Fixing a Broken Democracy: The Unratified Congressional Apportionment Amendment

• In Event: Politics and History

Abstract

The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 makes Congress increasingly less representative every decade with reapportionment, diluting constituents' voices, in the House and Presidential elections. The most recent reapportionment saw California lose a seat in the House for the first time despite the population of California increasing by two million from 2010 to 2020. On the other hand, Montana gained a seat after seeing a modest increase of 100,000 people. The first article of the original Bill of Rights presents a remedy to our misrepresentative democracy by establishing a standard metric for apportionment guiding how Congress should grow with the population. Congress approved all twelve amendments in 1789, but Article One remains unratified; as such, this report seeks to convince state legislatures to ratify the amendment, allowing the House to be the representative body founders like Madison meant it to be. This issue is inherently one for state and local government because ratifying Madison's amendment requires at least 38 states to ratify the amendment to meet the three-fourths majority threshold.

Author

• Matthew Steven Berge, Empire State University