Dan Marcus teaches at John Stark High School in Weare.
When the Constitution was being created there were several major disputes that needed to be worked out. One of them was about how people and states would be represented in the new government.
Under the existing government at that time, the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal voting power: one state, one vote. James Madison believed that this needed to change so that voting power was proportional to the number of people in each state.
At the time the largest state, Virginia, had about 11 times the number of people as the smallest state, Delaware. James Madison argued that Delaware should not, therefore, have equal voting power with Virginia. Big population states like New York and Pennsylvania agreed, but small states like New Jersey and Connecticut objected. We refer to this in class as the “big state, little state controversy.”
So, how did this get resolved? Well, you may have noticed that we have a two-chamber (a.k.a. bicameral) legislature, with both a House of Representatives and a Senate. This was done to make a compromise between the “big” states and the “small” states.
The House of Representatives was a nod to the big population states. It has proportional representation which is why California, the biggest population state, has 52 representatives and the smallest population states like Wyoming have only 1. To keep the small states happy, in the Senate each state gets two senators and so it maintains the equal state representation from the Articles of Confederation. This deal is often referred to as the “Great Compromise.”
When I ask my students if they think the Great Compromise was a good compromise, they often initially say, “yes.” I think they see each side getting something it wanted. As we get into the numbers, especially in regard to the Senate, some of them change their minds.
Let’s start with the population differences we have today. As stated above the biggest state in 1787 (Virginia) was about 11 times the size of the smallest (Delaware). Today, the biggest state, California, has almost 40 million people and the smallest, Wyoming, has less than 600,000. This means that California is 68 times larger in population than Wyoming, but still has only equal voting power in the Senate as each of the two states gets two senators.
Another way to look at this would be to consider that for every 300,000 people, Wyoming gets one senator and California gets one for every 20 million people.
If you take the three largest states, California, Texas and New York, their population approximately equals that of the 31 smallest states (each group has about ¼ of the total population of the U.S.). However the people of California, Texas and New York are represented by only 6 senators in total while those of the 31 smallest states are represented by 62 senators.
In fact, the three largest states, with a combined population of about 88 million people can be outvoted by the senators from Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota and Alaska and their combined population is about 2.8 million.
The Great Compromise is also embedded in the electoral college as each state gets a number of electoral votes based on how many representatives and senators the state has. This is why New Hampshire has four (2 for our representatives and two for our senators). Again, if you look at the numbers, this has a great impact.
If the framers had based electors on only the proportional numbers from the House of Representatives then voting power per person for the president would be roughly equal. However, by adding 2 more based on senators, the equality is lost.
For example, California moves from 52 (the number of representatives) to 54. This is a minor increase of about 4%. However, the states, like Wyoming, that have only 1 representative, move up to 3 electoral votes which is a 200% increase.
The Senate also has some unique powers and rules that make these state power differences even more pronounced. The Senate, and the Senate only, is given approval power over treaties and presidential appointments (like judges for example). The Senate only, also allows each senator to have the power of filibuster.
This means that any senator can stop a vote on a bill (or other actions such as appointments) unless 60 other senators vote for cloture which brings the filibuster to an end. So, a senator from a small state (yes, I’m looking at you again, Wyoming!) can stop popular policies or appointments while representing a very small percentage of Americans.
There are arguments that the Great Compromise has worked well. One could argue that the Senate helps maintain an ongoing voice of the states in the central government and that if representation was only based on population, small states, like ours, would have such a limited impact that we would not be listened to. Similarly, it could be argued that, without equal state representation in the Senate, rural parts of the country would lose out to urban areas.
Love it or hate it, the Great Compromise will not likely be changed. Article V of the Constitution deals with the procedure for amending the Constitution. It is very difficult to amend the Constitution in general as it takes approval from ¾ of the states.
However, it is even more unlikely that there would be a change in this instance as the last line of Article V states, “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” So, unless an individual state decides to accept less representation, it looks like the Great Compromise is here to stay.
3-Minute Civics is a column that explores and examines concepts to help readers understand and participate in state and national political conversation. It runs every other week in the Sunday Forum. The authors of this column are not members of the Monitor’s staff.