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Unlike the Senate which provides vastly more representation to less populated states, the House of Representatives is supposed to provide equal representation to all based on population. In practice the result is far from ideal.
If current law is followed the 994,416 people of Montana and the 568,300 people of Wyoming with each get the small level of representation with one member each. Each of the four districts in Iowa will contain roughly 763,447 people while each district in Rhode Island will have only 527,624 people. Even in the chamber in which all voters are suppose to be equal it appears some are significantly more equal than others.
The reason for this problem is that every state regardless of size must have at least one Representative; there are no interstate districts and there are currently 435 members of the House of Representatives. The last item could be changed very easily though.
We have effectively had 435 members since 1911 when the population of our country was less than a third its current size, but there is absolutely no reason there must be exactly 435 members of the House. The number 435 was more or less a number chosen at random nearly a century ago by an act of Congress. It is not in the Constitution. There is nothing stopping Congress from changing the limit.
The new Congress for example could slightly increase the number of members to make the apportionment much fairer.
Wyoming Rule
One of the simplest reforms would be for Congress to adopting the so called “Wyoming Rule,” written about by Matthew Søberg Shugart. Under this system the standard Representative-to-population ratio would be set by the least populated state – Wyoming. The result would be districts containing on average of 568,300 people instead of the 710,767.
The end result would be that the numbers of Representatives would be increase to around 543 and we would have a much more equal apportionment closer to the ideal of one-man-one-vote.
543 is a perfectly manageable number
Increasing the House by roughly a hundred members wouldn’t make the chamber unmanageable. The UK House of Commons has 650 members, the Indian House of People has 545 members, the French National Assembly has 577 members, the Indonesian Representative Council has 560 members and Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies has 513 members.
The United States of American is the third most populated nation on earth and the second largest democracy. Increasing the size of our lower chamber so that it is similar to most other large democracies shouldn’t cause problems.
No longer dreaming big
While I highly doubt Congress will act to make this change, it is important to point out that is not only possible, but in fact a relatively easy step to make our democracy fairer and require no Constitutional change to effect.
Progressives at the turn of the last century aimed big to create a fairer, more representative democracy, going so far as to pass the 17th and 19th Amendments. It is unfortunate that merely advocating a change to the law to achieve a fairer democracy is unthinkable today.
11 Comments
That sounds like an excellent plan. If I could understand the gerrymandering processes better I would try to change that too. I simply don’t understand what gives republicans the upper hand in most of these district changes. If anyone has the answers I would really appreciate it.
Thanks for the post, Jon. We need all the information we can get to make better decisions.
In some states the redistricting is done by what should be non-partisan boards. No one is meant to have an upper hand there. In most states the state legislature draws the maps. In 2010 the GOP won control of a lot of statehouses so they get to draw the districts.
The other issue is the need to create minority majority districts which end up producing districts heavily concentrate all the Dems voters in a district
For the longest time I thought that was the rule ;-)
PS The original (not adopted) first amendment set the maximum at 50,000
Jon, this is a subject I have been pushing for a very long time and glad to see you bringing it up.
BUT I will disagree with you about “543 is a perfectly manageable number”; so is an even larger number, especially in view of how other countries number their ‘peoples representatives’ AND, separately, the technology that exists nowadays.
There is simply NO WAY that a single person can EFFECTIVELY represent the interests of 568,300 people and we see that nowadays.
While you bring up examples like Brazil and the UK, you left out those countries populations as referential points regards our system and those points truly ‘bring it all home’ when it comes to our system:
http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1723/political-reform
And believe it or not -put it into a diary I wrote a good while ago- the SCOTUS has ruled that the President can order the House to increase it’s representation. Not that Obama would do so BUT he DOES have the authority so just add that to his list of ‘disappointments’.
I’ve written diaries about this but the search tool doesn’t allow me to find them among all I’ve written.
I’d refer you and others to http://www.thirty-thousand.org/
for further perspective.
The main impediments to such changes so that the people have a greater voice in their country is the ‘ruling class’ and I’ve a diary I’ll be writing about that.
And don’t forget the corporate headquarters around the United States (and even some overseas).
Per Citizens United, they are all now persons, and therefore a voter, a multi-storied, lots-of-windows, very obese voter, yes, but still a voter, with lots of First Amendment “freedom of speech” money to spread around to help other voters vote the “right” way.
Please proofread first sentence of second paragraph in OP.
This is an excellent time to push for such a change, as we’re more likely to get it considered as part of reapportionment than in the middle of a decade. Why not make the effort?
There’s no reason Members (of any number) can’t vote electronically and conduct committee meeting via webconference from their home district (give ‘em an office in the back of the local Post Office like the Prohibition Agents in Boardwalk Empire).
Of course, I’ve always been a fan of Pete DuPont’s suggestion that Members of the House be chosen at random for two year terms. Thinking it through, you’d still have elected Senators conducting intelligence committee hearing and what not and you could set up a congressional ombudsman office to take care of constituent services. If the voting was done electronically, it wouldn’t be much more onerous than federal grand jury service which lasts from 18 to 24 month at a time.
http://campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/fedj/fedj.htm
More significant than this disproportionate representation in the House is the similar imbalance in the Electoral College. This could be easily remedied by returning to the original Constitutional ratio of one representative per 30,000 persons.
While a Congress of >1000 members would be unmanageable, there is no reason why this number could not be used for the Electoral College (+100 votes corresponding to the Senate seats.) No reason that is, but the violent objections of the smaller states.
I don’t see how this would work unless the plan also allowed for multistate districts. Otherwise, there is still going to be a wide disparity in District sizes with the potential for the biggest swings happening in smaller states.
For example, I live in Vermont. We are one of seven states that currently have only one Representative. these seven states range from Montana at 989,000 to Wyoming at 563,000. Vermont is slightly larger than Wyoming but is the second “smallest” state at 625,000.
So under the Wyoming rule what does this mean? Does it mean that every state except Wyoming gets a second Congresscritter? That Congress would establish a range of acceptable size (ex 110% of lowest state population)before adding a second Rep?
I think this process might be just as unequal in different ways. For example, If you set “Wyoming population” as max amount per Rep, Vermont (and the other five states beside Wyoming with one Rep.) would gain a second Rep and we would end up with a Rep for every 312,500 people. I like it for Vermont, but it also means that Alaska, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana would get a second Rep too. In fact, Wyoming would be the only State with only one Rep.
It would almost be like the tax brackets on your tax return; states near the top end of getting another Rep would be scheming to figure out a way to add a few thousand names to their census roll just to gain another seat.
Another oddity is that it would ensure that Wyoming (or whichever states is found the smallest in a future census) would be guarnateed to have the the absolute largest ratio of citizens per Rep.
I like the idea of equalizing the allocation process, but the only way to get the numbers to work would be to create “at large” districts that cover more than one state. And this process would have its own gerrymandering problems since you could end up with a small number of people from one state being stuck in a district mostly made up of another state.
This year, the Republicans have an upper hand because of the results of the last election and the way districts are drawn. It is the State legislatures that establish districts. This year, because the Republicans made big advances in State legislatures, particularly in the states that are gaining seats, it is expected that they will draw districts that put Democrats at a disadvantage. Similarly, if they won a majority in a state that lost a seat, they could ensure that the loss comes from a Democratic held seat while protecting the Republican seats.