Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

while we're dreaming, i say draft large numbers of (anonymous & random) public representatives from each existing district to vote their will on potential bills before they ever reach a vote in congress.

then have that official, publicly recorded and exposed vote passed onto the house, where the elected representatives vote.

in comparison, the public vote would expose whether a congressperson votes the will of his/her constituents or moves off on his/her own based on their personal beliefs, partly hard-lining or lobby influences.

that would open up major discourse.

at some point in the future, we should evolve beyond our current representative democracy. i mean, hell, we're not farmers spread out all over the country anymore; we're knee deep in the foundational stage of the information age.

eventually, all americans should be representatives to the creation of law -- outside the current "free market" influences of customers and capital.

why not?

Not so crazy, considering that the House was *designed* for this.

Some related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Size_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives

And importantly:
Rep. Alcee Hastings' Congress 2008 Commission Act
http://www.fairvote.org/index.php?page=863

The bill never became law:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-1989

This has been a hobby-horse of mine for many years -- the House of Representatives has simply failed to scale with the country.

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution says:

"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative..."

One Congressman for every 30,000 citizens was the rule until the early 1900s, when Congress simply fixed the size of the House at 435 members. I'm no lawyer, but I'm not sure how they could square that with the language of Article I; anyway, that's been the rule ever since.

The result is that today each Congressman represents roughly 700,000 people -- an order of magnitude more than the Founders intended them to. The result is that House campaigns are just as media- and image- driven as campaigns for greater offices, which is a shame.

An interesting thought experiment: if we went back to the Article I rules, we'd have something like 10,000 House members today. How would the operations of government have to be modified to accommodate them? A Virtual Congress? Regional Congresses?

it seems like both of our ideas are intersecting, jason. now, how to make this a reality...

It also varies greatly by district on that 700,000 number. A seperate soltuion I would be interested in is rather than changing how many members we have, changing the way the House is elected. If each state kept the current number of members but did plural representative system instead of districts it eliminates the redistricting issue and would open the current political system to more political voices. For example a state like California would probably have many Dems and Reps, but then Libertarians, Greens and maybe even some Hispanic parties would get seats too. In a state like Wyoming or Delaware it may not have as much impact but in states with larger population it could open up the system to more voices.