\n\n“Let\u2019s start with a plausible scenario that could play out in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democrats win the popular vote by an even wider margin than Hillary Clinton\u2019s nearly 3 million vote lead<\/a> in 2016, running up the score in solid blue states and closing most of the gap in large red states like Texas. Pennsylvania and Michigan return to the Democratic fold, but Trump ekes out the narrowest of victories in Wisconsin. He walks away with exactly 270 electoral votes<\/a> and the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, House Democrats have a strong year, but not nearly as strong as 2018. Democratic candidates win every congressional district where Hillary Clinton prevailed in 2016, plus every district where Clinton lost by less than 3 percentage points. Democratic House candidates win the total popular vote by a few percentage points, but it\u2019s not enough<\/a>. Despite her party\u2019s popular vote victory, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is once again demoted to minority leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n n the Senate, Democrats pick up seats in Colorado and Maine, but they never really have a shot at replicating Sen. Doug Jones\u2019s fluke win in Alabama<\/a>. Republicans end up with a 52-seat majority in the Senate \u2014 and, with it, the ability to keep filling the courts up with Trump judges<\/a>. Although the Democratic \u201cminority\u201d would represent about 17 million more people<\/a> than the Republican \u201cmajority\u201d in this scenario, Mitch McConnell still controls the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Solid majorities of the nation, in other words, could vote for a Democratic White House, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate, and yet Republicans could gain control of all three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The system is rigged. It was rigged from the outset, quite intentionally, to favor small states. Under current political coalitions, that\u2019s become an enormous advantage for Republicans. The country\u2019s framers obviously could not have known that they were creating a system that would give Donald Trump\u2019s party an unfair advantage over Hillary Clinton\u2019s party more than two centuries later. But they did create a system that favors small states over large states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That means that a political coalition that is largely powered by voters in dense, urban areas \u2014 like, say, modern-day Democrats \u2014 are at a terrible disadvantage under thisconstitutional arrangement. (And, to be clear, the system would be just as anti-democratic if it put Republicans at a disadvantage instead.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Republicans, meanwhile, take their unfair advantage and build on it by gerrymandering the states they control, using their Senate \u201cmajority\u201d to fill the courts with Republican judges<\/a>, and then using their control of the judiciary to bolster their own party\u2019s chances in elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how United States now finds itself barreling toward a legitimacy crisis<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “more than half of the US population lives in just nine states. That means that much of the nation is represented by only 18 senators. Less than half of the population controls about 82 percent of the Senate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Republicans owe their majority in the Senate as a whole to their crushing 29-21 lead in the least populous half of the states. Those small states tend to be dominated by white voters who are increasingly likely to identify with the Republican Party<\/a>.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Founding Fathers came together at Philadelphia to achieve union at nearly any cost, because they wanted to avoid the persistent warfare that plagued Europe. Without a union, Amar says, \u201ceach nation-state might well raise an army, ostensibly to protect itself against Indians or Europeans, but also perhaps to awe its neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nor was this merely a hypothetical concern. When large states proposed a fair legislature, where each state would be given seats proportional to its population, Delaware delegate Gunning Bedford literally threatened that his state would make war on its neighbors. \u201cThe large states dare not dissolve the Confederation,\u201d Bedford insisted, or else \u201cthe small states will find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why we have a Senate: In a negotiation among 13 sovereign nations, each of these nations may demand equality as the price of union. Whatever the wisdom of this devil\u2019s bargain in 1787, America is a very different place today. There is little risk that Utah will make war on Colorado, or that New Hampshire will invade Vermont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, we are headingtoward a future where \u2014 barring some kind of major partisan realignment \u2014 the Senate will routinely feature a majority that represents far less than half of the nation as a whole. In the current Senate, the Republican \u201cmajority\u201d represents about15 million fewer people than the Democratic \u201cminority.\u201d And if current trends continue, the Republican advantage is likely to grow.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Senate does not simply give extra representation to small states, it gives the biggest advantage to states with large populations of white, non-college-educated voters<\/a> \u2014 the very demographic that is trending rapidly toward the GOP.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Two years ago, Neil Gorsuch made history, becoming the first member of the Supreme Court in American history<\/a> to be nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half of the country. The second was Brett Kavanaugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, Senate malapportionment also allowed Republicans to hold the late Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s vacant seat open until Trump could fill it. When Scalia died in 2016, Republicans had a 54-46 majority in the Senate, despite the fact that Democratic senators represented about 20 million more people<\/a> than Republicans in 2016.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The best case for the Electoral College was offered by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. The choice of a president, Hamilton wrote, \u201cshould be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station<\/a>.\u201d Such a process, Hamilton assured us, \u201caffords a moral certainty\u201d that \u201cthe office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.\u201d” <\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “the Electoral College is not capable of achieving Hamilton\u2019s stated goal. The people who make up the Electoral College are rarely \u201cmen most capable of analyzing\u201d who would be an excellent president. They are typically partisan loyalists, selected by their party<\/a> to perform one and only one task \u2014 robotically voting for whoever the party nominated to be president.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Thanks to the Electoral College, candidates focus almost exclusively on a handful of swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan, while solid red states and solid blue states are largely ignored.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The United States Constitution, according to University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson, \u201cis the most difficult to amend or update of any constitution currently existing in the world today<\/a>.\u201d It takes three-quarters of the states<\/a> to ratify constitutional amendments \u2014 which means that Republicans will almost certainly be able to block any attempt to remove the Constitution\u2019s anti-democratic features.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Realistically, the most democratic solutions, such as abolishing the Senate<\/a> or replacing it with a body that fairly represents all Americans, are off the table in a nation that cannot amend its Constitution. And so we\u2019re likely left with our undemocratic system for a long while, pushing for reform when and where possible, but likely unable to fix the system absent a major political realignment” <\/p>\n\n\n\n