In the midterm election this year, Republican candidates for US House won, in the aggregate, 51.6% of the vote, compared to 45.5% for Democrats. This outcome was widely regarded as a "rout," a Republican "wave," and indeed if Republicans prevail in three outstanding races so close that a winner is yet to be declared they will hold more seats than at any time since the 71st Congress convened in 1929.
Another way of putting it would be to observe that Republicans, by getting just under 52% of the vote, are going to be holding 57% of the seats in the US House. That the composition of the Congress is more Republican than the electorate is a persistent, under-reported fact about recent American politics. For example, in the last congressional election before this one, Democratic candidates for US House received 49.2% of the vote to 48.0% for Republicans. But this narrow "victory" for the Democrats resulted in a fairly substantial (234-201) Republican majority in the House. I remember John Boehner crowing that "the American people" chose the Republicans to run the House of Representatives. But, since a plurality of "the American people" had voted for a Democrat, it's hard to see how exactly it could be that they had "chosen" to be governed by the Republicans.
The country is full of congressional districts that are 65% Democratic and even more that are 55% Republican. Consequently, hundreds of uncompetetive races hurdle toward a foretold result that reflects more truly the interests of those who draw the boundaries than those of people whose participation in "the process" is limited to voting.
In the Senate, the situation is worse. Each state, no matter how big or small, elects two senators to represent it. When "the most august legislative body in the world" has heard from the representatives of California and those of Wyoming, the vote is invariably a 2-2 tie. Since this undemocratic arrangement is required by our Constitution, there is virtually no hope of reforming it, even though it was essentially a sop for southerners who feared that slavery would be abolished at the polls by voters in the more populous North. In the twenty-second Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton wrote:
Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America. . . .
He continues in a manner that almost leads you to believe that he anticipated the rule concerning the filibuster:
To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single veto has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.
But even Hamilton did not foresee elections awash in cash infused by wealthy contributors exercising their constitutionally protected "freedoms." Only worry warts think that the recipients of their largesse will be disinclined to enact the democratic reforms that are desperately needed.
