Artifacts

Federalist Paper Style Essay:

The first thing that jumps out at me with the question is the “fair” House distribution. What would be considered “fair?” Would it be fair to give the territories representation in the House when they aren’t states? Is it fair to give Washington that type of representation when it is not considered a state? In terms of the state by state basis, the best way to make the playing field “fair” or even would be to assign a certain number to a representative. For example, for every 500,000 people, one representative. That would solve the issue seen in Wyoming mentioned in the question. The current rules state, “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative.” So create a number larger than 30,000 and apply that to a single member of the house. I don’t know enough about the intricacies of territories to make a stand regarding the representation, or rather lack of representation given to the territories. It seems unfair to Puerto Rico, as more than 3 million citizens live there.  The same can be said for Washington. However, there is an argument to be made that Washington DC itself was set up the way it was to avoid it. It wasn’t placed in any states, and continues to be a federal district, not a state. It may be easier to redistrict DC itself to just encompass the government, and give representation to the citizens through Virginia or Maryland.