{"id":7706,"date":"2013-04-18T11:18:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T15:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=7706"},"modified":"2013-04-18T11:36:28","modified_gmt":"2013-04-18T15:36:28","slug":"how-americas-least-democratic-institution-killed-a-popular-public-safety-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/04\/18\/how-americas-least-democratic-institution-killed-a-popular-public-safety-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"How America’s least democratic institution killed a popular public safety bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US Senators from big urban states, including Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, generally voted in favor of expanding background checks. (Photo: US Senate Kirsten Gillibrand website)<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday’s series of gun control votes in the US Senate have drawn a lot of ink already, but it’s worth pointing out that once again the country’s least democratic institution has performed in a way that boggles the imagination.<\/p>\n

Due to modern interpretations of the Senate’s filibuster rules, measures like the expanded background check for gun purchasers currently require a 60 vote super-majority to prevail.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, the measure failed to advance, despite receiving a majority of votes — 54 ayes, including four Republicans — and despite drawing support from 90% of Americans in opinion surveys.<\/p>\n

But the situation in the US Senate is even more imbalanced and skewed than those numbers suggest.<\/p>\n

As we’ve noted here before, political power in the Senate is allocated not by population — the sacred principle of one-American, one-vote simply doesn’t apply.<\/p>\n

Instead, political power is allocated to each state “equally”, giving the same share of clout to California’s 38 million residents that is granted to North Dakota’s half a million residents.<\/p>\n

That redistribution of influence bore strange fruit yesterday.<\/p>\n

Because the 54 Senators voting in favor of the background check measure generally come from big urban states with big populations, they do in fact already represent more than 60 percent of the American people<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Put another way, the Senate vote on background checks demonstrated support from lawmakers representing a “super-majority” of Americans.<\/p>\n

The lawmakers who blocked the bipartisan measure, by contrast, represent roughly 38% of our citizens.<\/p>\n

So let’s recap.\u00a0 Ninety percent of Americans support a public safety measure.\u00a0 More than half of the US Senate, representing more than sixty percent of our population, votes in favor of the bill.<\/p>\n

Yet by the Senate’s 18th-century rules — both the filibuster and the Constitutional redistribution of voting power — the popular will of the people is thwarted.<\/p>\n

Whatever side you take in the gun control debate (and on this particular issue, it appears that 90% of Americans are unified) the bizarre dysfunction of this legislative body must give pause.<\/p>\n

This structural imbalance in the Senate has been dangerously exacerbated by population trends and increased urbanization over the last century.<\/p>\n

Rural states now wield so much power in the Senate that bills must find support from lawmakers representing roughly 70 percent of the US population in order to advance.<\/p>\n

Measures that are particularly unpopular in rural states (like gun control) are generally dead on arrival.\u00a0 It’s a daunting reality that accounts for much of the gridlock and stagnation in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s series of gun control votes in the US Senate have drawn a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}