In 1775, recognizing that the Articles of Confederation were severely flawed and that the United States needed a stronger national government if it was to survive and thrive, James Madison, then 35, took it upon himself to research what such a government required.
Madison went to work studying the republics of the past: ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, the Italian city states such as Siena, and the Puritan Revolution in England (1640-1660) when the Parliament declared a republic and then Oliver Cromwell ruled as the Lord Protector but refused to become a king. Madison then developed a draft constitution.
While Americans have divergent views about economic equality, on political equality there is wide agreement that people’s votes should count equally. James Madison concurred. In Madison’s Sorrow: Today’s War on the Founders and America’s Liberal Ideal, I discuss how, when entering the Constitutional Convention, Madison thought it essential to establish proportional representation by population in both branches of the legislature – the House of Representatives and the Senate. Only proportional representation by population would permit Congress to speak for the American people and thus justify a founding document that begins “We the People of the United States …”
Approximately 80 percent of Madison’s draft Constitution emerged unscathed in the final document. Still, he lost on some key points. Much to Madison’s and George Washington’s dismay, the infamous Connecticut Compromise gave small states the same representation in the U.S. Senate as large population states. Madison understood at the time that the real issue was not large states versus small states, but rather Southern slaveholding states versus Northern free states. Giving small populations states extra clout in the Senate was unfair then and is grossly unfair now.
The Violation of One-Person, One-Vote in the U.S. Senate
In a landmark decision, Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Supreme Court ruled that one person’s voting power ought to be roughly equivalent to another person’s in the same state. To which we should ask, why only in the same state? The Senate’s violation of political equality is a major flaw in the Constitution that badly distorts contemporary politics.
In 2025, with a population of roughly 39.6 million, California has two senators. So does Arkansas with only 3.0 million residents (Orange County, CA, has 3.1 million), Nebraska with only 2.0 million residents, and Montana with only 1.1 million residents. Wyoming’s population is so small (590,000 people), there is only one member of the House of Representatives, but two senators. The vote of a Nebraska resident is, in effect, worth about twenty-one times the vote of a California resident. The small state bias in American politics is both profound and consequential.
Chart from Leonhardt, D. (September 9, 2022). ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy. The New York Times.
In 2020, of the 53-seat majority held by Senate Republicans more than half (54.7 percent) came from the 25 smallest states by population and represented less than 1 in 6 Americans (just over 50 million people) in a nation of more than 340 million.
A serious effort at making the U.S. Constitution fair would attack the problem of a U.S. Senate that represents states instead of people.
One-Person, One-Vote and the Supreme Court
In Reynolds v. Sims, the case arose from a challenge to Alabama’s state legislative apportionment. This decision mandated that states must make a good faith effort to create districts with substantially equal populations, preventing the dilution of any individual’s vote. At the time, Alabama’s state’s legislative districts were significantly unequal in population and some districts had vastly more voters than others, leading to a situation where some citizens’ votes (whites) counted for significantly less than others (Blacks). The plaintiffs, including voters from Jefferson County (which included Birmingham), challenged this system, arguing it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the decision, authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the high court affirmed that the Equal Protection Clause requires “no less than substantially equal state legislative representation for all citizens.” This meant that states must apportion their legislative districts based on population, not arbitrary geographical boundaries or outdated data. The Court emphasized that “legislators represent people, not acres or trees,” highlighting the importance of equal representation in a democratic system.
The Supreme Court ruled to correct what it considered egregious examples malapportionment so severe they made a mockery of the democratic rule. Before Reynolds v. Sims, heavily populated urban counties across the nation often had total representations similar to rural counties and in Florida, part of the segregated South, the most populous counties were limited to three representatives total.
For decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a powerful tool that successfully curbed the aftereffects of racial segregation in the South. Then, Chief Justice John Roberts and the reactionaries on the Court gutted the Section 5 enforcement mechanism in Shelby County v. Holder (2013). Roberts’ actions then and other Supreme Court rulings since have severely weakened the guardrails once in place to protect against gross attacks on one-person, one-vote.
One-Person, One-Vote and the Texas Redistricting Plan
The 1964 one-man, one-vote ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court is rarely outwardly criticized. However, Trump Republicans are happy to violate the principle if it helps them gain additional political power.
In their current push to add more MAGA friendly seats to their congressional delegation, Texas Republicans created districts in which some voters (whites) will be overrepresented at the expense of brown and black voters. In so doing, they make a mockery of the Madisonian principle that in American democracy, people’s votes should count equally.
Under the new map approved by Texas lawmakers, it will take, according to Texas State Representative Vincent Perez in TIME, “roughly 445,000 white residents to secure one member of Congress and about 1.4 million Latino residents and 2 million Black residents to secure the same. In effect, the political ‘worth’ of a Latino Texan is cut to one-third of a white Texan’s and for Black Texans, to one-fifth.” On paper, the districts are equal in population; in practice the reality is radical inequality based on racial caste.
At President Trump’s request, Republican-dominated statehouses are attempting to rig the 2026 midterm election. This mid-decade push to win additional GOP House seats is a sign of desperation. The administration’s policies are increasingly unpopular. In a fair election, Republicans will likely lose control of the House. Midterm elections are notoriously hard for the party that holds the White House. Just ask former President Obama, who called his party’s losses in 2010, when 52 House Democrats went down to defeat, “a shellacking.”
Because of the framers’ bad judgement and the power of Southern racism at the beginning of the nation, Republicans already have a grossly unfair advantage in the U.S. Senate. The end game of this redistricting fight is to corrupt the House of Representatives as well.
James Madison championed the idea of political equality; so have other heroes across American history. We must do the same.