One of the most pressing issues that faced the founding fathers when they wrote the constitution was how to compromise on balancing power between larger and smaller states. Prior to the constitution, states were formed together in a confederation in which the national government had very little power and each state had equal representation in congress. With the proposed constitution greatly increasing the influence of the national government, the matter of representation in congress became increasingly important for each state. Naturally, more populous states felt that a congress in which each state had equal representation was inherently unfair. However, less populous states did not want to lose all of their say in congress to the larger states. From this conflict came the Connecticut Compromise, in which a bicameral congress would be created where representation in the House of Representatives would be proportional to a state’s population and each state would have equal representation in the Senate.
For a long time, this compromise satiated both the larger and smaller states’ desires. However, there has been much discussion recently over the inequities in how the system actually works. The main issue is that larger states are not getting fair proportional representation. Specifically, one could look to Wyoming and Montana. Both Wyoming and Montana have one representative in the House, however Montana’s population is almost double Wyoming’s. Therefore, each citizen in Wyoming technically has more influence per vote than a citizen in Montana. This represents a clear flaw in the system, as it is fundamentally unfair. Another issue that many people point to is the fact that the combined millions of American citizens in D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam do not have any voting representatives in congress. Evidently, these are issues that need to be fixed. The question though, is how can they be fixed?
Currently, a clear-cut solution seems quite far-fetched. One solution that would seemingly work just fine would be to create a minimum number of population required per representative and then apportion from there on out for every state. However, per the Reapportionment Act of 1929, the House of Representatives shall only have 435 members, making said solution futile. In order then, to make such a solution feasible, this act would have to be changed in congress. This brings up another issue though, too large of a house would surely be even more gridlocked and less effective than it already is today. Yes, adding only a few more seats would not hurt a great deal, but it would only help marginally and would not solve the issue at hand. Therefore, I sadly do not see a realistic solution to this issue.
While this is an important issue to address, I feel that the most pressing issue when it comes to apportionment and the census is the divisive and harmful tool that is gerrymandering. Gerrymandering undermines the fundamental elements of the American democracy by severely hurting the importance of a citizens vote and essentially securing elections for certain parties, regardless of the feelings of the people.
