Washington Post - What if senators represented people by income or race, not by state?

But what if the 100-member Senate were designed to mirror the overall U.S. population — and were based on statistics rather than state lines?

This article is basically just a variation on the old “100 people in the world” chain email, only limited to the US, but actually, I think it would be a good idea to rejigger the Senate along the lines of social blocks. Specifically, I think we should cut the number of Senators per state down to 1 and make it so the other 50 Senators represent self-identified social groups. Basically, every few years people would be asked to give themselves a couple labels—“white” “black” “conservative” “Christian” “teacher” “scientist” whatever—and then the top 50 self-identifications would become things that one could be the Senator for. So, one could imagine Jessie Jackson running to be the Senator for the black caucus or Sarah Palin running to be the Senator representing Conservative Christians. I would also love to see Larry Lessig as the Senator representing the technology industry. One could imagine a Senator for veterans or doctors and so on for all of societies different roles.

The point of this is that the Senate is designed to give minority groups (in its original case, small states) an outsized voice. I think that’s still a good idea, but I don’t think one’s state affiliation is the most relevant social group most people belong to. Yes, there’s a big difference between Hawaiians and South Carolinians, but there’s not necessarily any difference between North and South Dakotans. So the point would be to allow people to exercise collective influence in ways beyond a merely geographical unity.