Elections to the Imperial Senate

I don't think I have the energy to tackle the recent article about throwing away our Constitution.  We can either amend what we have or we could have a convention; but I don't see how it makes sense to rewrite the whole thing because it's just too hard to have a consensus for amending it.  If we can't form a consensus to amend it ...

Anyway,  I've had several passing thoughts about institutional changes that could be done through amendment, if not permitted by the current revision of the Constitution.

I've conjectured recently about better representation by the House of Representatives, and even conjectured about a third house of Congress (which might not need an amendment since the IPAB is supposedly Constitutional).

Now my thoughts turn to the Senate.

The House Is Not Representative

I've been thinking of a way that a large state would have its people better represented by its Congressional Representatives and guard against the abuses of biased redistricting.  I'm thinking that the single-member district idea isn't the best we can do.

So here it is:

First, the simple version:  Proportional Representation.  Each qualified party (last election there were 7 in California) has a primary in which the party's candidates are ranked.

All the Representatives for the state are being determined at the same time.   If the Green Party gets 11% of the Proportional votes, approximately 11% of the Representatives will be chosen from their top ranked candidates (probably the top 4 candidates).  If the Libertarian Party gets 17% they might get their top 7 candidates in.  (I believe this is called party list proportional representation.

Second, the feature of Party Seats.   Let's say that 10 of the 53 Representative seats are Party Seats.  The top 10 political parties as determined by state membership each get one of these seats.  Which would mean 7 seats currently filled this way in California.