Representation
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Margaret Cralle’s letter (Aug. 9), on the issue of statehood for Washington, D.C., with a population of 650,000, makes a point seriously neglected throughout our history. Her example of California’s 26 million people having two votes in the Senate, just as does Hawaii with its half-million population, highlights the reality that our Senate, patterned after England’s House of Lords, is a gross contradiction of equitable, representative democracy.
The remedy, preserving the advantages of bicameral representation of congressional districts and whole state populations, is simple. Its principle, proportional representation, governs the vote count of all 12 nations of the European Council with the exception of England.
We propose a constitutional amendment giving each U.S. senator a vote in the Senate equal to one-half of the fraction of his/her state’s population compared to the total population of the United States as measured in the last census.
The same principle could be applied by the states to their bicameral legislatures.
NICK and JO SEIDITA
Northridge
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