Changing the structure of the Senate to proportional representation would require many states that get additional power from its existing structure to willingly give up that power.
It's not going to happen. 1/
It's not going to happen. 1/
To ratify a Constitutional amendment, you need 3/4s of the states. That's 38.
You're not going to get 67 senators to agree, so you'd need a convention.
No incentive for states like West Virginia or Nebraska (13th & 14th in population) to back such a move.archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.co…
You're not going to get 67 senators to agree, so you'd need a convention.
No incentive for states like West Virginia or Nebraska (13th & 14th in population) to back such a move.archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.co…
It's vastly more likely -- but still extremely unlikely -- that you could slice the most populous states into smaller slivers. That only requires 218 & 50+VP + the consent of the state about to be torn asunder. Some in California have talked about it. BUT...
Where would the votes come from to turn California into 2, 4, 5 states? A lot of senators would be voting against their own states' long-term power interests. In the current Senate you'd need people like Joe Manchin or Heidi Heitkamp to vote to give Californians more power.
Vastly more likely again would be to make Puerto Rico a state. That would improve representation of Americans but wouldn't really increase proportionality; 50 equally sized states would each have more than 6 million people; PR has 3.3M and falling.
If DC were made into a state it would be one of the smaller states, so you'd probably be DECREASING proportionality. And at any rate, adding states is keeping the existing Senate structure.
