November Question-

The question of the month for November is questioning whether or not there is a way to make the apportionment in the House of Representatives more “fair” since currently states with smaller populations are technically getting more representation then ones with bigger populations. The census takes a measurement of the population in an area and overall in each state. This is used to give states their number of Representative today.  To readjust the apportionment changes would have to be made to the constitution on how population is used to decided the number of reps. If it is currently held that a population size between 500,000- 1 million only has one Representative then that should change to allow the bigger population to have a bigger say in the House.

A bill to correct apportionment will never be passed through both the House and the Senate. Due to the polarity of our congress, those who have power will never willingly allow the other party to gain on them in any way. Just like the redistributing in our states, the two parties want to make sure that they have the upper hand in their state. Republicans would have issues giving another Democrat to a blue state and vice versa. States will also complain if others gain more representatives, the smaller states will complain that they don’t have enough representation.

If something changes there will always be people that complain that the changes made aren’t fair. If representation is given to Washington D.C. then whichever party doesn’t get that Rep. will complain that the other party was try to make a power play by giving them representation. Same thing goes with Puerto Rico and Guam especially since they tend to agree more with Democrats, Republicans will argue they they don’t have to undergo all of the decisions that the U.S. deals with, they aren’t even included in the election of our President. Even though Puerto Rico pays for Medicare, Federal tax, and other things that should allow them to have a say in the legislation that is made.

Personally, I think that a change should be made, a state that has twice the population size of another should have a bigger representation in the House. The House was made to have an unequal amount of representation based off of population size. The Senate was made to counteract that by having two representatives for each state, no matter the population. I just don’t think that either party will allow that to happen unless there is a very big pull in the American public, but D.C’s population has been complaining about this for a while and nothing has happened. Until the parties can set their power struggles aside, there will never be a truly “fair” apportionment for states in the House of Representatives.