The Senate is entirely vestigial and needs to be dissolved or other wise made to be proportional to population, if we are going to keep an upper house at all.
The House needs to be rid of single member districts, ideally, and move to a multimember party system. Barring that, first-past-the-post should be completely replaced as a voting mechanism.
The Supreme Court should be reformed with term limits of some kind, and/or have a second tier of justices which are appointed unanimously by the politically appointed justices.
The Electoral College needs to be removed entirely, the President should be elected by the people directly. The method of voting should be mandated NOT to be first-past-the-post.
In other words, our national government is fundamentally broken in its representation of the people of this country, and broken in how its members are chosen. At this point, we need a bit of a revolution, though the less blood the better.
EU was founded quite recently. It too has mechanisms to avoid concentrating all the power in the hands of the big ones: Germany and France.
E.g. for the European Parliament, each country has a different level of representation (MPs per capita). Germany has the least representation and Malta has the highest. This way smaller countries also have a voice.
There are other mechanisms as well(agencies HQs, comisioners etc.), but in the end Germany and France still have a lot of weighg in all the major decisions. If it wasn't for at least the current provisions it would have been even worse and probably the EU would have dissolved by now.
US has a similar system of propping up smaller states: for senate and president elections. I don't see this anachronistic at all, the more I learn about it the more impressed I am with the wisdom of the american forefathers. E.g. The Senate does not represent the people, they represent the states. This is very similar to how EU "council of ministers" has one from each state, regardless how large that state is.
The EU and the US are at different levels of integration, though the EU does have free trade and travel.
I should read the details on the implementation of the EU parliament, but I wonder if this "minority voice" equivalent in the EU is able to block essentially any progress or legislation.
I also wonder why the states in the US should have nearly as much say as they have in 2021. We aren't a small band of ragtag cultures stretched across have the universe as we were in 1789.
A lot of legislation is blocked in the EU, yes. The modus operandi of the EU is to compromise until every state is satisfied.
And the US is far from being blocked out of any progress. The gay rights is more advanced than in Europe, infrastructure bills are passing with bipartisan support, COVID relief bills are passing with flying colors and with a much more consistent amount than in Europe. EU struggled to get 700 billions out after a year and a half! And it's still not distributed.
I would say the US now is more diverse than in the 1700s. More diverse states, more diverse ethnicity (80% were white people in 1776, mostly English) and a HUGE population compared to 3 million back then.
And yet we are more interconnected than ever before. Even the most impoverished can travel across the country in 3 days by car or bus. As diverse as our personal cultures are, our administration of state and infrastructure, our economy, is as interwoven as ever. I argue that there are many things which could have been handled by the states in 1800 that cannot now, or otherwise were not issues or responsibilities of the state at all in 1800.
I just gave you examples of EU inner workings. They are also incredibly interconnected, almost as much as the US. Still, they have institutions to give some power to the smaller entities/states. The US institutions are not made the way they are because "people could not travel far enough in a day", they are made as such to provide checks and balances. As an European living in the US, I feel like you have more stable mechanisms that work better than even the modern EU.
The point of the Senate and Electoral College is that states are supposed to have quite a bit of sovereignty, and so more populous states shouldn't be able to run roughshod over less populous ones. Your suggestions completely miss that point.
No, I didn't miss the point. I disagree with it entirely. The EC and the Senate function nothing like they were designed in the 18th century when the goal you mention seemed to matter. The filibuster and the 17th amendment and two centuries of societal advancement have something to say about the "state sovereignty" argument for the Senate.
The fact that the Electoral college allowed the previous President to take office is is an example of its failings from its supposed original intention, as is the fact that most citizens of any party or educational background expect that the President should be democratically elected.
This debate is pretty academic though. Article V is clear that the composition (or existence) of the Senate can't be changed even by amendment without the unanimous consent of the states. Arguably, even a new constitution couldn't (legally) do it.
Of all the things we might possibly ever do to improve the function of government, that alone is not one.
Assuming we wanted to get rid of the Senate but could not do it technically, we could strip it of all meaningful power and responsibility. We could make it an advisory panel for appointments, and an approval committee for war and intelligence operations, and nothing else in terms of legislation.
But yes, there are other things in my incomplete list which need addressed as well - I think the one most critical thing I would do above all others is switch every Single-Member District election from first-past-the-post to ranked choice voting or approval voting.
Everyone knows the reason for the system. There are 50 states now. Hard to form a coalition of states which will be able to run roughshod over other states, but what we do have is a very unfair system where a minority of the country can block the will of the majority.
What is being blocked? States are still sovereign and can largely run their own affairs. If MA wants to, let's say, give people free public healthcare then TX can't do anything to block it. From a legislative standpoint there are only a few areas that are totally under federal control.
There is a compelling argument that with the state of remote work, familial mobility and whatnot, it is not feasible for the states to tackle certain issues without unconstitutionally blocking non-state residents from using those services.
The House needs to be rid of single member districts, ideally, and move to a multimember party system. Barring that, first-past-the-post should be completely replaced as a voting mechanism.
The Supreme Court should be reformed with term limits of some kind, and/or have a second tier of justices which are appointed unanimously by the politically appointed justices.
The Electoral College needs to be removed entirely, the President should be elected by the people directly. The method of voting should be mandated NOT to be first-past-the-post.
In other words, our national government is fundamentally broken in its representation of the people of this country, and broken in how its members are chosen. At this point, we need a bit of a revolution, though the less blood the better.