I don’t see the State Senate equal representation as vote rigging , but as a necessary part of a Federated system, where the Senate is supposed to reflect State interests and the smaller States don’t get ignored in Federal largesse.
A State like Tasmania ( with 12 Senate seats) sure gets to secure concessions it might not otherwise get ( Also helps that, as a founding State, it has a minimum of 5 House seats)
Looks like people voting Greens may have given the Republicans the Arizona senate seat. Because 2.2% of the voters went Green, while the Democrat trails by 1.4% of the vote (85% counted). A Republican vote on the senate, judicial appointments plus all legislation (including environmental legislation) locked away for 6 years because some people voted principles over pragmatism.
The greens biggest problem is that the US doesn’t have ranked ballots and/or preferential voting. Its ridiculous that voting for greens or Libertarians ends up helping the party you are most opposed to.
Also, in most US states, the party that’s in power at a state level in a census year (once every 10 years) gets to draw the electoral boundaries. So you’ve got a LOT of states that are gerrymandered to hell and back. There’s been a series of court cases about that (North Carolina in particular, but Georgia, Texas etc I believe are in the pipeline) with promising verdicts, but for now, they’re stuck. And the ruling party also has control over the voting eligibility rules and electoral body, so you end up having very few polling booths in minority areas, voter ID requirements designed to be difficult for the poor or for people on native reservations, etc etc.
It’s really hard to wind this stuff back. Power begets more power. Which is why you get senate results like today, where the Dems won the popular vote by something like 8% but the repubs will actually gain seats.
Alternatively the Dems should have run a candidate that was a true progressive and not a person who would alienate the far left liberal voters who are politically aware and more likely to vote.
This phenomenon isn’t exactly new and the DCC doesn’t seem to have learnt many lessons.
Libertarians cost the Dems at least 6 seats that were lost by 1% or less. I think a governorship as well.
It is now a divide of country and city, the Republicans lost their last suburban district with Statten Island. Every single suburban electoral district in the country was won by Democrats, every single one.
Now I’m very aware that a big reason for this is self sorting of the electorate. Democratic voters move to the cities, Republicans avoid suburbia. The Democrats won’t be able to take the Senate without rural voters, as they need the smaller states to reach a majority of Senators. For that they need to be attractive to non-urban voters, while still motivating their base enough to turn out in the cities. Tough spot they are in.