The current health care debates bring into focus a significant problem in how our citizens are represented in D.C. I don't think it is a partisan issue, as both sides of the debate are affected, and it applied to legislation over the past eight years as well as current legislation.
        We've heard about how unfairly the Electoral College sometimes decides who will be president. Well that's a picnic compared to the U.S. Senate, which is now taking up the health care legislation.
        I'm not suggesting any kind of corrective, just hoping to share what I have learned crunching these numbers and thinking about how our representative democracy works, and just what our Founders saddled us with. I think we need to understand our system's limitations along with its benefits.
        I’m not an expert at all, don't even recall ever taking a course of study in American Government, but find our form of government and the Founders who conceived it and gave it to us most interesting, as well as currently relevant.
        Out of 300 million citizens represented in Senate (unrepresented D.C., Puerto Rico and Island possessions account for another 5 million) each of 100 senators from the 50 states represents on average 6 million citizens. (Each of two Senators represents all of each state's citizens.) But California's two senators represent 37 million and Vermont's just over a half million. So each of California's citizens receives just 1/60th as much representation as Vermont's.
        This is at the extreme, but seven other large states (populations over 10 milion) also receive much lower representation than five other of the smallest states (populations under one million) ranging from Texas as compared to North Dakota at 1/48th, to the more equitable Michigan to Montana at less than 1/10th. A total of 16 states with 2/3rd of the total U.S. population (including previously mentioned California, Texas and Michigan) receive significantly less than proportional representation. Thirty-two others with just over 1/4th of the population (including Oregon) have significantly larger than fair proportional representation. Only two, Tennessee and Missouri, have the level of representation (two Senators) that their populations (6 million) would call for.
        So to summarize in a different way, 12 states are seriously under represented, eight are reasonably properly represented (within 10% of a fair proportion) and 30 states receive substantially more than fair representation. Or to put it another way, 18 senators in our nine largest states represent half the US population, with 82 representing the other half.
        How about The House of Representatives? Constitutionally required to be distributed by proportional representation, with infrequent disputes among the states as to how this is to be properly determined.
        I don't recommend any action. It's probably not possible to remedy. Just imagine getting the 30 states who are over represented (and perhaps the two properly represented) going along with such a Constitutional amendment. And this is not to mention what to do with unrepresented D.C., Puerto Rico and our island possessions. 
        But since I'm an Oregonian and therefore given extra representation (as well as Electoral College over representation), let's just leave things the way they are. On the other hand, maybe we could get some goodies for our state in some sort of trade off? Do we have interests within the state which could contribute big bucks to sweeten a pot of campaign contributions that would help secure something beneficial to us, probably, as well as some special benefits to the contributor(s)? Of course we want to be fair to everyone, but mostly to ourselves, and we're willing to let a little slip by to those who helped us. Maybe we could get some other smaller states to join in such a way that a group of us could benefit, and only lose our disproportionate legislative and electoral influence. All in all we might make a deal.
        (Just kidding. But now let's get serious.) How well do you think the Founders had this Senate thing figured out? Suppose this came about because of some compromises, such as the disgraceful retention of slavery in our newly formed government, and the representation of a slave as 3/5 of a citizen for a state's representational entitlement in the House and in other matters (but also impacting how Senate was to be formulated) even though slaves could not directly participate in this fractional "representation"? Other compromises about the ways the Senate would be proportioned and selected were debated (not unlike the current health care measure debates) and went forward in the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The issues about the Senate threatened to break up the Confederation, and were hence "negotiated." Do you suppose they would ever have imagined that eventually half the total U.S. population of 300 million in the nine largest states with 150 million would be represented by less than 1/5th of the senators?
        So what is worse? Our brilliant and noble Founders compromising as they believed they had to over these matters in the late 1700s? (I use these adjectives sincerely, holding the Founders in great respect.) Or, is it worse to be compromising over our health care legislation by those so starkly representing inequitably the citizens to be affected?
        I suggest these factors lead to two conclusions:
              • The Senate is made up of representatives whose lack of selection on a proportional basis leaves over 60% of U.S. citizens seriously underrepresented, with those in the 10 largest states underrepresented by nearly 70% or worse, and with Oregon relatively modestly overrepresented by about 30% and Washington underrepresented a bit by about 10%, but with eight of the largest states with populations over 10 million severely underrepresented, and with 19 smaller states with populations under 3 million unreasonably overrepresented.
              • The rules (two senators for each state) established Constitutionally by our Founders were agreed to at least partially for corrupt (unseemly compromise) reasons, so that for current processes in the Senate to seem to some as corrupt (also unseemly compromise) follows this well established pattern.
        Dick McQueen,
        Wildwood, (503) 622-0162.