The hidden biases at play in the U.S. Senate

The United States Senate was never designed to represent all people equally. But over recent decades, it has become unrepresentative in ways the founders could not have imagined.

In the negotiations that created the Constitution, the House was to be apportioned proportionally, based on the population of the state. When a proposal was offered to apportion the Senate in the same way, representatives from the less populated states objected.

The solution is what became known as the Great Compromise, a Senate that was designed to treat every state equally, regardless...