A Nation Underrepresented

Part 6 in a series on Refactoring Democracy

9 min readJun 24, 2017

This post concludes a six-part series examining the current condition of representation in America. For those just joining us, may this post serve as a summary of everything covered with links out to parts in the series. For those of you who kept up, I suspect you are as shaken up having read this series as I have been researching, crunching numbers and writing about it. Thank you for sticking with these posts and in advance for spreading the word.

To read the full series in order:

The Day American Democracy Died

Our forefathers never really figured out how many Members should represent us in the House of Representatives. They knew it should proxy Americans as closely as possible, change every two years, and grow in size every ten with the census, but they never resolved how big it should get. George Washington did his part to make sure no state could overrepresent itself by having more than one Member per 30,000 people, but the Philadelphia Convention failed to agree on a minimum ratio to prevent underrepresentation (except for ensuring every state had at least one).

Soon thereafter, we came close to ratifying a different First Amendment in the Bill of Rights requiring states to elect no less than one Representative per 50,000 people, but hasty revisions screwed up one word that would have rendered the Amendment meaningless after 1830. Without that mistake, we would have 6,175 seats in the House today instead of just 435. Alas, one too few states ratified the defunct Amendment and it never came to be.

From 1787 to 1911, Congress made good on its promise to grow with the population after every census from the original 65 Members—roughly one per 60,000 constituents—to 435 Members at a ratio of one per 240,000. When the 1920 census rolled around, however, rural states fought the growing power of industrializing urban centers full of new immigrants and Congress failed to reapportion the House for the first time in history.

Xenophobic sentiments disguised as arguments resisting an unruly House size waged on for nine years until President Hoover demanded that the 71st Congress sort it before they violated the Constitution come 1930 census time. Not only did Congress reapportion the House, but they did so permanently by capping Membership at 435 seats to be automatically reapportioned by formula after each census. While the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 successfully averted a constitutional crisis and saved future Congresses from the same, it severally curtailed our threshold for citizen participation in government.

The Curse of Permanent Reapportionment

With our population having tripled since the House capped at 435, each Member must now represent 750,000 people and counting. This means we each only get 10–15 seconds of our Representative’s time per year. Because of the cap, Reps have little attention to spare for you or to empathize with the needs of constituents…unless you have money. The limit on House seats made scarce the valuable attention of Representatives, prompting lobbyists to spend roughly $6 million per Member in 2016. Individual voters who cannot afford contributions exceeding $1,800 continue to lose their voices in a corruptible system heavily influenced by Special Interests. With 435 Members and their staffs, there are simply too few people to influence.

To make matters worse, 53.7% of today’s population (including women and youth over 18) did not have voting rights back in 1911 when the House last expanded to 435 Members. Without having added more seats to compensate, Congress falls dramatically short of proportionally representing women, class, and race in America.

In a similar vein, a finite number of seats precludes minor political parties or movements from taking part in the national circus. Republicans and Democrats alike continue to propagate brands so strong that they have a stranglehold on representation in this country. These parties can out-raise any contender and consistently win reelection, resulting in a House that reprised 97% of its incumbents in 2016 and admitted less than 10% fresh blood only able to run in the first place after former Members chose to retire. Congress is, demographically, an old boys club and means not to change.

To keep the House at 435, we reapportion seats every decade by a formula that regularly costs states seats even if their populations grow albeit not as fast as others. This game of zero-sum reapportionment results in an anomaly whereby some Representatives represent more constituents and some less than others, meaning that the value of an individual’s vote varies state to state (some as much as two times more than others). 43% of Americans are proportionally underrepresented and yield a great deal of power to the other 256 districts in this country who live above the line.

The Ideal Number of Representatives

When weighing how many Representatives we should have, look no further than every other democracy in the world. Out of 192 countries boasting unicameral or lower houses to proxy their citizens, the United States ranks 191st in ratio of constituents per Representative. We’re more oligarchical than every single other country in the United Nations besides India and Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia doesn’t even have a legislature). The cube root of most nations’ populations closely resembles the size of their representative bodies and would give us 675 Representatives today to compete. While it would be great to max out the cap at the one per 30,000 ratio imposed by the Constitution, expanding the House to 10,291 Members would likely shock the system far too much for effective change. Increasing House size per the cube root law would open up more than 200 seats, admitting greater diversity and fresh perspectives into our equation.

Obstacles to a Larger House

Congress will not be in a hurry to raise House membership on their own. Incumbents, political parties, special interests, and other offices all have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are to retain authority and their playbooks. Defenders of the status quo will argue against adding more voices into an already unwieldy legislative process, into rooms that won’t fit everyone, and raising taxes to afford such a massive increase in headcount.

Congress will neglect to point out, however, that most legislative work happens in committees rather than on the House floor, more Representatives means more committees, and having more committees means getting more done. Opponents will also forget that far more than than 435 clearly fit in the House chamber today (as evidenced by State of the Union attendances) and, more importantly, that we live in a digital age where Representatives could debate or vote remotely from their home districts. Finally, it would only cost $1 per taxpayer per year through an appropriations bill to afford the larger headcount while preserving salaries, keeping staff, reducing overall burdens, and paradoxically shrinking Federal government by adding more representation.

Americans are all well within our means financially, logistically, and technologically to counter all arguments against an increased House size.

A Call to Action

This is not a partisan issue. On the contrary, the very freedom all Americans celebrate has been violated by our federal government and been on an accelerating bobsled ride to oligarchy for the past 88 years.

We shall no longer blindly accept 435 as our magic number. Permanent apportionment violates our rights as Americans otherwise equal under the Law by distorting district sizes and varying the worth of our votes. It’s time to define a new number of seats more fit for representing the American people in these rapidly changing and complex times. We the People deserve fresh blood, new perspectives, and greater diversity in our offices.

The census and House reapportionment only happen every ten years. In two years, we’re due for another census. This time, it’ll be under Donald Trump’s watch (assuming he makes it that far in his term). Now is the time for us to push for this change lest we wait another ten years to raise the issue again. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” curtail lobbying and impose limits on Congress. Through no other single cause could he or anyone else exact more disruptive change in government than by calling for an increase in the size of our House of Representatives (“flooding the swamp,” if you will).

Assuming Trump won’t think to steal this idea for himself, it’s on all of us to convince Congress to make the increase or coerce them by other means. Unless you personally have the cash and legal capital to help sue the Department of Commerce on a path towards convincing the Supreme Court that permanent apportionment is unconstitutional, join the rest of us in making the following phone calls:

Find and call your U.S. Representative. Email your Rep a link to this blog series. Get as many of your friends as possible to do the same.
Find and call your State House and Senate Representatives. Share this blog series. Get as many of your friends as possible to do the same. As further explored in part 3, state legislatures have the power to apply for a convention under Article V of the Constitution to propose Amendments on their own. If we can get nearly two-thirds of our state legislatures on the same page, we could push Congress to propose an Amendment or sidestep Congress altogether for the first time in history. Given that most state house representatives are far more available to constituents than U.S. Representatives, this method is not as farfetched as you might think. In the next few weeks, I plan to work on language that you can share with your representative to make this easier for you.

Refactoring Democracy

The future of representative democracy rests firmly in our hands. In a very short matter of time, humans will need to come to terms with the limits of our own attention and the limits of our Representatives’ total attention. If we cannot add more Representatives with more attention to better represent us (and even if we can), we need to find a way to add more touchpoints to our elected officials that are easy and engaging for Americans to participate through and equally accessible for our officials.

If you cap a representative institution to any number, you sacrifice optimal representation to a large extent. Ideally, we wouldn’t cap it at all. Having been inspired, a group of us intend to investigate the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to better connect representatives with their constituents, hold representatives accountable to the will of their constituents, and infinitely expand the scope of representative attention for a better future. The implications of this technology longterm will likely be profound and rank as one of the more critical pursuits in our lifetimes.

Want to get involved? Drop us a line through this Google Form.

This is the end of a six-part series on our representation in the United States. Thank you so much for taking the time to review this critical subject.

In Part 1, we reviewed the history of American apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives. In Part 2, we examined how the Act of Permanent Reapportionment dealt a fatal blow to American Democracy. In Part 3, we evaluated various methods for calculating optimal Representation. In Part 4, we covered key challenges to increasing our House size. In Part 5, we imagined more innovative solutions to representation limitations.