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b_b  ·  1380 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "It is rotting American democracy from the inside out."

The Senate was a horrible compromise, but one, I'm afraid, we're stuck with. I think many people would be amazed to learn that there are two things in the Constitution that cannot be changed by any mechanism. The first is moot, since it said that no one could make any changes to slavery for 20 years after ratification. That is why it took 20 years to ban the international slave trade. The other is that the voting power of any given state in the Senate can only be changed by assent of the state whose power is to be changed, which is basically everyone, because it's not like if you change one state's number of senators, you don't affect the relative power of everyone else. So 100% of people in 49 states could all sign up for an amendment that says, "WHY THE FUCK DOES WYOMING GET 2 SENATORS?", and Wyoming just gets to shrug.