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June 06, 2003

Filibustering Dems Equal Majority Vote

As the GOP tries to take out the ability of Democrats to filibuster Bush judicial nominees, I just thought I'd remind people of this post:
In fact, if Senators had voting power proportionate to their state's populations, Democrats would have a significant majority in the Senate. Assuming that each Senator got one vote for every person in their state (as of 2000), the totals would be as follows (remembering each state has two Senators):
Democratic Votes: 301.5 million
Republican Votes: 246.8 million For all the GOP talks about the "will of the majority", what they mean is that GOP Senators from Wyoming should be able to outvote the whole population of California as represented by its two Democratic Senators.

The filibuster may be a stupid, arcane anti-democratic institution, but then so is the whole Senate.

Posted by Nathan at June 6, 2003 07:15 AM