U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM Just How Undemocratic Is the Filibuster?
OPED: One voter in Wyoming has the voting power of over 68 voters in California in electing members of the Senate. This disparity is why senators representing only one-ninth of the population can tie up the Senate.
September 10, 2021 at 12:00 PM
3 minute read
Federal Government
The U.S. Senate's filibuster rule requires a vote of 60 senators to invoke cloture, which terminates a filibuster to allow a bill or motion to be voted on. It takes only 41 senators, therefore, to prevent cloture and allow a filibuster to continue indefinitely. The senators of 22 states can prevent cloture. I did some rather simple math to see what that means. According to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the entire population of the United States as of April 2020 was 335,111,000 (all figures are rounded to the nearest thousand). The total population of the 22 states with the lowest populations is 35,761,000, which is 10.67% of the entire population. So, senators representing about one American in nine can block action in the Senate.
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