An Example of Why Bicameralism in State Governments is Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

There are 50 state legislatures in America and 99 state legislative chambers. Only Nebraska did the the smart thing and set up a unicameral legislature. The bicameralism of the rest is dumb, dumb, dumb.

Nebraska, Land of Unicameralism

Let me illustrate this with an example from Indiana, a state with which I am fairly familiar. The Indiana General Assembly consists of two chambers, a House and a Senate in a poorly-thought-out imitation of the US Congress. The House has 100 members elected to 2 year terms, the Senate 50 seats (from 50 districts) elected to staggered 4 year terms, i.e. 25 are up for election every 2 years.

Why is this dumb? Because the Indiana State Senate is pointless. It serves no purpose. It is redundant, surplus to requirements, excess, useless, frivolous, and unnecessary.

The US Congress has two chambers because those chambers are meant to represent two different constituencies on two different basis. The Senate was initially (prior to the 17th Amendment) intended to represent state governments, while the house was meant to represent the "the People" (initially defined to mean propertied white men, but nevermind that now). Thus, two chambers were created, whose members would be elected in different ways. Representatives are elected for two-year terms from districts of equal population, while each state sent (or now, directly elects) 2 Senators to serve for staggered six-year terms.

The Indiana General Assembly does not do that. It has one chamber which consists of representatives directly elected from equal population districts and another chamber that also consists of representatives elected from equal population districts. This is dumb.

Adding more chambers creates additional veto points in the political process, gumming up the works and making it harder to get anything done, and adding legislators means more people who want favors or other considerations for their support to which tends to increase wasteful "pork" spending. This is dumb.

Staggering elections makes sense if you're electing multiple representatives from the same district, but if the districts all  have only one representative and serve for 4 year terms then half of the State Senators will be arbitrarily and perpetually "on-cycle" with the Governor, and half off-cycle. This might be desirable, as it allows people could decide to punish a governor in mid-term elections. But since the entire lower house, not just half of it, stands for midterm elections as well as on-cycle gubernatorial elections, the Senate adds nothing in this regard, also. Dumb.

As the sea of stupidity is bottomless, I'm sure I'm missing other dumb arguments, but I feel I've made my case well enough.