They're so rare that I can't enough of Senate-apportionment-scheme bashing.

"Though the Republicans won nineteen of the thirty-four Senate seats that were up for grabs last Tuesday, for a gain of four, the number of voters who cast their ballots for Republican Senate candidates was 37.9 million, while 41.3 million voted for Democrats—almost exactly Bush’s popular-vote margin over Kerry. When the new Congress convenes in January, its fifty-five Republicans will be there on account of the votes of 57.6 million people, while the forty-four Democrats and one independent will be there on account of the votes of 59.6 million people."

http://newyorker.com/printable/?talk/041115ta_talk_hertzberg

"If you compare seats in the Senate to the actual population of the states, and assume that each Senator represents half a state (a fair assumption), you will find that Democratic Senators actually represent 147,772,393 Americans, or 50.8 percent of the country—a narrow but still very real majority. Of course, due to the rather unrepresentative nature of the Senate, the Democrats are still left with a minority of seats."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/blog/2004/11/MB_2004_44.html#43


- posted by jsbennett70 @ 5:02 PM