Although I take liberties with the content I post on my blog, I try not to veer far from topics that interest me. I never even hint at political content for many reasons, perhaps the most pertinent being there is nothing I can add of value on any contemporary topic. I do have opinions, but they are not relevant.
Yet there has been one topic in this realm I have been meaning to comment on for some time. I wish it were at the forefront of national discussion, as I feel it is seriously relevant to America’s federal system. It is the matter of representation.
America 18th Century
When the United States was founded, its population was approximately 3.9 million. The US House of Representatives had 65 members, and the Senate 26 (two for each of the original 13 British colonies now states). It was no accident that this worked out to one member of the House representing 60,000 people each. The exact numbers varied by state and region, but this held on average.
60,000 is a number I can wrap my head around. I can watch any NFL game on a Sunday and see a stadium that can easily fit 60,000 with plenty of room to spare. If these arenas existed in the 18th century, House members could have rented stadiums as town halls for their entire constituency. They could have talked to everyone, at once, and literally seen every person at once that each represented. That is not insignificant for a county whose bedrock is supposed to be self-governance by The People.
Moreover, if I were one of those 60,000 people and there was an issue I felt strongly about, I feel I could have spoken in front of everyone, to be heard, to have my say. If I were savvy enough, perhaps I could sway enough to my point of view, and perhaps even change the direction of government action itself. Again, that would not be an insignificant exercise in freedom and self-rule.
And also consider that my congressman, who represented me and 59,999 of my fellow countrymen, had a 1.5% say in matters within the House of Representatives. The lower chamber of Congress was considered to be where the actual power of the federal government resided, since the House has the representatives closest to the will of the people. The Senate was intended as a sanity check to prevent or at least delay fevered policy changes, until perhaps cooler heads could prevail. Still, the connections from citizen to power at the federal level was easy to trace.
(If I am to provide one commentary on the current state of affairs, it is that the Senate no longer holds this responsibility and instead acts as a “Super House” inclined to democracy’s mob tendencies just as much as the lower chamber.)
America 2020s
The population of America is over 335 million, as of 2023, over 85 times the population at its founding. Did James Madison write the U.S. Constitution as a structure for a country of this size? Another topic I wish received national attention.
Today there are “only” 435 House members for all 335 million people in America. That averages to approximately one House representative for every 770,000 people. And that single House member’s vote is now only worth 0.23% of the entire say in the People’s chamber.
While the U.S. population increased 85-fold, a U.S. citizen’s representation at the federal level is down over 93% and federal impact of his House representative down nearly 85%.
To put in a grander perspective, a U.S. citizen in the 18th century country of less than 4 million people had a remarkable and unprecedented say in how affairs of the federal government were handled. Today, one U.S. citizen is nothing more than a statistic point in an ocean of over 330 million people, with just over 500 total federal elected representatives among them all. It is no wonder the primary driver of today’s political agendas are the super funds fueled by corporations and special interest organizations.
And keep in mind there are 3 million federal employees, a remarkable central apparatus that likely has far more say over the affairs of U.S. citizens than any House member and possibly Senator.
Solutions
There are no quick fixes to the matter of nearly non-existent representation in the U.S. as presently constituted. A logical suggestion would be to increase the number of U.S. House representatives. However, to achieve the original 1-to-60,000 ratio, the House would need to have nearly 5,600 members! While that would certainly address the per representation matter, it would fully dilute each constituent group’s voice at the federal level. In other words, this would only shuffle the structure of federal representation without impacting aggregate representation. Not to mention the logistics of a House with thousands of members. The “special interests” would still control politics.
Creating more states is another solution, as used to be done in earlier times to increase regional representation. But again, given the size of America today, we would have to add at least dozens of new states to have an impact, which would then encounter newer problems of having so many new Senators and likely House members.
I am not a scholar in this area, but I assume there are academic proposals, somewhere, on how to address these issues. It is unfortunate the topic is not discussed and debated broadly. I frequently ask myself, “What would James Madison do?” How would Madison have crafted the U.S. Constitution if he knew it was going to be for a country of 330 million people instead of 4 million”?
Title photograph was taken by me on one of my several vacations visiting Mount Rushmore.
