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(Trends Wide) — You’ve probably heard that American democracy can be undemocratic; the candidate who gets the fewest votes is routinely elected president because of the Electoral College.
But the inequality of American democracy runs much deeper. Although US citizens over the age of 18 have one vote, one person’s vote can go much further than another’s. And a person from Wyoming has the most powerful vote of all.
One of the main reasons is the size of the House of Representatives, which is frozen at 435 members.
Congress used to grow with the population
House seats are apportioned among the states, in a process called apportionment, every 10 years after the census.
In the early 20th century, soaring population growth fueled by immigration fueled many rural legislators’ fear of the growing power of cities.
A dispute after the 1920 census led Congress to limit the size of the House to 435 seats.
The number of seats grew temporarily after the incorporation of Hawaii and Alaska as states, but has basically remained the same for more than 100 years.
The number of representatives is frozen, but the US population has skyrocketed
In 1910, just before the House reached 435 members, there were 46 states and the official census population was 92,228,496 people in the US.
In 2020, that same number, 435 House members, represented 50 states, and the official census population was 331,449,281 people.
Where the average member of the House used to represent about 200,000 people in 1910, today it is closer to 800,000.
Not only does this alienate legislators from the people they represent, but it also means that different members of the House can represent vastly different numbers of people.
Let’s compare two states of similar size:
- Delaware had a population of 989,948 in 2020.
- Montana had a population of 1,084,225 in 2020.
It is a difference of 94,277 people.
But Delaware gets the minimum of one representative in the House.
Montana, based on those additional 94,277 people, will get a second representative for the first time in the 2022 election.
- The Delaware House member will represent nearly a million people.
- The two members of the Montana House will represent about 500,000 people each.
26 people can make a big difference
The above are the most extreme examples. Each member of the House of Representatives represents between a million people and a little over 500,000, a wide range.
The difference between losing a seat and keeping it can be incredibly small. Following the 2020 census, Minnesota held its eighth congressional seat by a 26-person margin over New York.
Take the time to assimilate it.
The 26-person count determined a full decade of representation in Congress.
Millions of Americans have no voice in Congress
The city of Washington has a larger population than Wyoming but has no voting federal legislators, compared to Wyoming’s House member and two senators. The same goes for more than 3 million Puerto Ricans, who have even less power because they can only participate in presidential elections if they leave home to live in a state or in Washington.
Most countries have many more representatives per person. The United Kingdom has 650 MPs, that is, just under one MP for every 100,000 inhabitants. Each member represents a fraction of the people represented by a member of the United States House.
The size of the House could be unmanageable if Congress grew. As the founders conceived it, the Chamber today could have more than 11,000 members. Something in between might work better.
Just try to read all the mail
Having so few reps for so many people has real-world consequences.
A congressional office that received 9,300 messages in 2001 got 123,000 in 2017, according to an analysis by the Congressional Management Foundation.
More voters means more work for each legislator, but the number of congressional employees has fallen dramatically. So has the number of bills enacted. Congress is increasingly diluted and less efficient, since the same number of people represents a much larger country.
The growing distance between legislators and the people has changed the power of states
New York once had more than 40 representatives. Today he is 26.
Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois have also lost power. California, for the first time, lost a House member following the 2020 census.
Texas, Florida and other Sun Belt states are growing. Texas, in particular, has used so-called “gerrymandering” to keep the state reliably controlled by conservatives in the House, even though its growth is fueled by cities and minority populations.
How to make America more democratic
Congress could vote to remove checks on the size of the House, and there are plenty of governance groups pushing this kind of reform, though it’s not top of mind in Washington. The arguments and options are collected in a study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Here are some of them:
Idea 1: apply the Wyoming rule, in which each district is roughly the same size as the least populous state, Wyoming.
Under this model, California would have nearly 70 seats. Texas would have more than 50. Montana and Delaware would probably be about even, since their populations are similar, around a million people.
Idea 2: use the cube root rule, in which the cube root of the US population is used.
According to calculations by the American Academy, the number of members of the House of Representatives would be 692, or ∛331 million people, according to the 2020 census.
Either method would result in a much larger and more equitable Congress.
Idea 3: add 150 legislators. The authors of the American Academy study ultimately recommend simply expanding the size of the House by 150 members and periodically adding more members as the population grows.
None of these proposals would address the other big problem that plagues democracy in the House, which is gerrymandering.
The state parties have become sophisticated in their ability to draw the maps of Congress. Some states have created nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions to remove some of the political game, but another idea that has been floated is for lawmakers to represent multiple districts, giving more people a voice.
In reality, the Constitution gives a great margin of maneuver when it comes to forming the Congress. In some periods, some large states like New York have had independent districts in addition to their established districts on the map.
Then there is the Senate, where the equality of states equals the inequality of Americans
There is an even greater imbalance in the Senate, where each state, by design of the framers of the Constitution and regardless of the size of a state, gets two senators.
But the states, most of which did not exist when the Constitution was written, have grown unevenly. Some populations have exploded, while others have remained relatively static.
California is one of the world’s largest economies, but in the Senate, its two senators are right up there with Rhode Island and Wyoming, which have comparatively tiny economies.
Republicans in the late 19th century pushed to rapidly expand the number of states, thinking it would help them consolidate power. They added six states, 12 senators, in two years, in 1889 and 1890, creating a very different balance of power on Capitol Hill. Generations later, that imbalance continues to help Republicans, even though the two parties today are nothing like they used to be.
And finally, the Electoral College
Representation from the House of Representatives and the Senate converge in the Electoral College, where states have electors equal to their senators plus their members of the House of Representatives. Using 2010 census data, as I wrote in 2018, California has about 12% of the population, but its 55 electors equate to a smaller portion of the Electoral College.
Which means that each Californian voter has the least individual voice at the presidential level. Because it has the smallest population and two senators, Wyoming has the most voice. There is one presidential voter for every 192,000 inhabitants approximately, which makes participation in his government very unequal.
With graphics by Trends Wide’s Renée Rigdon
