The system of representation in the national legislature, as set out in the US Constitution, laws, and rules, is broken. We all know it, but there is a great hesitation to do anything about it.
The basic problem is one of scale. During the time in which the Constitution was written, it was possible to envisage a House made up of one representative for each 30,000 people in the nation, apportioned among the states; this is what led to the constitutional limit that "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative". In those days, the total population divided by 30,000 would have given 130 total representatives and the ratio of the largest state's population to the smallest (Virginia/Delaware) was about 13.
Since there are about 300 million people in the US today, dividing by 30 thousand would mean 10,000 total representatives, a ridiculous number. As the population of the US increased, an upper bound was placed on the total number of representives, without changing the lower bound of one per state. As the number of states increased, the proportionality of representation became even more skewed. As for the Senate, the system was already inherently skewed by specifying two senators per state, but as the difference in population among the various states has increased (California has
70 times the population of Wyoming),
the inherent bias in the system has long surpassed acceptability. Furthermore, the skewness of this representation is perpetuated into the executive branch through the Electoral College, and, by the system of nominations and confirmations, into the Federal judiciary.
It seems to me that the Constitution and the current informal limits on House membership unnecessarily conflate three criteria
- The need to have a manageable number of members in the House and Senate so that reasonable debate can occur
- The influence in debate that a senator or representative can have through force of personality, rhetoric, or logic
- The representationality of the member's vote
Because of the more evenly and far less populated states in 1790, the emphasis was on the first two items, but not on the third; the framers' lack of cognizance of the importance of insuring representationality has led directly to the current grossly biased, unfair system.
I propose a very simple change, which in fact could mostly be implemented at the level of House and Senate rules, but which should be a constitutional amendment: weighted representative voting.
By this I mean that the first two criteria of representative government in the list above can be dealt with as they currently have been, but the third criterion is dealt with by having each representative's, senator's, or elector's vote be weighted by the number of constituents that they represent. That it, each senator, representative, or elector would still have one vote, but the vote would be weighted by the population of the state they represent. Debate would still be manageable, each state would still have two votes in the Senate, each state would still have at least one representative in the House; the total number of representatives would still be manageable. The only difference is that the most fundamental principle of representative democracy--that it be representative--would be restored.
The computation of the weighting would be very simple. The count of constituents would be determined by the most recent national census in each constituency (state/territory/district). Therefore, the maximum allowable representative vote count would be the total population of the US according to the most recent census. Individual votes would be weighted by dividing the total votes for each constituency by the number of individuals representing that constituency. Furthermore, it would not be necessary to use this procedure for each and every matter before the body. Perhaps it could be limited to matters before the whole body (as opposed to committees), and perhaps there could be unanimous consent procedures that allow it to be bypassed in procedural votes. The most important thing is that a mechanism exist that allows true representativeness, and that it be required in the "money votes" for each body (votes on bills, amendments, confirmations, etc.).
I think this might be fairly easy to sell to the American people. It is inherently democratic, it corrects a longstanding problem, and it is clear and straightforward. Resistance to it would probably come from sparsely populated states, who have disproportionately benefited from biases of the current system, but even there, voters would be hard pressed to justify opposition to it, I believe.
There are other benefits to the proposed system of weighting votes. Each time that the House, Senate, or Electoral college voted, the representative vote count itself would be a reminder that we have a government of the people. When Dianne Feinstein votes, the representative weight of her vote, almost 18 million, should sober her and remind her that she is voting for that many people. If a representative misses a vote, the lower total would be a reminder that so many million people were without a voice in that matter.
This proposal could also go a long way to correct the gross injustice of our electoral college; if states moved away from "winner take all" rules, then the electoral college representative vote count would become very close to the actual popular vote.
Greg Shenaut