Smaller Populated States Deserve Less Representation

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) said that the fact that there are four senators representing North and South Dakota but only two representing California “should change, on a number of fronts.”

Host Bill Maher asked, “[T]here [are] four senators from the Dakota territory that represent about two-and-a-half million people, and you represent — one guy represents 20 million. That’s got to change, right?”

Padilla responded, “It should change, on a number of fronts. It’s why things — why not more things get done through the Senate. But let’s go back to the Electoral College, right? That’s not one person, one vote.”

He added, “It’s one of those long-lasting things that needs to be corrected. Go back to the founding of our nation and how imperfect it was, from the original sin in the Electoral College. We’ve made a lot of progress on a number of things, but representative democracy, still needs some work.”

Padilla also stated that California’s state policies eventually spread to the national level, “sometimes, despite the imperfect — again, Electoral College, U.S. Senate, filibuster, etc. That needs to go, that there’s an opportunity to leverage the size of our state, right?”

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