28 December 2023
The American government has long stood as the greatest symbol of democracy in the world. Countless republics, schools of thought, and political theories have been reformed and refined based on the example laid out by Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and others. The concept of representative democracy was repopularized here and is a tradition that Americans pride themselves on. No matter who is in charge or what the situation is, there has always been an election and there has always been a transition of power. Given this, it might seem counterproductive to claim that the United States is no longer a true democracy, but it’s true. Recent events have shown that there is a fatal flaw in American government, and it’s one that demands immediate correction.
On October 3rd 2023, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made history. As the result of a motion from Matt Gaetz (R-FL), McCarthy became the first Speaker of the House to be ousted involuntarily before the end of his term [4]. While the removal of McCarthy was noteworthy, his expected succession was meant to be a formality. With the Republican Party still controlling the House, the general consensus was that another member of House Leadership would take over the mantle of Speaker ahead of the pivotal 2024 elections. That’s where things get interesting. The first choice of most of the party was Steve Scalise of Louisiana who was the Majority Leader. While Scalise won an internal vote to be the party’s nominee for Speaker, he soon dropped out after seeing massive expected opposition from his own party on the floor. The next choice was Jim Jordan of Ohio who had previously lost a vote against Scalise. Jordan lost two floor votes, prompting a recess, and then lost another vote before withdrawing his nomination. Afterwards came Tom Emmer, who didn’t even make it to a floor vote before the party finally coalesced around Rep. Mike Johnson. Against unanimous Democratic opposition, the majority Republican party finally voted in a replacement for McCarthy after 21 days, the longest gap since 1962 [6]. While all this was happening, one candidate was getting consistent votes: Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Minority Leader from New York. Jeffries consistently received 212 votes: the number of Democrats in the House. In essentially any other democracy under a Parliamentary system, Jeffries would have been the Speaker. Instead, during what was an incredibly tense time in geopolitics, one half of the American government’s legislative branch was essentially leaderless. Not only that, the Speaker of the House is constitutionally second in line to the Presidency after the Vice President. A possible situation in which there is no direct successor to the Presidency in the wake of an assassination is a terrifying possibility and is something that should be altered so that a situation like that can never happen again. To be clear, the Republican party won the House majority and that should be recognized but the thin margins were always tenuous. The House should never have been in this position but after the results of the 2022 midterm elections this was a predictable outcome.
After all, it took McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to finally win the Speakership in January; the most for any Speaker since 1923. That’s an issue of course, but it’s more representative of a larger issue. That issue lies with the House of Representatives; specifically the fact that it no longer does what it was designed to do.
The Founding Fathers designed our bicameral legislature with an eye towards balance. The Senate was meant to be the upper house and allow for fair representation of all states. Each state gets 2 senators and is represented equally while the House was meant to favor the states with larger populations. For much of the country’s first 150 years the House grew as the population grew. In 1929, however, a law was passed that halted this. The consequences were immediate and indicative of a democracy in peril: the average number of constituents per congressional district went from 210,000 in the 1910s to 762,000 in 2020[1]. It is impossible for constituents to feel represented when they are one of 762,000. Moreover, due to gerrymandering, certain districts have millions of voters while others may have less than 150,000. My proposal would see the House gradually expand to be more representative of the population of this country which is what the Founding Fathers envisioned.
Initially, the President was meant to be elected by the Electoral College and the Senate was to be elected by state legislatures which left the House as the only lawmakers in Washington chosen directly by voters. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison noted this with pride, claiming that the electors of the House “are to be the great body of the people of the United States”[5]. The first U.S. Congress of 1789 had fifty-nine members and an additional six were added over the next year. The census was created and conducted every 10 years in order to ensure that the House scaled with the national population. Madison noted as much in Federalist 58, stating that the goal was to “readjust, from time to time, the apportionment of representatives to the number of inhabitants.” Madison had even proposed adding an amendment to the Bill of Rights that would codify this expansion explicitly in order to avoid the exact situation we find ourselves in today. Under Madison’s proposal the House would be much more accurate to real population dynamics with the body containing anywhere from 1600 to 6500 seats [2]. The House has never maintained a precise mathematical standard for adding new seats in large part because Congress adjusted the census in order to avoid seats being eliminated. Finally, with urbanization in full swing in the 1920s, Congress began to push for capping the size of the legislature. In 1929, the Permanent Apportionment Act fixed the size of the chamber at 435. There was no mathematical reason, no interpretation of the Constitution, and no judicial justification; simply put, Congress decided they no longer wanted to increase the number of seats and as a result the House has remained fixed for nearly a century.
The big issue with this, and one that I think we are seeing come to a head nowadays, is that the House is no longer representative enough. With only 435 seats, congressmen are now often balancing multiple interests from their constituents, which means that there are voters on both sides of the aisle who are not being heard and whose voices are not being represented. Representatives like Troy Nehls [R-TX] who represents nearly 900,000 people cannot feasibly make sure that all sectors of their constituency are represented accurately. Additionally, expanding the House would have the added benefit of allowing for more people to get involved in politics. It would serve to increase the diversity of Congress without the amendments required for other suggestions such as term limits. As an addendum to that point, more districts allow for greater diversity of candidates. In order to win elections in large pools of voters, candidates typically become heterogeneous and bland. Smaller districts allow for more groups to elect their preferred candidate. For example, estimates have shown that if the poorest ⅓ of Americans voted in unison they would only be able to get their preferred representative in 5% of districts. In France, that number for the same proportion of poor citizens is ⅓ . Contributing to this is that American districts are larger than French districts, nearly 7 times larger in fact [3].
The capping of the House in 1929 also had another unintended consequence. Any time a state gains a seat (through an increase in population) another state loses a district. For example, West Virginia had 3 congressional districts in 2010 each with around 600,000 constituents but under the new 2020 census that number went down to just two districts with around 900,000 constituents each. This has become more and more common since 1929 and it’s led to voters losing representation across the board. In states that are receiving an influx of voters, the sheer number of people is overwhelming the number of districts available and, in states losing voters, the remaining citizens are being lumped into large groups. Since 1931, nearly 150 seats have shifted between states. Therefore my proposal would call for an immediate increase of 150 seats to the House. While something similar to Madison’s outline would be preferable, it simply isn’t feasible due to the enormous constraints it would take on the nation’s budget. Increasing the House to 585 seats is a feasible solution that would reduce the average number of citizens per district to under 575,000.
Additionally, I believe that the House should continue to expand as the population grows. This would involve undoing the 1929 act which I believe should never have been enacted. Congress should increase the number of seats in the House by enough to ensure that none of the states which would lose representation under the current system have that happen. There are issues with this as it could cause the House to rapidly expand but certain conditions could be put in place to mitigate this issue. For example, if a state loses population over two census cycles (20 years) they are no longer able to ensure that a seat is preserved.
There are other options that could be undertaken as well. One would be the so-called “Wyoming Rule” which would increase the size of the House to bring the average representative-to-constituents ratio in line with that of the least populous state. That implementation would put the House at around 600 seats as of 2020 but could lead to issues if the population of smaller states changed rapidly. The final proposal and the one that would be most in line with the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, which is to simply add enough seats to ensure that Madison’s preferred ratio is maintained. By ratifying Madison’s still existing amendment the House would be required to retain a ratio of 50,000 people per representative. This would require the House to have around 6,500 seats.
Personally, I believe that the latter proposal is the most true to the ideals that America purports to believe in. While systems and proposals exist which would allow for more representation it would simply make it impossible to have an effective form of government. It makes a lot of sense to simply stop at 6,500 seats. With new technology and the possibility of online meetings and voting the issue of physical space constraints are no longer quite so pressing and business can be conducted much faster. In addition, greater representation and greater resources will allow for more people to get involved in government and bring new ideas to the table.
Uncapping the House and bringing it more in line with traditional proportions would make the United States more of a proper democracy. It would solve some of the issues encountered by the Republican Party when attempting to name a Speakerand open the doors to more bipartisan cooperation. Introducing more seats would allow for the country to be able to truly say that each constituent has legitimate representation in a way that simply isn’t true right now. Additionally, an increase in representatives in the House could lead to possible common ground between members of opposite parties who have constituencies with similar interests. With more members of the House, there is more of a chance of Republicans and Democrats from similar areas (farm country for example) finding common ground. This could help ease the issue of partisanship that is rampant in the country. One thing is for sure, in order to be a true democracy the House must change.
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Works Cited
[1] Drutman, Lee. “Part I: How We Got to 435.” The Case for Enlarging the House of Representatives | American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2019, http://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/section/2.
[2] Kyvig, David, Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution 1776–2015 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016), 470.
[3] Jusko, Karen, Who Speaks for the Poor? Electoral Geography, Party Entry, and Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
[4] Mascaro, Lisa, and Farnoush Amiri. “Speaker McCarthy Ousted in Historic House Vote, as Scramble Begins for a Republican Leader.” AP News, AP News, 4 Oct. 2023, apnews.com/article/mccarthy-gaetz-speaker-motion-to-vacate-congress-327e294a39f8de079ef5e4abfb1fa555.
[5] Madison, James. “The Federalist No. 57.” Independent Journal 1788-03-12 : . Rpt.
[6] Murphy, Joe. “How Long Was the House without a Speaker?” NBCNews.Com, NBCUniversal News Group, 25 Oct. 2023, http://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/speaker-of-the-house-time-tracker-rcna120179#:~:text=The%2021%2Dday%20gap%20was,candidates%20to%20the%20position%3A%20Rep.
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