The Underrepresented Majority...

[Solon]

This is something that has been brewing in me for a long time, before even Bush came into office. But it is even more dramatic now, our federal government is slipping out of our hands, slowly but surely. Whether you believed this election was a fraud or not, it became apparent that the popular vote is becoming more and more removed from actual representation in the Federal Government.

This problem is becoming more and more apparent as our population increases over time. The problem has 2 sources that should be mentioned, one is that Congress decided to limit itself to 535 members, also limiting the Electoral College at the same time. This IS NOT in the Constitution, and the Constitution itself actually set no limits and in fact mentions that the ratio should 1 rep for every 30,000 people, and that is all it says. Think about this, since that limitation, we have added 2 states to the country, therefore gaining 4 Senate seats but LOSING 4 Representative seats plus losing seats for however many Representative those states gained. This is the REST of the Country being penalized, unconstitutionally, and losing representatives because of it.

The second problem is the flawed districting system used to distribute the members of the House of Representatives. This is definately a more pertenant problem because of not only gerrymandering, which, while illegal, is almost impossible to prove; but also because in many instances. Even worse, this representation is even more unfair because in many cases these districts do not have close ratios. For example, the ONE representative in Wyoming represents a little over 300,000, while the average for the rest of the country is 675,862 citizens for every 1 representative. That means, simply, that a Citizen in Wyoming has almost 2 times the representation in the House than most of the rest of the country and an even greater representation in the Electoral College plus the Senate. This leads to the subject of the "Winner takes all" problem that many mention.


These two problems cannot go away on their own, and will only become more apparent as time goes on. When will the ratio increase to 1 rep for every million citizens? 10 years, 20 years, who knows, but it will, and by that time, they will become more and more removed from the concern of average citizens and we will eventually have a situation where even the pretense of democracy can no longer be sustained. The whole concept of one citizen=one vote which is a bedrock principle of democracy does not exist in this country. We need reform, badly, before the situation becomes so untenable that seccession would actually be seriously considered.

Now I can talk about solutions to this, first things first, both of these problems are NOT mentioned in the Constitution. The Constitution left it up to states to sort these out, and it could be argued that the limitation Congress imposed on itself overreached its powers as a legislative body by the Constitution.

Since neither problem originates nor is promoted by the Constitution, no Amendment is needed on the Federal level. The most difficult one to solve is the limitation on Representation, until that is resolved any other reforms are mearly window dressing with no real substance. This is one issue that could be bi-partisan if we frame it that way, for if we make it partisan then we accomplish nothing. Basically I propose that we get rid of this low limitation entirely. The second reform is to fix the ratio of reps to citizens and NOT CHANGE IT AFTERWARDS. Let's say 1 rep for every 300,000 citizens. The next thing is to get rid of districts and have representatives elected at large on a state by state basis. This would greatly increase representation in the House and will also allow more opportunity for 3rd parties to have representation as well.

These things could be lobbied for on the state level first, by targeting state houses that have districting systems, then eventually on the federal level. The goal is to empower the citizens of this country to have an actual government that represents us, and to minimize disenfranchisment. This also includes DC which should have representation as well, with full VOTING powers.

[DebJ]

1. good post. I agree with MOST of it. But I think first that citizens

should try COMMUNICATING with their elected representatives.

Doesn't matter what the ratio is if NO ONE IS WILLING TO PICK UP A DAMN PHONE OR EMAIL...and this is because they are completely clueless as to what is going on.
One million clueless/don't care or ten million clueless/don't care.

If Reps were getting bombarded with feedback from 'too many' people, there might be some momentum to change.

[Solon]

2. The problem with that...

is that if your a member of the 49 or less percentage in that district that didn't vote for that rep, why should they listen to you. The most you could hope for is to convince two additional percent of that districts voters to vote the guy out, and that is a long shot by itself.

[DebJ]

4. How about getting petitions signed by hundreds of people so

that personal responses become inconvenient/impossible, getting newspaper coverage and forcing a newspaper response?

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. I agree we need to clean up

the election system. Scroll past the civic alert on my site to see my thoughts on the subject.

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Have you secured your town and state voting systems yet?
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm