So, I saw this tweet, by yet another person claiming that critics of U.S. Senate apportionment rules are historically illiterate:

I’m sick and tired of this argument, and I responded with what seems to me to be the obvious rejoinder:

I realize this has become a partisan issue because of the elections, but the factual claim in my tweet is incontrovertible: People in low-population states have far more voting power in the U.S. Senate than people in high-population states, because every state gets two senators, regardless of the population. Thus, the 28 million people living in Texas are represented by only two Senators, whereas the 27 million people living in the combined states of Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming are represented by 36 senators. That’s an 18-fold advantage.

Several replies to my tweet were from people who seemed to think they were arguing with me, but who were actually agreeing with me, starting with the original tweeter I responded to:

These people are all making the same point I was making: The Senate does not represent the people fairly and equally because it privileges states. Originally, each state’s senators were elected by state legislatures. The idea was to give state legislatures a say in the federal legislative process. Thus the Senate would be more like the members of the earlier Continental Congress (or U.N. delegates today) than free-standing representatives of the people. 

The 17th amendment screwed all that up by switching the selection of senators to direct popular elections in the states. Nowadays, except for a few constitutional powers, the Senate is basically a smaller version of the House of Representatives, but with longer terms and badly disproportionate representation.

No, the 17th Amendment didn’t just make people think the Senate represents people. The 17th Amendment made the Senate represent people. Just not very well.

A few people took the tiresome path of objecting to my use of the word “democracy”:

And you should have learned in civics class that in the taxonomy of systems of government, a constitutional republic is a type of democracy. The United States is a democracy, and more specifically, a constitutional republic.

I’m not sure how to answer this one. Two conflicting responses come to mind:

• You teach civics, and you don’t know a constitutional republic is a democracy?
• Do you realize that in saying the U.S. is not a democracy, you’re agreeing with my assertion that we’re doing democracy wrong?

Look, the idea of fairness is a pretty basic ethical principle. It’s why the rallying cry of election reformers has so often been some variation of “one person, one vote.”  In utilitarian terms: Everybody matters, and everybody matters equally. Except when voting for U.S. Senators, where some people’s votes are a lot more influential than others.

Yes, it was designed this way on purpose. But that was a compromise (literally, it’s the Connecticut Compromise) necessary, given the concerns of the time, to form the United States into a stronger, more unified government. But just because the Senate’s structure was intentional and necessary doesn’t mean that Senate representation is fair or just.

I also realize that actually changing Senate apportionment would be extremely difficult. At minimum, we’d need a constitutional amendment, and even that wouldn’t be sufficient because Article Five of the Constitution explicitly prohibits amendments that reduce a state’s representation in the Senate without that state’s permission.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with arguing that the Senate’s structure was a good idea at one time, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with arguing that reforming the Senate is far too difficult to be workable. But you can’t argue that the existing structure is moral and right unless you can explain why you think disproportionate representation is a good thing.

Like this, for example:

That was just about the only tweet to avoid getting hung up on side issues and actually attempt to support the disproportionate representation.

My short answer to Forward Observer is that I’m against tyranny too, but tyranny of the majority is still better than tyranny of the minority. You limit tyranny by limiting the authority of government, not giving that authority to a smaller group of people.

And if you want to protect a minority, the Senate’s disproportionate representation shifts voting power to protect a vary strange minority class. It doesn’t protect racial or ethnic minorities, and it doesn’t protect religious minorities, or any of the other classes that are normally considered disadvantaged. And contrary to what Forward Observer is suggesting, it doesn’t even protect people who live in rural areas outside the “biggest cities,” because there are big cities in small states, and there are rural areas in big states. The people living in Las Vegas benefit from their influence over Nevada’s two Senators, and people living in the rural areas of Texas (or New York or California) lose by comparison.

To the extent that Senate apportionment rules protect anyone against tyranny of the majority, they only protect people who live in states with small populations, which is kind of a strangely defined group of people to be concerned about.

Yesterday morning, for the second time, I voted from my new address in the suburbs, after many years of voting in Chicago. It’s pretty much the same experience out here as it was in the city, except out here they have good parking.

I only had to stand in line a minute or two before giving my name to one of the election judges, who looked me up on the computer and printed out a label for my application to vote. I signed the application, and then both judges checked it against the copy of my signature on the label. Satisfied, they initialed it and sent me down to receive my ballot.

This was the first election where I’ve seen them use the computerized ePollbook system to check my registration. In the past, they always used a giant printed book. Normally, I’m skeptical of computerized election procedures, but since the giant printed book was computer-generated anyway, this seemed like an improvement without an increased risk. I thought it worked well.

The system broke down a bit, however, when I got to the ballot judge. He checked my application, grabbed the appropriate ballot form, initialed it, and handed it to me. As I stepped away, I noticed something odd. He had given me two ballot forms.

Oh my God, this was my big chance! After decades of voting in Chicago, I was finally getting to live the Chicago election motto: Vote early, vote often!

My mind was off in a flash: Nobody was paying attention, so I could just walk to the booth. Voting is private by law and design, so nobody would be able to see what I was doing. I could fill out both ballots and vote twice. Problem: The judge had only initialed one ballot. But would anyone notice? Maybe I could just feed the ballot to the AccuVote tabulator and let it be counted. Probably no one would notice it was missing the judge’s initials unless they had to do a manual recount. Alternatively, I could forge a copy of the judge’s initials on the other ballot. Problem: Can I get away with feeding two ballots to the tabulator? Maybe, if no one was watching. Or I could leave one of the ballots behind in the voting booth, where another voter would discover it and report it to a judge, who might solve the problem by feeding it to the tabulator. Better yet, I could try depositing both ballots, and then if someone spotted me, I could claim that I had found the second ballot in the booth, and I was just trying to be helpful because I didn’t want someone to lose their vote…

With a heavy heart, I turned back to the judge’s table and handed back the extra ballot, and then I went to vote. Just once. Like all the other losers.

But for that one shining moment…

If I’m following the story correctly, California Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, has prepared a 4-page memo which purports that the FBI lied in some way to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to get permission to wiretap a Trump aide who was supposedly talking to the Russians. 

Democrats are arguing that Republicans only want to release the memo to protect Trump by derailing Muller’s Russia investigation. Republicans are arguing that the memo should come out because it will show that the Russia investigation is driven by partisan hackery. And now the FBI is now saying they have “grave concerns” over the memo because it is misleading and reveals secrets.

To hell with all of them. Either show us the memo or shut up about it. All this speculation is pointless when the memo itself is right there.

I gotta say, it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be.

Last year about this time I was concerned about four major policy areas where I thought Trump could ruin things. He’s been active in all of them, but as I suggested, he’s done the most damage in the area where he has the most direct control: Immigration. Trump’s attempt at a Muslim ban fell apart pretty quickly because it was so poorly executed (although that did not stop our traitorous Homeland Security department from trying to stop permanent residents from re-entering the country). He keeps trying though, with the result that our immigration system is in turmoil. He has also been creating chaos for the “Dreamers” who were brought here as children, leaving their status unresolved and in jeopardy for most of the year. Trump is a wrecking ball.

Lest you think Trump has some principled objections to illegal immigration, he’s also been pushing for more restrictions on legal immigration, including a reduction in the diversity lottery, reduced acceptance of refugees, restrictions on family immigration, and a bizarre scoring system for merit-based immigration.

Trump has done less damage to our healthcare system. The direct Obamacare repeals all failed, and cutting the advertising budget appears to have only slightly lowered enrollment this year. On the other hand, the tax bill removes the individual mandate for next year, without making much in the way of offsetting adjustments, which greatly increases the risk of a health insurance death spiral in 2019.

Trump is moving even slower on Trade. He appears to have killed U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that hadn’t been approved anyway, so it’s not so much a setback as a failure to make progress on a trade deal that wasn’t all that great. On the other hand, the recent tariffs on solar panels and washing machines show Trump’s willingness to steal from some Americans for the benefit of the better connected. In addition, that kind of unpredictability discourages investments.

Finally, I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to foreign policy, but I think I would have noticed any really bad blunders, like nuclear war. And the leaders of most other nations seem to understand that Trump’s bluster shouldn’t be taken too seriously. (The fireworks in North Korea have remained rhetorical.) I do have this vague impression that by restricting trade we are losing influence, and nations like China are moving in, but that may have happened anyway as China becomes wealthier.

Clearly some people have lost big under Trump, but as bad as some of those things are, the overall damage has been surprisingly limited: The broad economic indicators have continued their long streak of improvements and no major disasters have befallen us.

To be honest, I expected much more of a shit show, but things have held together better than I thought.  I think this reflects less on Trump as a President than on the resilience of our institutions, but it’s still good news.

For the coming year, I expect continued turmoil in all of these areas, and I’ll add criminal justice to the list, as the Trump administration continues to reverse federal policies and as the reduced oversight of state law enforcement plays out.

(Now let’s see what happens in the State of the Union address.)

Ever since her speech at the Golden Globes, people have been floating the idea of Oprah Winfrey for President. This is, of course, a silly idea. Or it would have been, before Trump. Oprah, like Trump, has no experience in government. Like Trump, Oprah is a celebrity who has had considerable success at business. And like Trump, Oprah embraces junk science. If not for the example of Trump, electing her President would seem ludicrous and highly unlikely.

(This is not to say that Oprah is the same as Trump. Oprah is, as far as I can tell, a much better person.)

I wonder, when the Republicans chose Trump as their candidate for President, didn’t they realize they would be normalizing the idea of an inexperienced celebrity President? And if so, didn’t they realize which party has the most celebrities?

Republicans are going to learn that lesson the hard way when the Winfrey/Hanks 2020 campaign heats up.