Introduction

If you’ve read any of my other work, you will have already met my modus operandi. For those who haven’t, my goal is to create “high effort, original content.” You’ll be glad to hear that I believe I have succeeded past even my own expectations with this article.

In the following 4000-ish words, I’ll be addressing what I consider to be badly needed reforms to the House of Representatives.

If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of the first topic I’ll cover: Increasing the size of the House of Representatives. And if you’re like everyone else in the world, you haven’t heard of my second topic: The SDPE Plan for congressional elections. That’s because I personally invented it, and am only now sharing it.

For the sake of brevity, I will not be explaining terms I use for voting methods such as First Past the Post, Ranked Choice Voting, Instant Runoff Voting, Range Voting, and the Borda Count, although understanding these terms is by no means critical to understanding the article.

So without further ado, let’s find out why — as the New York Times puts it — we need to “build a bigger House.”

Table of Contents

The Case for a Bigger House of Representatives The Super-District Proportional Election Plan Other House Improvements Conclusion

The Case for a Bigger House of Representatives

America’s lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives, was designed to be “of the people.” The Founders wanted it to be sharply accountable to local districts and voters, dreaming that citizens could perceive their Congresspeople as direct conduits to the Federal Government. Gradually, we strayed from this idea. Never in big steps, rather in small, seemingly innocuous changes. The first step was taken even before the Bill of Rights had been ratified.

The original First Amendment of the Bill of Rights — now known as “Article the First” — was as follows.

After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

In modern English, Article the First would cap the maximum size of a congressional district at 50,000 people. For centuries, it was thought that the amendment wasn’t ratified. However, a recently discovered clerical error (yes, really) shows that it actually should have been.

So why did the Founders believe in Article the First? They wanted a large House of Representatives because they feared that a small one would result in a legislature of too-powerful oligarchical plutocrats, and the members of that legislature would not be adequately responsive to their districts. Ha. An out of touch House of Representatives beholden to special interests? Imagine that.

In all fairness, however, we eventually would have had to amend this First Amendment, because if left untouched, it would have led to us having over 6,000 House members today, which is simply far too many.

Since the country’s foundation, the House was gradually expanded on an ad hoc basis to keep up with the population. That expansion stopped suddenly in 1929, when the Permanent Apportionment Act (PAA) was passed. The PAA locked in the number of House members at 435, where it has resided ever since. But not everyone from the time agreed with the PAA. The prevailing argument against it was simply “Why?”

As one Missouri Representative argued, the number of 435 was entirely arbitrary. He said…

“The bill seeks to prescribe a national policy under which the membership of the House shall never exceed 435 unless Congress, by affirmative action, overturns the formula and abandons the policy enunciated by this bill. I am unalterably opposed to limiting the membership of the House to the arbitrary number of 435. Why 435? Why not 400? Why not 300? Why not 250, 450, 535, or 600? Why is this number 435 sacred? What merit is there in having a membership of 435 that we would not have if the membership were 335 or 535? There is no sanctity in the number 435 … There is absolutely no reason, philosophy, or common sense in arbitrarily fixing the membership of the House at 435 or at any other number.” -Missouri Representative Ralph Lozier, 1928

But as it turns out, the arbitrarity of the law is far from its greatest flaw. Its major failing was its lack of foresight. When the House was first set at 435, each member represented 223,000 people. Today, each member represents an average 738,000. The below graph charts this,

Historical context proves that our situation is indeed strange, and it contradicts the intentions of the Founders and Americans from earlier times. But how does America compare to other modern nations in terms of parliament size? To find out, I created the below graph.

When compared to other well-respected democracies, America has far fewer reps/person. However, does this necessarily imply anything? America also has a population far greater than any of the other nations on this list. If America were to have the same ratio of Parliamentarians/citizens as Norway, we would need an airplane hangar for each time the House came to session.

Upon this discovery, I realized there might be some non-linear relationship between parliamentarians and citizens that other countries follow to determine the size of their parliaments. There is. It’s known as the cube root rule.

The cube root rule stipulates that the size of a legislative body should be the cubed root of its population. For America, the cube root rule would result in 685 total congressional members. Assuming 100 of those are senators, we would have a House of 585 members, which would be an increase of 150 seats or a 35% increase (although I should mention that some advocates of the cube root rule believe that the House on its own should have 685 members, arguing that the Senate represents states not citizens). Technically, this number is still arbitrary, but not nearly as much as 435 is. It arises out of mathematics, is based in scientific observation, and the number fluctuates census to census to reflect population changes.

The graph below shows how the countries in the previous graph compare to the cube root rule. Note that America is still too low.

To create this graph, I took the current number of parliamentarians divided by the cube root of the population, then converted that into a percentage. Yes, I know that’s probably not the most statistically perfect way of doing it, but you get the point. America still comes up short. In fact, if you don’t count the Senate, it comes up shorter by far than all other countries on this list. The conclusion we must draw is we should at least take the time to consider what a larger House might look like.

Increasing the size of the House would have plenty of effects, most of them good. When there are more House seats, there are also more districts in the country, which means that districts are smaller. Research shows that districts with smaller populations are generally happier with their representatives than districts with higher populations (link to abstract). Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean the House in total will be more liked, only that constituents will like their representative more. Additionally, smaller districts mean each individual campaign is smaller and less expensive. There is a lower barrier to entry for candidates who wish to challenge incumbents, and a newcomer can rapidly become known across a district. This grants minor parties hope, and means a strong unseating campaign could actually unseat a long-time incumbent.

Perhaps even more important, however, is the effect a larger House would have on lobbyists and campaign financiers. Because each single Representative is relatively less powerful, lobbyists would no longer focus on “purchasing” candidates, which is a well-paved road to corruption. Rather, lobbyists would be forced to focus on shifting the overall debates. Money is no longer as influential because it must be spread more thinly amongst a higher number of politicians.

For reasons only explainable by math and wasted votes (which I will explain in the next section), gerrymandering becomes more difficult with more districts. In short, a larger House strengthens the constituent/representative bond, while weakening the lobbyist/representative bond.

Also, this increase in House members could result in an increase in Electoral Votes for presidential elections. This doesn’t necessarily have to happen, but there are many arguments that it should. In a larger Electoral College, the results of an election would more closely represent the popular vote (this is explained simply by math). It would grant an arguably long overdue reduction in the electoral power of states, and instead offer that power to actual voting citizens.

Lastly, a bigger House offers more accurate apportionment of district populations. Currently, districts can consist of anywhere from around 550k to 1 million people because district-allocators are forced to round, and have to deal with extremely low population states like Wyoming. Increasing the number of districts allows districting to be much more accurate.

House of Representatives size is not often discussed, but it clearly is not inconsequential. When Congress froze the seats at 435 in 1929, they seemed to have no other justification than “that’s where we are now.” Adopting a 585-seat House that fits the cube rule would at least remove some arbitrarity from the issue, and even provide some major democracy-enhancing benefits along the way.

Fixing House Elections: The Super-District Proportional Election Plan

It’s no secret that House elections aren’t perfect. This is because of three major pitfalls they suffer: the cube rule, gerrymandering, and wasted votes.

The Cube Rule

Not to be confused with the previously mentioned cube root theory regarding the size of legislatures, the cube rule predicts that a majority party or belief will be massively over-represented in a legislature. As Wikipedia puts it here …

Suppose we have two parties which receive A% and B% of the vote. According to the cube rule, the ratio of A seats-won to B seats-won will be proportional to A^3/B^3. So if A wins 60% and B wins 40%, the ratio of votes A/B = 60/40 = 1.5, but the ratio of seats is 603:403 = 3.375:1. That works out to a ratio of seats of 77:23. In a close election where the popular vote is A=52 and B=48, the seats break 56:44. In other words, the winner gets many extra seats.

For mathematical reasons, this rule is an artifact of systems that produce only one victor or that use First Past the Post voting. American congressional elections use both of these.

Gerrymandering (A Great Video On This Topic)

Gerrymandering is simply the practice of drawing congressional districts to favor a certain party. A districting committee may decide to “pack” all of one party’s constituents into a single district so they only win that one district, or they could spread out or “crack” a party’s constituents over multiple districts so they don’t have a majority in any of them. Both parties have been guilty of this, and it’s a blatantly undemocratic process that has no place in first world countries.

Wasted Votes

A wasted vote is any vote that has no effect on the outcome of an election. For the purposes of this discussion, we can also define wasted votes as “ignored votes.” For instance, if a candidate loses an election 49 votes to 51 votes, all 49 people who voted for the losing candidate will be ignored. A true democracy should do everything it can do reduce wasted votes and ensure no citizen’s voice is ignored.

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Now that I have laid out the problems, I can explain what I consider to be my stroke of genius solution.

Super-District Proportional Elections (The SDPE Plan)

Because SDPE is a bit strange to comprehend when first explained, I have split it into three sections: The Primary, The Ranking, and The Super Election. I should also note that, while this system doesn’t necessarily have to go along with the suggestion for an increased size of the House of Representatives, its benefits are emphasized if it is.

Part 1: The Primary

Under the SDPE, there are super-districts and sub-districts. Each super-district is made up of 3 sub-districts (this number can be modified if need-be), although if a state’s allotted district quantity is not divisible by 3, some super-districts will have only 1, 4, or 2. For a graphical representation of the idea of super and sub-districts, I will be using the state of Rectangllinois, which is a rectangular state I invented with 18 Congresspeople (like Illinois).

Rectangllinois has 6 super-districts marked by the darker lines, and 18 sub-districts denoted by lighter lines. For example, super-district X contains sub-districts X1, X2, and X3. Each sub-district will hold primary elections to determine one front-runner for each party involved, just as we do currently in America. The only difference is one extra “party preference” element on the ballot. The image below displays a potential ballot that sub-district X1 might use in the primary.

This ballot can be modified to accommodate a ranged, ranked, approval, or Borda count system and can allow minor party access if needed.

Note that this ballot will produce two results: a straight polling percentage on approval of parties in contrast to each other, and one favored candidate from each party. These data will then be used in Part 2: The Ranking

Part 2: The Ranking

Now that we have collected data on sub-district voter preferences, we can set up a ballot for the general election. Let’s suppose the primaries in sub-districts X1, X2, and X3 grant the following results.

“Sending” a candidate means the candidate has won its primary, and will be “sent” to the next round.

To explain the notation, “Candidate X1D” means that the Candidate is from sub-district X1 and is a Democrat, while “Candidate X3R” is a Republican from sub-district X3. Note that because each of the 3 sub-district primaries produced two victors (one from each party), there will now be a total of 6 candidates to rank.

The chart shows the results from the small upper section of the ballot that simply presents the voter with two parties and says to “Mark Your Preference.” With these data, we can see that sub-district X1 would happily accept representation from a Democrat, while X2 would prefer Republican, and X3 is okay with either. Using this information, we can set up a ranking system for the candidates based upon which ones should be seated. It is arranged as below.

“1” refers to highest priority, while “3” refers to lowest

Democratic Candidate X1D hails from the strongly Democratic sub-district of X1, so he/she should be given a high chance of gaining a seat. Meanwhile, Democratic Candidate X2D from the 60% Republican sub-district X2 would not be a good representative of the people in that sub-district, so they will be given low priority.

We can use this data to design a general election ballot for a super district X-wide “Super-Election.”

Part 3: The Super Election

Now that our candidates are ranked, we can design our ballot. It would look something like this.

Note: This ballot could be modified to allow third-party access, and a ranked run-off system could be applied in which parties are ranked in order of preference.

You’ll notice that there are only two circles to choose from: Democrat or Republican. The result we will get from this general election is two percentage points that add up to 100. We know that for each of the three sub-districts there is one congressional seat to fill, so half of the 6 candidates will be seated.

Let’s suppose that Republicans win a majority of the vote with a 55%-45% split. Democrats won over 33% of the vote, so they deserve one of the three open seats. Republicans also won over 33% of the vote, so they also get a seat. The real battle is over the central 33%. Because Republicans won the central 33% with 22%-12%, they will pick up that seat. Overall, Republicans win two seats, Democrats win one.

According to our ranking, the two sub-districts that would most like to be represented by Republicans are sub-districts X2 and X3, so Candidate X2R and Candidate X3R both get to go to Washington. Meanwhile, the Democratic sub-district X1 happily accepts their Democratic Candidate X1D. As you can see, each sub-district gets a representative, and they each get one they will tolerate or approve of.

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So how does this system contrast with the current system?

The SDPE Plan significantly reduces the effectiveness of gerrymandering

In the example above, the numbers were all rather moderate and no districts were extremely “packed” with a single party’s supporters. However, suppose the numbers had instead looked something like this…

Sub-district X1 is practically bleeding blue, whereas X2 and X3 are only slightly red. This extremity is likely the result of partisan gerrymandering.

If each sub-district had its own election under America’s current rules, sub-districts X2 and X3 would both send Republicans, while only X1 would send a Democrat. However, over all of super-district X, Democrats have a 60%-40% majority, and deserve representation for that. Under the SDPE Plan, Democrats win two seats and Republicans win one, meaning Candidates X1D, X2R, and X3D would each go to Washington.

Also, the SDPE Plan renders “cracking” of parties useless. To demonstrate this, view the following example.

Under America’s current system, all three sub-districts would be won by Republicans. However, the SDPE’s general election would reveal that super-district-wide approval of Democrats lies around 45% compared to Republicans’ 55%, so the Republicans would only have a 2–1 seat victory.

While the SDPE doesn’t entirely eliminate the potential for gerrymandering, it significantly reduces its power.

The SDPE method reduces wasted votes

Proportional Representation elections are practically defined as creating the fewest wasted votes possible. To prove this, consider the math of the SDPE compared to the current method. In today’s American elections, it is theoretically possible to waste up to 49% of the vote (and sometimes even more when minor candidates and write-ins are considered). In the SDPE, because elections are functionally actually three different elections taking part in 33% increments, the maximum percentage of the electorate that could be ignored (in a run-off or two party system) is 16%. Statistically speaking, the SDPE is an improvement.

The SDPE Plan reduces the prominence of the cube rule

Because the SDPE Plan is not necessarily run under First Past the Post and it doesn’t provide a single winner (it provides 3), it doesn’t satisfy the conditions needed to create a cube rule effect. A 60/40 citizen split will actually produce a nearly 60/40 representative split. This means minorities and smaller constituencies that were previously ignored may actually have a path to Congress.

In conclusion

The SDPE is by no means perfect, but it‘s better than our current system.

Other ideas for improving the House

These aren’t my ideas. I don’t exactly fully endorse them either. It’s more of a “while we’re on the subject” sort of list.

Fully Proportional Representation Elections statewide

If we eliminated super-districts from the SDPE Plan and instead had the parties compete in a state-wide super-election (treating states as massive super-districts), we could have a form of statewide Proportional Representation. This would completely nullify any hopes of gerrymandering and would be extremely effective at reducing wasted votes and the effect of the cube rule. If we wanted to get really crazy, we could make the entire country a super-district. Note that these options would drastically alter how campaigns are run, and candidates would no longer be campaigning for themselves (as they do in current elections), rather they would campaign on behalf of parties.

Alternatively, we could hold full-on Proportional Elections by simply abandoning districting altogether and running House elections on a state level. Parties could hold a primaries to rank the candidates within the party, then vote to seat 18 of them as in the case of Rectangllinois.

One problem with Proportional Representation and the SDPE on a state-level is that it somewhat removes the local element from House elections and campaigns which is an integral part of what the House is supposed to be. These elections would functionally be creating a bigger — and perhaps redundant — Senate.

Two Member Proxy Holder System Elections (read more here)

I hate to admit it, but I may even like this idea better than I like my own SDPE Plan. Because this idea came from a Daily Kos article, I’ll let them explain it.

In this system, every Congressional district gets two members instead of just one. Each political party fields one candidate per district, and the top two vote-receiving candidates are elected to Congress. Typically, that would be one Democrat and one Republican. However, and this is key, the members are not equal. Each elected member carries to Congress the proxies of those who voted for him/her, and it is those proxies that he/she casts when voting. If member A is elected with 300,000 votes, and member B is elected with 200,000, then whenever a bill comes up for a vote, member A will be casting his/her 300,000 proxies, and member B will be casting his/her 200,000 proxies. To pass a bill, you would need a majority of the proxies.

The proxy system directly resolves all problems arising from gerrymandering and malapportionment. Representatives of high population districts would be more powerful than those from low population districts. This idea takes the term “representative democracy” to a whole new level.

Publicly funded campaigns

Currently, candidates must spend much of their campaign time fundraising. Our current system requires them to acquire a massive war chest of donations to even have a prayer in the primaries. This requires candidates to make quid pro quo promises to donors even before they are elected, and it often means that special interests can gain influence over candidates with a few “generous” contributions.

A possible system for publicly funded campaigns is to perform an accurate public poll a few months before elections to find voter approval of candidates. Any candidate with an approval above a certain cutoff would receive public funds they could use for their campaign. No other funds could be used after that point, and any candidates below the cutoff would have to drop out. There would be no need for private funding, and all candidates would be on equal footing regardless of personal wealth. This would massively reduce the overall costs of elections, and would weaken special interest influence over election results.

Term Limits

Many election reformers today argue that incumbents are simply impossible to beat. Stints in Congress are not supposed to be careers, but short periods in which to serve your country. Forcing members to serve a maximum of 8 years would mean no incumbent could become so ingrained in the system as to become unbeatable. Our current President, Donald Trump, has expressed interest in term limiting, though he has remained deathly quiet on the issue since his election.

Conclusion

We have many problems with our government’s architecture, but if there is one takeaway I could offer you from this article, it’s that these issues are fixable. We suffer no shortage of imaginative solutions to our problems, only a shortage of politicians willing to address them.

The shocking lack of discussion in politics about the reforms I’ve discussed exists because politicians like the current setup. It gives them more power and reduces their chances of losing that power.

Allowing elected officials to design and regulate their own elections is a dangerous path, one well-worn by dictators and authoritarians. As citizens, it is our duty to encourage our Representatives to seriously discuss reform options and — when the time comes — to choose the side of democracy.

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Ben Chapman, June 2017