Democracy Diluted: The Declining Representation in America
Increasingly, it feels as if democracy is dying. I’m not here to point fingers at individuals but at the mechanisms within our system that allow for its decline. In a recent article titled ‘How Money in Politics Silences OUR Voice’, I discussed how the influence of money in politics has quieted our collective voice, creating a distance between the electorate and those elected.
Today, I’m focused on the dilution of representation in our democratic system. While ‘dilution’ can have various meanings, I’m referring specifically to the number of representatives. We haven’t added a single representative since before 1929. Not one! This stagnation is due to the Reapportionment Act of 1929. As our population grew OUR political voices shrunk.
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Historical Perspective
The concept of representation is deeply rooted in the foundation of the United…
