendas.
This inherent difficulty was the intended outcome to try to assure that only bills which had strong support overall from different perspectives and viewpoints would make it through the double gauntlet.
You have essentially described the current US Senate/House as it was originally set out in the constitution.
One group of limited seats, with equal seats per state (the Senate). This is the "guarantee of at least X seats" to each state part.
A second group with the number of seats determined directly by population (the House). This is "the rest set ... according to census data on population".
One big change along the way was an amendment that capped the size of the House at 435 members to avoid it growing ever larger as the population expanded. Now the 435 are allocated to the states based on population.
> One big change along the way was an amendment that capped the size of the House at 435 members to avoid it growing ever larger as the population expanded. Now the 435 are allocated to the states based on population.
Thankfully, the Permanent Apportionment Act is not actually a constitutional amendment and could be corrected with the passing of legislation rather than needing to go through a full amendment process.
Not as far as my limited understanding is, USA still has a Congress and a House, and the comment thread I replied was specifically about abolishing the Congress for a different solution. And as far as
I know USA has not abolished the Congress, right?
Congress as a whole? I don't know if there's anything unique it solves. It's merely the US's compromise to balance between a monarchy and a weak federal government with little control over the coalition of states.
The big issue is that our House of Representatives stopped being proportional to the population some 90 years ago. I believe analysts suggested that a House today would have over 1000 members, as to the 435 seats today. So that only increases representation of smaller states.
Other have pointed out that the house ("Y seats are set according to census data on population") and senate ("guaranteeing each state X seats") already do what you suggest.
Amazingly some guys thought it up hundreds of years ago. Is your issue that it is bicameral? If so what advantage would one house have?
> Other have pointed out that the house ("Y seats are set according to census data on population")
This is repeated all over this thread, but it is just no longer actually true.
The Permanent Apportionment Act means that it is only partially tied to census data. The low cap and guaranteed seats mean that low population states have more power per capita in the house to a significant degree.
Couldn’t it also work by guaranteeing each state X seats and then the rest Y seats are set according to census data on population?
For example a single house with 100 reserved seats, and on top of that one seat per 500k citizens?