Re-Democratizing the House of Representatives

When the U.S. Constitution was originally ratified, it provided that the House of Representatives should be comprised of one representative elected for every 30,000 people in each state.  After the first census provided for the enumeration of the House under this provision, there were 106 members of the United States House.  The population according to the 1790 census was approximately 3.9 Million.  Today, the U.S. Population stands at 299 Million and the U.S. House’s membership has been frozen at 435 since the Reapportionment Act of 1929.  That is approximately one representative per 688,000 people.  

The intention of the Founders with respect to the House of Representatives was that it was to be “The People’s House.”  Instead, over the course of the last century, it has increasingly become “The Special Interest’s House” and “The Lobbyists’ House,” but it has most certainly lost its status (real or imagined) of The People’s House.  If the original ratio had been maintained, there would be almost 10,000 members of the U.S. House.  At first consideration, this might seem unwieldy and virtually impossible to organize, but that presupposes a traditional parliamentary body’s operations and the way the House has historically operated.  435 members was almost unwieldy prior to the advent of electronic voting.  The House was extraordinarily inefficient in the days when all 435 members voted during voice-prompted roll call votes.  Now, roll call votes take place via electronic voting device.  Democracy was always a difficult prospect from an implementation point of view, but thanks to technology, both in communication and travel, it has become easier and easier since Independence.

Most people cannot name their Congressman, much less have they ever met him or her.  They likely don’t care to, either.  The reality is that Congressmen are safe in their seats approximately 97% of the time (those are the actual statistics).  Most House seats remain in the same party’s hands for decades at a time, and so Congressmen have little incentive to be terribly close or responsive to their constituency.  The districts are also engineered to protect incumbents census after census.  This, combined with the increasing cost of elections, makes Congressional races extremely uncompetitive unless it is an open seat, and even then it is at best a competitive primary between two almost indistinguishable members of the same party.  

The complete lack of ideological diversity in Congress and representativeness of the American public must be remedied, and through advances in communication and transportation technology, we can make these changes, but the political will must be present in order for it to occur.