Politics Panther · Paper 3 USA

US Congress · paragraph completion

Pre-written half against the LoA - you write the rebuttal

Your job is to write the second half of the paragraph. The first half (below) argues against the line of argument. Your half rebuts it and ends with an interim judgement on your side. The writing autosaves on this computer; the Send button emails your draft straight through.

Line of argument

The US Senate is more undemocratic than the House of Representatives.

I agree with this statement.

First half (written for you - argues against the LoA)

It can be argued that the House of Representatives is in fact the less democratic chamber. Members serve only two-year terms, which puts them in permanent campaign mode and dependent on continuous fundraising rather than careful deliberation. Their districts are drawn by partisan state legislators, which opens the door to gerrymandering on a scale the Senate simply cannot match. The 1965 Voting Rights Act has been steadily weakened by recent Supreme Court rulings, and the result is a chamber whose lines can be tilted by whichever party controls a state legislature. On this reading, the House is the more vulnerable to manipulation.

Your half: rebut and judge

Sentence starters - use one or more, or write fresh

However, the Senate is more undemocratic at its core because each state gets exactly two senators, regardless of population. This means that...
Wyoming, with around 580,000 residents, has the same Senate representation as California, with around 39 million. The effect is that...
A senator's six-year term also insulates them from voter pressure for longer than any House member ever experiences, which means that...
Taking these points together, the Senate's structural undemocracy outweighs the House's gerrymandering problem because...

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