I’m not even going to TRY to list out all 435 House Races, but let’s keep the discussion on that here.
Google election results is showing:
218 R / 208 D with 218 needed for majority. We likely won’t know the full result for several days.
9 races left to call.
CA 9 - Leaning Democratic
CA 21 - Leaning Democratic
ME 2 - Leaning Democratic
OH 9 - Leaning Democratic
OR 5 - Leaning Democratic - Called by local media.
AK 1 - Leaning Republican
CA 13 - Leaning Republican
CA 45 - Leaning Republican
IA 1 - Leaning Republican
Looks like it’s going to end up 222 R to 213 D.
Particularly notable will be any flips from D to R or R to D.
Currently, the makeup of the House is:
https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/party-breakdown
220 Republicans
212 Democrats
3 Vacancies
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) resigned effective 04/25/2024.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) died 07/19/2024.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) died 08/21/2024.
If the Republicans lose just 5 seats, control will flip from them, back to the Democrats with a majority of 217 to 215. Not even counting the three vacancies.
This is exactly why I like the 127 DC states plan so much, https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review
Need to drop the filibuster to pass the required laws to implement it, but once that’s done, Dems have not only a permanent super majority in the Senate, but the required two thirds majority of House, Senate, and even States to pass constitutional amendments. So as soon as its removed, the filibuster can be re-enshrined via a constitutional amendment as a permanent fixture (preventing the GOP from taking advantage once they inevitably retake power).
That’s a clever and funny strategy. And who knows we may end up wanting to do that or something similar. But what we need isn’t the certainty of a Democrat majority and a Republican minority, but majority rule.
Creating lots of states out of DC would solve our current dilemma of Republican overrepresentation, but it would not solve minority rule. We need to reform the institutions of our society from the ground up. The House and Senate each need a thousand seats, and the president and Supreme Court need to be elected by popular vote to name a few. All of these are possible to change, assuming bicameral legislatures are worthwhile to keep. Even the Senate, but it requires every state to agree.
Agreed, but does it require every state to agree? If enough constitutional amendments could be passed and ratified by a two thirds majority on all levels, then the Constitution could simply be amended to implement those changes (and the authors behind the paper for this proposal expect that this is exactly what will happen once the plan is executed successfully - rather than Dems abusing their power or DC enacting minority rule over the entire country, they’ll cooperate to design a better, fairer, and reformed system)
Yes. It’s baked into Article V which is about amendments. The last line is the relevant line.
I’m not a constitutional scholar, but presumably an amendment cannot self-reference the article that amendments are derived from. Otherwise, we could just amend Article V to remove the last line of text and then amend the Senate as much as we wanted with another.
I could be wrong. Maybe the Founders were hoping that the future generations would notice this, but enough slave owners at the time wouldn’t and sign it.
Hmm… I understand the that last line to mean that every State should have the same number of Senators in the Senate.
But from https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/56523/can-the-us-senate-be-abolished-without-unanimous-consent-of-the-states it sounds like a workaround is simply to set that equal number to zero. Meanwhile there’s no prohibition on adding a new, third House to Congress - so maybe we reply the Senate with the House of of State Peers or something.
Alas, it looks like we’re screwed now.