The bug in our process
By
Dave Winer on Thursday, March 08, 2012 at 8:17 AM.
 The biggest bug in the structure of the US govt is the way we allocate Senators and the way we define states.  There are a lot of states in the west with tiny populations, but they all get two Senators, whether they're California or Wyoming. This means the small states have much greater power per capita than the large ones.
In the Senate, with its filibuster rules, forty percent of the votes can stop everything from happening. It's not that hard to put together forty percent of the votes in the Senate with much less than forty percent of the populace.
This is something the founders couldn't have anticipated. There were 13 states when the country was founded. Today there are 50.
This single fact is why our political system is so out of whack, why the extreme right has so much power, in proportion to their numbers.
Update: A crazy idea for the Occupy movement. Pick a low population state, occupy it, and send two Senators to Washington. It's a start.
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