The Patriot Post® · The Founders' Version of Representative Government

In a recent column, Jeff Jacoby proposed the enlargement of Congress. “Many of us chafe at the fact that our political views are never shared by our representatives in Washington — yet those representatives are invariably reelected, often unopposed,” he writes. “If you’re an average voter, you’ve probably never met your member of Congress. Then again, if you’re not a major donor, an influential party organizer, or a well-connected lobbyist, your member of Congress probably has little interest in you.”

The Founders also feared the polarization arising from a two-party system. “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other,” warned second U.S. President John Adams. “This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

George Washington agreed. “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism,” he stated in his 1796 farewell address. “But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

That alternate domination of the parties, when they’re not occasionally united in their effort to “sympathize least with the masses of people” — think open borders, fiscal irresponsibility, and unnecessary wars, e.g. — has engendered a despotism realized by increasing levels of impotence in the legislative branch of government, because Congress can’t or won’t do its job, Supreme Court decisions and rule-making precipitated by unelected bureaucrats have increasingly filled the void.

Moreover, alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, has precipitated the impeachment fiasco.

The Founders foresaw the problem of under-representation. While the Bill of Rights consists of 10 Constitutional Amendments passed by Congress and ratified by the states, two others were passed by Congress and not ratified. One ultimately became the 27th and last Amendment to the Constitution, adopted on May 5, 1992. “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened,” it states. Thus the ratification period took 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days.

The other Amendment, still sitting before state legislatures? The Congressional Apportionment Amendment. Originally titled “Article the First,” this Amendment, proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, stated the following:

“After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.”

Why didn’t it pass? In the conference over the House and Senate versions of the bill, a clerical error changed the last “less” to “more.” And despite the reality that states were tasked with affirming the vote of Congress (that ultimately included the correct wording), it was discovered in 2011 that Connecticut may have ratified, then un-ratified, and then re-ratified the legislation — meaning it should have become law.

Unfortunately, the record of ratifications was lost.

Since it never passed, Congress set the size of the House of Representatives by statute, gradually increasing the number of representatives relative to population growth throughout the 19th century and ultimately capping the number at 435 in 1911. That number was temporarily increased to 437 members from 1959 through 1962, when Alaska and Hawaii were granted statehood.

Between the time that final number was reached in 1911 and today, America’s population increased from from 92 million to 332 million. Jacoby notes the deleterious implications: “When the House first reached its current size, each member represented an average of 211,000 residents. Today the ratio is 1 representative for every 763,000 Americans.”

If the Congressional Apportionment Amendment were applied as written? The House would consist of more than 6,000 members.

Absurd? In an age where the two-party-engendered polarization the Founders feared has been realized, an exponential increase in the number of representatives has a decided upside. As columnist Lyman Stone, Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, explains, while Democrats and Republicans would still win most districts, the presence of additional parties “would make Congress more representative of Americans” and “could also help nudge the larger parties away from deadlock.”

Practically speaking, a far larger House would also nudge our Ruling Class out of their de facto fiefdom in Washington, DC. Much like the Trump administration’s current efforts to decentralize the federal workforce, one suspects Americans would see representatives forced to remain among the people they represent as a feature, not a bug in the system. Moreover, since each representative would have far fewer constituents, congressional staffers — who number more than 8,000 for House members, with top pay of $172,500 — could be substantially reduced per capita.

House committees would be larger, but also far more representative of the peoples’ interests. Those with more specialized levels of expertise would likely populate them as well. Campaign reform would virtually take care of itself as House members representing far fewer people would have to raise less money — and big money interests would be sharply diluted by sheer mathematics.

All voting could be done electronically.

Inefficient? The most “efficient” form of government is a dictatorship. The most annoying one? That which purports to represent the people, even as it defers to the Supreme Court, the Deep State, the well-connected, and naked, partisan self-interest.

The Founders gave us a republic — and a way to keep it. Perhaps the state legislatures should embrace their offer. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, dividing it among more people — and thus diluting it on an individual basis — could produce the opposite effect. In turn, that might lead to something Americans haven’t seen in a long time:

Statesmanship.

(Edited.)