An anti-Trump Twitter account linked to the incoming Democratic chair of the Federal Election Commission and her staff proposes to turn permanent control of the Senate over to Democrats by sidestepping the Constitution and electing senators based on population.
Under the plan presented on the altFEC Twitter site, one of dozens of “alt” sites Obama-era staffers and supporters set up to thwart President Trump, states like California with large populations would get more senators.
THREAD: In Kavanaugh’s wake, we’ve seen a lot of gnashing of teeth about the structural flaw in the Constitution that gives rural red states disproportionate influence in the Electoral College & U.S. Senate. Here’s a fairly radical but possible idea for fixing the Senate. 1/9
— altFEC (@alt_fec) October 9, 2018
In the case of California, the state would be broken up into six states, giving it 12 liberal senators — 10 more than today.
Such a move would get around Article One which gives states two senators no matter what their population by breaking up over-populated Democratic states and adding senators to the current 100.
“In Kavanaugh’s wake, we’ve seen a lot of gnashing of teeth about the structural flaw in the Constitution that gives rural red states disproportionate influence in the Electoral College & U.S. Senate. Here’s a fairly radical but possible idea for fixing the Senate,” opened the thread in the Twitter account that has been linked to Commissioner Ellen Weintraub and her staff and that brags that is “The unofficial Resistance team of the U.S. Federal Election Commission.”
Said a series of tweets, “This problem is thought to be permanent, as any Constitutional fix would require the assent of many small, red states, who would never give up their influence. But what if, instead of changing the rules about how Senate seat are allocated, we changed the disproportionality?
“If you can’t fix the numerator, fix the denominator. If California broke itself into 6 states, that would be 12 seats in the U.S. Senate,” said the account.
Hill reporter Rudy Takala and the Republican National Lawyers Association have reported that the altFEC site is linked to Weintraub and a top staffer.
Democrats on the FEC have long complained about the GOP’s outsized influence and have explored imposing regulations on conservative media.
But the Kavanaugh confirmation and the Senate’s razor thin majority have led to the radical idea of redrawing the U.S. map to build a new Democratic majority.
If the plan were put into place, the site said the current GOP majority would evaporate. “The current partisan balance in the Senate is 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats. If this plan were in place right now and Dems swept the new seats, the Senate’s partisan balance would be 57 Democrats to 51 Republicans,” said the site.
