Repeal the Reapportionment Act of 1929! Fair representation!

[joshcryer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929">Reapportionment Act of 1929
The Reapportionment Act of 1929 (ch. 28, 46 Stat. 21, 2 U.S.C. § 2a, enacted June 18, 1929) was a combined census and reapportionment bill passed by the United States Congress that established a permanent method for apportioning a constant 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives according to each census. The bill neither repealed nor restated the requirements of the previous apportionment acts that districts be contiguous, compact, and equally populated.

The Act of 1929 gave little direction concerning congressional redistricting. It merely established a system in which House seats would be reallocated to states which have shifts in population. The lack of recommendations concerning districts had several significant effects.

The Reapportionment Act of 1929 allowed states to draw districts of varying size and shape. It also allowed states to abandon districts altogether and elect at least some representatives at large, which several states chose to do, including New York, Illinois, Washington, Hawaii, and New Mexico. For example, in the 88th Congress (in the early 1960s) 22 of the 435 representatives were elected at-large.

This has had an astounding, breathtaking effect on American politics over the last century. Politicians went from being representatives of a group of people to being businessmen whose whims have been http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/index.php">increasingly manipulated by lobbyists.


The U.S. population has increased more rapidly than the membership of the House of Representatives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment">United States congressional apportionment
The current size of 435 seats means one member represents on average about 709,760 people; but exact representation per member varies by state. Three states – Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota – have populations smaller than the average for a single district.

The "ideal" number of members has been a contentious issue since the country's founding. George Washington agreed that the original representation proposed during the Constitutional Convention (one representative for every 40,000) was inadequate and supported an alteration to reduce that number to 30,000.

In the end the left http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A">has the influence necessary to take the country in the right direction. But as the http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/index.php">lobbying link shows, even we are incapable of moving the country in that direction because our influence is mitigated heavily by these groups.

I'm not against lobbying in principle, however, what good is lobbying when those who are being lobbied do not represent the population as a whole? In fact, incapable of representing the population as a whole? How can one person represent over five hundred thousand people? They can't. The overall influence of lobbyists (those who work for corporations as opposed to small businesses or political action groups) would be highly diminished if they had to lobby 5,000 to 10,000 representatives! Meanwhile the influence of the left would be greatly increased!

Repeal the Reapportionment Act of 1929! For democracy! For the people! For fair representation!

[joshcryer]

1. Kick for any comments. :)

Thanks for the recs, I'm wondering if anyone opposes this idea. :hi:

[BeFree]

2. How could anyone oppose this?

I have posted about this issue several times, but never as lucid as yours, Josh.

The failure of our democracy is because we don't have good representation.
1 rep for 700 Thousand people?!?!?! Crazy.
And is why so few control the whole country.

[joshcryer]

3. Thanks!

I did see it get like 3 unrecs, but maybe that's because of my bad reputation around these here parts. :hi:

Yeah, I can't see any downside to this. Perhaps though the representatives should be paid a bit less. Right now they get about $174 thousand a year, it could be reduced to $70 thousand.

[krispos42]

4. How could we manage 10,000 Congressmen?

The Capitol would look like that Senate in "Star Wars Episode I".


Or a football stadium.


I think we need more, I just can't see how it would work!

[joshcryer]

6. We'd fall back to committees.

There would be a whole bunch of committees and caucuses 100 or more strong. Instead of having one House and one Senate you'd have a hundred Houses and Senates, you'd use crypto-democracy to spread the votes evenly and fairly, digitally, quickly.

[krispos42]

7. We'll have to discuss this later.

It's too damn late to do it now, but you've tickled my interest.

[OswegoAtheist]

5. 10 000?!

How many members make up the largest democratic body (past or present)? Like one poster said, it'll look like the Galactic Senate. That said, a variety of third parties will inevitably crop up, some issue based, some regional. There'd be no way either the Republican or the Democratic Parties would earn a true majority (esp. not the Repukes, who I think would fracture between a Southern, a Mid-West, and a Southwest power shift), and then deals would have to be brokered between moderate Big Parties and their more leftist/rightist Small Parties. In essence, we'd cease to be a Republic, and would transition into a quasi-Parliamentary system. I'd be in favour of this, as you could probably tell by how I spelt 'favour', but it wouldn't be a pretty transition. Government will probably be effectively shut down for at least 3-5 years as we learned a new system.

Oswego "and the Senate would grind to an absolute halt for all of eternity" Atheist

[joshcryer]

9. Nah, Parlimentary systems can be Republic.

The constitution envisioned a Constitutional Representative Democratic Federated Republic for the United States. It has instead turned out, due to disproportionate representation, a quasi-Aristocracy.

I agree third parties would come in, but caucuses would play a much more powerful role, and you'd have socialists and communists sitting down with progressive Democrats, it'd be really awesome.

[ClarkUSA]

8. I agree. Liberal Democrats would govern forever, given our large concentrations in urban areas.

[dsc]

10. One for every 30,000 would be a tad bit excessive

The UK has 650 members of parliament for around 62 million people. That is a bit over one per 100,000. That would seem to be a reasonable ratio for us and would give us a legislature of around 3,000. India has about 800 members for its billion plus population.

[joshcryer]

11. One for every 60k, the low end of my estimate, is very dooable, I think.

[BeFree]

12. I envision.....

Most votes and discussions would take place in a similar to DU forum.

Members only could post and vote, and all citizens could read.

So if there were 10,000 members, they would not have to congregate in DC they could do almost all their work at home. And of course the pay would be closer to 10,000 each with one staff member.

10,000 members would mean lobbyists would be kapoot. Campaigns would be simple and open debates on a forum like DU.

Of course the elites would hate anything change to the present system as it would dilute their power.

[joshcryer]

13. That's my thought, too, so you use crypto-democracy (digital democracy)...

...and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy">the system would be open source, fully transparent. You'd have various Senates/Houses around the country for votes for big occasions or gatherings, but generally representatives could stay home most of the time. I think they should however get at least the median wage, so at least $50k or so, because it will still be a full time job.

I agree that this is a long shot from hell and doubt it'll ever happen, but if it did it'd change the entire scope of our democracy beyond recognition. Campaigns wouldn't just be simple, they'd make town council campaigns look more difficult (some city council campaigns for cities of 300-400k people can get pretty intense). It might make districting a bit more complicated, but a computer could do that job fairly easily, and it wouldn't be easily used to gerrymander. Whole subsections of cities would be doled out block by block.

[BeFree]

14. It is the only solution

Ok, maybe just 5,000 reps. That would be one rep for say every 70,000 citizens.

Still have paper ballots for the vote for the reps, but the reps could easily vote via the internet because it wouldn't be a secret.

In no time at all the cream of the citizenry would rise to the top and we'd be on course to accomplishing a far better democracy and once again lead the free world to making real progress.