Day 630 Monday October 8, 2018 951 Days to Go
The Republicans rammed through their Supreme Court nominee, and there wasn’t really a vote changed by the proceedings. So much for women being heard.
Bill Maher made a point in his last show that Mike Enzie from Wyoming represents 237,000 people while Kamila Harris of California represents 20,000,000. He’s made this point before in a different way by stating that in a few years the majority of the U.S. population will live in 16 states. They will be represented by 32 Senators while the rest of the country, where the minority of the population lives will have 68 Senators.
I did a little fun with numbers and pulled the populations of every state plus D.C. and rank ordered them. If we awarded states senators based on percentage of the population California would get 12 and twelve states would get none. If we throw in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands then Puerto Rico would get a Senator and Florida would lose one going down from seven to six.
In the latter scenario (with Puerto Rico in the mix) the bar to achieve !% of the population and hence one Senator would be 1.7 million. Idaho getting one Senator at 1,753,860 and Hawaii losing out at 1,426,393.
So what about the states that didn’t get a Senator? Would they be willing to team up with another state to reach the one percent?
Here’s the rank order:
| Rank | State | 2018 Population | % of US | Senators | |
| 1 | California | 39,776,830 | 11.99% | 12 | |
| 2 | Texas | 28,704,330 | 8.65% | 9 | |
| 3 | Florida | 21,312,211 | 6.42% | 6 | |
| 4 | New York | 19,862,512 | 5.99% | 6 | |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | 12,823,989 | 3.86% | 4 | |
| 6 | Illinois | 12,768,320 | 3.85% | 4 | |
| 7 | Ohio | 11,694,664 | 3.52% | 4 | |
| 8 | Georgia | 10,545,138 | 3.18% | 3 | |
| 9 | North Carolina | 10,390,149 | 3.13% | 3 | |
| 10 | Michigan | 9,991,177 | 3.01% | 3 | |
| 11 | New Jersey | 9,032,872 | 2.72% | 3 | |
| 12 | Virginia | 8,525,660 | 2.57% | 3 | |
| 13 | Washington | 7,530,552 | 2.27% | 2 | |
| 14 | Arizona | 7,123,898 | 2.15% | 2 | |
| 15 | Massachusetts | 6,895,917 | 2.08% | 2 | |
| 16 | Tennessee | 6,782,564 | 2.04% | 2 | |
| 17 | Indiana | 6,699,629 | 2.02% | 2 | |
| 18 | Missouri | 6,135,888 | 1.85% | 2 | |
| 19 | Maryland | 6,079,602 | 1.83% | 2 | |
| 20 | Wisconsin | 5,818,049 | 1.75% | 2 | |
| 21 | Colorado | 5,684,203 | 1.71% | 2 | |
| 22 | Minnesota | 5,628,162 | 1.70% | 2 | |
| 23 | South Carolina | 5,088,916 | 1.53% | 2 | |
| 24 | Alabama | 4,888,949 | 1.47% | 1 | |
| 25 | Louisiana | 4,682,509 | 1.41% | 1 | |
| 26 | Kentucky | 4,472,265 | 1.35% | 1 | |
| 27 | Oregon | 4,199,563 | 1.27% | 1 | |
| 28 | Oklahoma | 3,940,521 | 1.19% | 1 | |
| 29 | Puerto Rico | 3,706,690 | 1.12% | 1 | |
| 30 | Connecticut | 3,588,683 | 1.08% | 1 | |
| 31 | Iowa | 3,160,553 | 0.95% | 1 | |
| 32 | Utah | 3,159,345 | 0.95% | 1 | |
| 33 | Nevada | 3,056,824 | 0.92% | 1 | |
| 34 | Arkansas | 3,020,327 | 0.91% | 1 | |
| 35 | Mississippi | 2,982,785 | 0.90% | 1 | |
| 36 | Kansas | 2,918,515 | 0.88% | 1 | |
| 37 | New Mexico | 2,090,708 | 0.63% | 1 | |
| 38 | Nebraska | 1,932,549 | 0.58% | 1 | |
| 39 | West Virginia | 1,803,077 | 0.54% | 1 | |
| 40 | Idaho | 1,753,860 | 0.53% | 1 | |
| 41 | Hawaii | 1,426,393 | 0.43% | 0 | |
| 42 | New Hampshire | 1,350,575 | 0.41% | 0 | |
| 43 | Maine | 1,341,582 | 0.40% | 0 | |
| 44 | Montana | 1,062,330 | 0.32% | 0 | |
| 45 | Rhode Island | 1,061,712 | 0.32% | 0 | |
| 46 | Delaware | 971,180 | 0.29% | 0 | |
| 47 | South Dakota | 877,790 | 0.26% | 0 | |
| 48 | North Dakota | 755,238 | 0.23% | 0 | |
| 49 | Alaska | 738,068 | 0.22% | 0 | |
| 50 | District of Columbia | 703,608 | 0.21% | 0 | |
| 51 | Vermont | 623,960 | 0.19% | 0 | |
| 52 | Wyoming | 573,720 | 0.17% | 0 | |
| 53 | US Virgin Islands | 104,914 | 0.03% | 0 | |
| 331,844,025 | 100 | ||||
Would Hawaii team up with the US Virgin Islands? Not quite enough, maybe they could make a deal with D.C.?
How about Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont?
What about Rhode Island and Delaware?
How about Montana, North & South Dakota, and Wyoming?
Oh gee, Alaska has no one. Maybe they should throw their lot with Hawaii and the Virgins? Then where does DC go? With them or with Rhode Island and Delaware?
Regardless of how you cut it California, Texas, Florida, New York are getting screwed. You could go down the list further until you hit 2%, but – I know – this is what the House of Representatives is for. However, you can’t escape the fact that the least populous states hold an unfair and unequal sway over our political system.
Currently, the top six states hold 41% of the population, the top 9 have 50%, the top 16 have 67.5%.
Only five or six of those states are Republican. What if the six, nine, or sixteen said, “Sorry, not going to play any more.”? Wyoming the state that sucks the most money out of the Federal government per capita would not get those subsidies. What would happen? You can go through the list. They would shrivel up more than they have.
At some point this problem will be addressed. How or when and in what form I don’t know, but the folks in California will only take so much from the Dick Cheney’s and the Mike Enzie’s of the world.
951 Days to Go
PS What Cha Gonna Do When They Come For You?
Leave a Reply