Taxes are going up. Debt is skyrocketing. Priorities are out of whack. The government is rounding up citizens.
And what are the parties doing? Gerrymandering for power. What is the president doing? Deploying the National Guard.
Chris Stirewalt on the Dispatch Podcast says, “The underlying problem … is that we haven’t added any members to the House of Representatives for more than 100 years.” He’s right, but the issue goes deeper. America has a representation ratio problem.
A representation ratio problem occurs when there is an imbalance in the ratio of apportionment caused by an outside variable. If we want to fix the problem, we must uncap the House and pass comprehensive immigration and apportionment reform.
Our current problem stems from a failure to establish a standard naturalization process for immigrants, which creates uncertainty in the Census count and outside incentive for states to swell their numbers, which tilts the balance of power in Congress and dilutes representation for citizens.
The country’s first representation ratio problem was caused by slavery. The three-fifths compromise counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportionment, enabling a minority interest to have outsized control in Congress. It diluted the representation for non-slaveholding citizens and increased the number of representatives for slaveholders. And as the country and slavery grew, the representation ratio problem got worse.
The imbalance of power caused by the ratio problem led to the Civil War. Like today, parties were gerrymandering for control of Congress, and the executive was expanding power. In April of 1853, the Democratic Party in Virginia gerrymandered districts that “effectually stifle[d] the voice of the Whig people of this commonwealth.” Then, on July 4 of 1856, President Franklin Pierce sent the U.S. Army into Kansas supporting the slave government.
The 14th Amendment resolved the ratio problem by establishing citizenship for the freedmen and counting them as whole persons.
Fast-forward to the Progressive Era, and the country was growing uncontrollably — and Congress was struggling to keep pace. Millions of immigrants arrived in America, concentrating in urban areas and shifting the balance of political representation. The 1920 census was the first to record a population exceeding 100 million and to note that more people were living in urban areas than in rural ones.
The result was a failure to apportion representation in the House for the first time in American history. The House and Senate debated apportionment for nearly a decade, with a key issue being who should be counted. Ultimately, they settled on the status quo and capped the House at 435 seats.
Since then, the population has grown to more than 340 million today, and the ratio has increased from one representative to 220,000, to one to 768,000. As the population has tripled, the number of seats has remained the same. The representation ratio problem has worsened.
This increase in the ratio has separated the average citizen from the representatives who serve them. The distance makes it difficult for citizens to be involved and for representatives to listen to their constituents. It allows barriers to be placed around the representative insulating them from the reason and virtue of their fellow man.
In President Trump’s first go-around in office, the administration tried to add a question of citizenship to the census, but ultimately failed. The census is taken every 10 years to count the population for apportionment of representation. Now, in his second term, he has embraced large-scale immigration enforcement to root out those who are here illegally.
The Trump administration’s efforts to remove illegal immigrants stem from the idea that it increases representation in Congress for states like California, which welcome illegal immigrants with sanctuary cities. However, all the gerrymandering and enforcement does is drive a bigger wedge between us. Representation is turned into a tool for control rather than a tool for self-government.
It also fails to address the core issue: not properly accounting for those in the country and achieving a balanced representation ratio. To do that, the two parties would have to call a truce in their war for power, reach across the aisle, and pass immigration reform, as well as write a new apportionment bill.
This is an issue that should unite all people: citizens and immigrants, Republicans and Democrats. Immigrants are more likely to be exploited, suffer wage loss, or end up a victim of human trafficking out of fear that going to authorities will get them deported. Businesses and local governments invite them here, but they lack the authority to grant the necessary rights to protect themselves.
We must provide clarity to the census. We must uncap the house, removing the limit on power, and add seats to the House of Representatives. We must mend the current divide, enabling better communication between citizens and their representatives.
Representation is the core of self-government, and it has also become a weapon for party conflict. We are once again at a tipping point. It’s time to return the “government of the people” to the people once more.
Jeff Mayhugh is the founding editor of Politics and Parenting and vice president at No Cap Fund.
