US Senate’s Brain Hemorrhaging Clout

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Canada Free Press:

American electoral system

 

US Senate’s Brain Hemorrhaging Clout

 

Matt Shipley (Bio and Archives) Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Adam Liptak, in his March 11, 2013 New York Times article, Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in Senate, makes a logical argument, about smaller State’s having disproportionate electoral power in the Senate, based on false premises.

 

First, Liptak complains “Vermont’s 625,000 residents have two United States senators, and so do New York’s 19 million. That means that a Vermonter has 30 times the voting power in the Senate of a New Yorker just over the state line — the biggest inequality between two adjacent states.”

 

Liptak’s focus in this complaint is that smaller States were able to get a disproportionate amount of the stimulus money compared to their relative population, because their Senators wield disproportionate power compared to a larger State’s population.