This is a valuable line of thinking. We could probably convince ourselves "it would never work" but instead, I'd be more interested to hear what other possibilities this would open up.
> I'd be more interested to hear what other possibilities this would open up.
Not sure if this is what you meant by "possibilities," but I see a couple of major issues with this:
- The cost of buying off a politician (oh sorry I meant "lobbying") dramatically decreases. It's a lot cheaper to campaign to 30,000 people than it is to campaign for several million.
- The sheer number of representatives (~10600) presents a problem: it grants much much more significance to the senate, because deliberating on bill in the house would be impossible (and introduces effective filibuster since a 40% coalition could use 5 minute speaking slots to take up 2 weeks of time on the floor)
- Gerrymandering would become much, much worse as the size of districts decreased and number of representatives increased, just because the number of options you have to split up your state dramatically increase. Potentially minority districts would have 90% minority support while majority districts could be much more competitive (allowing for far more of them).
> There would be so many representatives, that votes would have to be made based on what the person feels is right for their 30,000 voters, rather than how much money they can collect from lobbyist for their next campaign.
I feel like the author pulls this conclusion out of thin air.
The representatives become more dependent on their party to win the election and stay incumbent, so the lobbying money shifts to the members in the party leadership who will eventually direct the other members on how they should vote.
The representatives become more dependent on scheduling and organization, so lobbying shifts to those people who control the calendars and schedules.
You can't have a working organization of 9400 people who all have equal power. If it isn't given an explicit hierarchy, one will form spontaneously, and lobbyists will obviously focus on the topmost layers of it.
If there are 9400 targets, you don't lobby all 9400 of them. You lobby the 940 most likely to sway the vote.
How do you figure? Each person would be one-twentieth as influential and important to sway as before (assuming, probably wrongly, that there aren't blocs you can sway by targeting one or two people).
Yes and no. When a member of Congress is deciding how they feel about an issue (in the rare example where the party line hasn't already dictated it), I think it's unlikely they think about specific individual voters in their district.
I know when it comes to votes on our borough council, those council members think about their neighbors, the guy down the street, etc. Now they're only representing about 2k people each, but it's not hard to imagine that if you represent 30k people, only a fraction of whom are politically active, you're much more likely to think of individual voters than if you represent over 20x as many people.
Most blog posts', comments' and even some research papers' conclusions are similarly "pulled out of thin air", as you put it, or simply conclude what seems logical to them.
It would be more interesting to hear your thoughts on why you seem to think it's wrong. Merely a "citation needed" isn't helping.
Research papers usually have more than a citation or two. It is the job of the person making an argument in a field with a long line of extant research to demonstrate that they understand what's been contributed before them.
Many papers have been found to be non-reproducible, and from time to time I read papers where I don't see how their conclusion is logical given the data. To me that indicates that often conclusions are drawn that seem logical to the researchers, and I'm sure they make perfect sense at the time, but every once in a while they end up being wrong later.
Here in Canada we have 100,000 constituents per mp, and things are not better. Their political footprint is so small that their party affiliation is all that matters. This means they all do exactly what their party says for fear of losing that party affiliation and becoming unelectable.
Compare vs the blue dog Democrats that held up healthcare reform. That kind of party infighting is unheard-of in Canada.
It's pretty much the same in most parliamentary systems. You're basically voting for a party, not a representative.
American political parties are much more like broad coalitions than their Commonwealth counterparts. If a candidate is vaguely left-ish, supports high taxes, extensive government services, and/or is sympathetic to minorities and foreigners, they will likely run as a Democrat, whereas the small government and/or traditional values and/or America fuck yeah! candidates are more likely to run as Republicans.
How many Democrats or Republicans would win election as independents? I doubt many would. While party discipline is looser in the US Congress, party affiliation is still very important.
As a whole, we vote for a party. The person on the ballet is that of your riding. They are a Member of Parliament (MP) for your area, and they are affiliated with one of the many parties.
The party the receives the most elected MP's across Canada wins, and their leader becomes the Prime Minister. The party votes for their leader, so Canadiens have little say there.
Sadly, most people vote based on who they want as prime minister, and they put little thought who is running their riding.
Sadly, most people vote based on who they want as prime minister, and they put little thought who is running their riding.
This is entirely rational, though. The local MP has two primary functions - one is to vote on legislation, and the other is to support a particular set of MPs to form the executive government (personified by the Prime Minister, because the PM usually gets most of the say in who makes up the remainder of the executive).
Both of these are important, but the choice of executive normally has far more effect on the day-to-day running of the country (and the executive mostly gets to set the legislative agenda anyway), so it's no mystery why people tend to focus on the choice of executive when deciding which local MP to vote for.
In the US. the President is voted upon separately, and often is the opposite of the party that runs the House of Reps. Party footprint in the House has little baring which party in the White House.
Yes, but my point is that in the USA you see reps acting against the stated plans of their party - as I mentioned before: when the blue dog democrats opposed their de-facto leader Obama on national healthcare? That does not happen here in Canada.
The party whip rules with an iron fist - votes where it is safe for party members to vote their conscience or directly constituents are the exception, not the rule. And my opinion is that a big reason for this is that individual representatives are basically anonymous here in Canada. They're too small to get any media coverage. The only time an MP or MP candidate makes the news is if they have a Cabinet position or if they make an apocalyptic gaffe. Debates, policy, etc. are ignored below the leadership.
Ah, due to the two party system that has a stranglehold on the US system and the nature of our primary system, there are A LOT of unaffiliated independent voters. There would likely be a lot of unaffiliated candidates if the number in the House was drastically and suddenly increased. There would be no party whips to whip. There might not even be enough representatives of the major parties to even form a collation, at least in the start.
> There would likely be a lot of unaffiliated candidates if the number in the House was drastically and suddenly increased.
No, there wouldn't. The electoral forces that drive duopoly operate the same almost independently of district size, changing the number of single-member House districts with first-past-the-post elections won't reduce duopoly.
Changing the electoral method might (and doesn't require changing the number of districts.)
I don't agree with this premise. From what I learned about redistricting when I was a candidate for California's citizen redistricting board (which almost completely eliminated gerrymandering in CA because legislature no longer has authority to define districts), under-representation is a big issue. From my impression, Republican and Democratic party bases are much smaller than everyone thinks. Neither of them would be in control of a drastically increased body without a collation with many many other groups. Also, many laws are currently in place that prevent third parties from participating in the primary system on equal footing with Dems and Rep. If those limitations where removed, that by itself would see an erosion of Dem and Rep party affiliation. The hold that Dems and Reps have on US politics is much more tenuous than they'd like everyone to believe.
It would be pretty interesting to look at a map of the large cities. A new waterfront development near me was slated to add somewhere around 15k new residents so you would probably hit the 30k mark after maybe 4-5 city blocks. There's a 2 block stretch nearby with 5 ~500 unit count towers, so they'd probably hit it. That would essentially make the government representatives akin to the building HOA Boards.
> Can you imagine a House of Representatives with 9400 members? How would business get done? Well, maybe that's the point. There would be so many representatives, that votes would have to be made based on what the person feels is right for their 30,000 voters, rather than how much money they can collect from lobbyist for their next campaign. 9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials. It would make pork barrel projects almost nonexistent because districts would be too small to gather enough support for the most silly of funding requests. It's a lot harder to buy off 9400 people than it is 435. Particularly if each of those 9400 people have to go back to talk directly to just 30,000 people several times a year. Representatives' support would really have to come from the local grassroots level. They might even vote per their constituents desires! Imagine that!
This seems like common sense, but there are a number of things in the social sciences that don't work out as common sense would.
Voting is, after all, largely irrational.
The other possibility is that corruption would be reduced in scope as to make it difficult to detect and and root out. Do you know 10 of the 435 representatives? The average person doesn't. Have you seen a corrupt city council? Now imagine every 9400 of those people representing 30k and imagine the possibilities for corruption.
> The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. If we keep to the current system of making huge bills with tons and tons of legal code, things would be unmanageable. However, that doesn't necessarily need to be a roadblock. Maybe we shouldn't keep the current system of bill introduction! Maybe our Representatives should really just submit succinct laws that apply to very specific things. We would still need a huge bill from time to time to address social and other national issues, and the national budget, but we would pretty much end riders that plague the current system. We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process. (Anyone hear of this Wonder called The Internet?)
Ok, so now the author is suggesting not just reforming law but reforming voting behavior. Good luck? What the author seems to be complaining about is an individual's access to their representative. This is fair, but reducing the number of constituents in no way guarantee that. The same dynamics discussed by Mayhew would still be in play. [1]
Access can be increased via modern technologies, but that's a seprate argument.
> The other possibility is that corruption would be reduced in scope as to make it difficult to detect and and root out. Do you know 10 of the 435 representatives? The average person doesn't. Have you seen a corrupt city council? Now imagine every 9400 of those people representing 30k and imagine the possibilities for corruption.
To me it seems like you have a lot higher chance of personally knowing someone who represents 30k people instead of the current figure. Finding a bad apple among a lot more apples sounds harder, but each 'apple' will have a closer relationship with the people they represent.
But personal relationships aren't what fight corruption. If anything, they contribute to it when you get people thinking "I have a history with this guy, he'll help me out".
What fights corruption is overall social trust, which is a wash because changing the size of the legislature won't change it, official policies, and oversight by regulators, courts, and journalists. And increasing the number of representatives would be bad for that oversight--more people to keep track of.
>> "The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. ... We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process."
This is a solution to the excessive power concentrated in Washington, D. C. Dilution to more people. I think better would be not concentrating the power there in the first place.
I used to think our 3 'powers' - legislative, judiciary, and executive -- were sufficient. But I no longer believe that the legislative is up to the task of oversight of the executive.
If the foundational debates were happening today, I would argue for a 4th branch of government: operational.
A modern system should avail itself of available technology. An 'open source' operational branch of the constitutinal state would be afforded the power of runtime oversight of the executive, and ideally be crowd sourced. The issue of 'state secrets' is somewhat legitimate, but imo a healthy system would strive to minimize such requirements, and worst case it can refer such matter to the much more compact legislative body.
That's interesting. Civil monitors would engage in activity that includes more immediate attention beyond the post facto review and redress (which is the sense I got from your linked content).
[p.s. For example, detach from the deliberative legislative body functions such as United States House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.]
I’m not sure moving committees, such as that one, to anther branch of government would achieve much. In the end, these committees are intended to allow the legislature to make better decisions - moving their functions away from the legislature doesn’t help.
Then again, the US system of government is not exactly a model for the 21st century.
Investigations and information sharing would be principle functions of this branch. I do not see the problem. They'll publish findings, and legislature may then deliberate on these findings to alter laws or enact new laws. If the operational branch discovers violations, it can then forward their findings
Decoupling the leadership of the oversight of the executive from the dominant party in the legislative would be benefitial. This is already possible in context of executive and judiciary. As it is now, these committees are subject to partisan games.
Further, the legislative permits lobbying whereas there is no room for lobbyist pressure on this body. None.
> the US system of government is not exactly a model for the 21st century.
I am drawing a blank imagining which existing system today would fit that bill.
Additionally, there’s no reason why government auditors have to do things annually like auditors for companies do - government auditors could quite easily audit smaller parts of the government at shorter or longer intervals.
Imho, the correct solution to corruption is to fund the election process. People work for the one who pays them. If there is no money provided for elections, then candidates will be paid by private funders, and work for them.
The US has 1.7 representatives in parliament per citizen. Compared to countries in Europe, that's very low [1], but even in Europe there's a clear trend for larger countries to have proportionally less seats, e.g. compare Estonia (1.3 million people, 76 seats per million citizens) to Germany (80 million people, 8 seats per million).
Looking at larger democratic bodies, the US doesn't seem that underrepresented compared to the European Union (1.4 per million) and India (0.6 per million!)
Having nearly ten thousand MPs seems very complicated, although I think it could be a good application of modern technology. However, how could this every be implemented? Even the most ardent supporters wouldn't be able to deny that it would be quite an experiment, and can you really do experiments on a nation state with hundreds of millions of people? We could try in a smaller country first, but using actual countries as "guinea pigs" sounds totally ludicrous.
For reference, the actual numbers are 535 congressmen (435 representatives and 100 senators) for about 324 million people for a ratio of about 1.65/Million.
This ratio is likely only going to get lower. The number of senators is equal to (2 x number of states)[0]. The number of representatives is set by law at 435, and has not changed since 1911[1].
Having a US representative for every 30k residents would, in many cases, result in congressional districts that are smaller than currently existing State legislative districts.
> Having a US representative for every 30k residents would, in many cases, result in congressional districts that are smaller than currently existing State legislative districts.
That's something of an understatement...Los Angeles (just the city proper, not the metro area) would have more members of the House of Representatives than there the total members of the California State Assembly and California State Senate combined. (133 vs. 120).
The other extreme would be New Hampshire, where we have just over 3000 residents per representative, and thus the third-largest legislature in the English-speaking world. Possibly one of the lowest-paid legislatures, as well - $100/year, plus gas money...
That failed Amendment didn't seem important enough to the founders, but nowadays, it makes good sense. At the very least, it would have forced consideration of this issue throughout our history, rather than being able to forget about it since 1911.
As for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, I'm not favor of that, as this is the only hedge we currently have against gerrymandering that keeps our House in the hands of the two parties. There's a reason that there is commonly a party mismatch between the House and Senate. Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely.
I also agree with you regrading Citizens United, but it really shouldn't need an amendment since the idea of a corporation existing on its own is a modern day fabrication in the first place. However, since the courts went a bit sideways on this issue, it seems like an amendment will be necessary.
> Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely.
The Senate is only redundant because it is popularly-elected, just like the House.
What it ought to be is the voice of the states. The state legislatures and governors should select senators (I'd like to leave the exact mechanism up to each state, but the key is that the senators should represent the state; honestly, I'd like to make them responsible to the legislature & governor as well).
Our federal system was gravely damaged by the 17th Amendment; the states have become not much more than glorified local governments, rather than the sovereign states they ought to be (and, legally, still are).
Also, the loophole found by the Federal government involving withholding funds from states if their will isn't met. They can't tell the states to, say, set a maximum speed limit [0] or force annual standardized testing [1]. But they can withhold highway and education funds if the states don't. I feel like this has pretty dramatically increased the intended power of the federal government over the states, but no one ever talks about it.
States are gripped by the gerrymandering process at all levels from state legislature all the way up to the Presidency. Literally the only exception is our Senate. If we repeal the 17th Amendment, party stranglehold on state legislatures (compounded by the issue of gerrymandering) support artificial control by one party over all of the state's representation at the federal level.
There is no need for our state governments to have direct representation in our Federal government. All representatives should be voted upon by the people directly. The idea that the state governments themselves need representation at the Federal level was misguided from the start, in my opinion.
De-aligning the visions and incentives of the many states is not a particularly desirable end-goal. For a sample of the result, one only needs to look at the European Union. For all its faults, legislation in the US is not approved or denied on the basis of whether it will let some states "get ahead" and so on. When a state gets nailed by an earthquake or a hurricane we provide military assistance and financial relief and get on with it.
The EU does not act in this fashion because they have strong sovereign states who act in their own interest, and are much the worse for it. When an EU member state gets something like a refugee crisis all the other member states just tell them it's their problem and they need to deal with it. They view monetary policy in the light of which member states it will benefit and which it will harm. They can't even raise an effective Federal military force.
Frankly this type of government already failed as the Articles of Confederation and the Federal system was drafted as a response, but that still doesn't stop some people from clamoring for its return. The Federal system already contains numerous sops to the interests of states, and should not be weakened further.
The House of Representatives already does a pretty good job of representing geographic areas. That's somewhat contrarian since people think of the Senate as the one that's supposed to represent geographic areas (states), but in modern times the House represents the geographic areas (large sparsely-populated areas with conservative membership) and the Senate represents the actual popular vote (nationwide, moderately liberal by a small margin but highly concentrated in urban areas). This is amplified somewhat by gerrymandering, but the truth is that congressional districts are inherently geographic areas and that's the feature the representation conforms to.
If you wanted the House of Representatives to be restored to its original vision, you would need to do exactly what the topic suggests and massively increase the number of representatives to drive the error caused by districting down to a reasonable level. That would be very different from any other large-scale government and would be ruled by informal power structures inside the parties, at which point you might as well just go to a parliamentary system.
While we're on the topic, if I could change one simple feature of US politics it would be for Senators to serve 4 year terms, with every state electing one senator every 2 years. The current system of 6-year terms sucks because parties very predictably dominate presidential elections and off-year elections, and you end up with Senators who are thrown out based only on the fact that they now face an opposite electoral climate from the one they were elected in, that will inevitably reverse on the next 6-year term cycle. There is a huge amount of "churn" here that in my opinion serves no purpose.
> that keeps our House in the hands of the two parties
Single member districts, first-past-the-post elections, and the Presidential system (which creates a big winner-take-all election, and makes the parties competitive for that election even stronger relative to other parties than they otherwise would be in downballot elections) are what keeps the House (and Senate, you will note, so the gerrymander-proof nature of the Senate is no defense against duopoly) in the hands of the two major parties.
Gerrymandering may effect which of those two parties is likely to hold which seats in the House, and effect competitiveness between the parties for particular seats, but is pretty much irrelevant to duopoly.
In the past one might reasonably expect to meet your representative at the local pub, tea and coffee house. You'd say, "Hey Sally, we should really do something about patent reform" and she'd say "Bob, I agree. There are two bills that are being ..."
Right now, it is nothing like that. My representative lives in another town, and I have never even seen her face in person except at a rally.
That sort of situation has never existed at the national level (except maybe back when only white male property owners voted).
Even with almost 10k representatives in Congress, representatives would still have 30k constituents each to deal with. It would be almost impossible to meet 30k people in a year, let alone give each of them time to discuss issues and fit in actually being a legislator.
I don't understand the conceptual leap at all from more representatives to smaller bills. Large bills are the result of political negotiation. You want X, I want Y, let's talk... That results in a bill with both X and Y. That's not going to go away with more people involved. In fact, it will probably get worse as everyone wants their own piece of pork in the barrel.
> 9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials.
Rather, it would be easier; the larger a body is, the less the body actually works in a flat egalitarian manner, and the more the work of the body gets done through formal or informal power structures created within the body; this is already a substantial difference between the Senate and the House when the latter has a bit over 4 times the size of the former, at 94 times the size it would be even a bigger distinction.
Lobbyists are experts at understanding and leveraging both the formal and informal power structures in governing bodies to focus efforts at influence.
Interesting proposal, but what is the justification for maintaining a geographical orientation in a system with a larger number of representatives? What if I'm more interested in advocating for an issue that in bringing money into my district. What if I'm ideologically disconnected from my neighbors. Can I put my vote towards a representative in Silicon Valley even if I live in Ohio?
If we are looking at modernizing the system, could we stop tying ourselves to a time when communcation was by horseback?
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The intent of this system is to protect regional interests, many of which are still with us (natural resources, garbage disposal, and employment are three obvious examples to me).
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadNot sure if this is what you meant by "possibilities," but I see a couple of major issues with this:
- The cost of buying off a politician (oh sorry I meant "lobbying") dramatically decreases. It's a lot cheaper to campaign to 30,000 people than it is to campaign for several million.
- The sheer number of representatives (~10600) presents a problem: it grants much much more significance to the senate, because deliberating on bill in the house would be impossible (and introduces effective filibuster since a 40% coalition could use 5 minute speaking slots to take up 2 weeks of time on the floor)
- Gerrymandering would become much, much worse as the size of districts decreased and number of representatives increased, just because the number of options you have to split up your state dramatically increase. Potentially minority districts would have 90% minority support while majority districts could be much more competitive (allowing for far more of them).
I feel like the author pulls this conclusion out of thin air.
>9400 Representatives would make it a lot harder for lobbyist to sway the will of our elected officials.
because a ~20x increase in the number of representatives would probably mean a roughly proportional increase in lobbying resources
The representatives become more dependent on scheduling and organization, so lobbying shifts to those people who control the calendars and schedules.
You can't have a working organization of 9400 people who all have equal power. If it isn't given an explicit hierarchy, one will form spontaneously, and lobbyists will obviously focus on the topmost layers of it.
If there are 9400 targets, you don't lobby all 9400 of them. You lobby the 940 most likely to sway the vote.
I know when it comes to votes on our borough council, those council members think about their neighbors, the guy down the street, etc. Now they're only representing about 2k people each, but it's not hard to imagine that if you represent 30k people, only a fraction of whom are politically active, you're much more likely to think of individual voters than if you represent over 20x as many people.
It would be more interesting to hear your thoughts on why you seem to think it's wrong. Merely a "citation needed" isn't helping.
Compare vs the blue dog Democrats that held up healthcare reform. That kind of party infighting is unheard-of in Canada.
American political parties are much more like broad coalitions than their Commonwealth counterparts. If a candidate is vaguely left-ish, supports high taxes, extensive government services, and/or is sympathetic to minorities and foreigners, they will likely run as a Democrat, whereas the small government and/or traditional values and/or America fuck yeah! candidates are more likely to run as Republicans.
The media only covers the party's leaders. I mean, Toronto has dozens of elections for mp seats, which should the Star cover?
The party the receives the most elected MP's across Canada wins, and their leader becomes the Prime Minister. The party votes for their leader, so Canadiens have little say there.
Sadly, most people vote based on who they want as prime minister, and they put little thought who is running their riding.
This is entirely rational, though. The local MP has two primary functions - one is to vote on legislation, and the other is to support a particular set of MPs to form the executive government (personified by the Prime Minister, because the PM usually gets most of the say in who makes up the remainder of the executive).
Both of these are important, but the choice of executive normally has far more effect on the day-to-day running of the country (and the executive mostly gets to set the legislative agenda anyway), so it's no mystery why people tend to focus on the choice of executive when deciding which local MP to vote for.
The party whip rules with an iron fist - votes where it is safe for party members to vote their conscience or directly constituents are the exception, not the rule. And my opinion is that a big reason for this is that individual representatives are basically anonymous here in Canada. They're too small to get any media coverage. The only time an MP or MP candidate makes the news is if they have a Cabinet position or if they make an apocalyptic gaffe. Debates, policy, etc. are ignored below the leadership.
No, there wouldn't. The electoral forces that drive duopoly operate the same almost independently of district size, changing the number of single-member House districts with first-past-the-post elections won't reduce duopoly.
Changing the electoral method might (and doesn't require changing the number of districts.)
This seems like common sense, but there are a number of things in the social sciences that don't work out as common sense would.
Voting is, after all, largely irrational.
The other possibility is that corruption would be reduced in scope as to make it difficult to detect and and root out. Do you know 10 of the 435 representatives? The average person doesn't. Have you seen a corrupt city council? Now imagine every 9400 of those people representing 30k and imagine the possibilities for corruption.
> The one problem with a number of Representatives being so large is that bill introduction may become a bit unmanageable. If we keep to the current system of making huge bills with tons and tons of legal code, things would be unmanageable. However, that doesn't necessarily need to be a roadblock. Maybe we shouldn't keep the current system of bill introduction! Maybe our Representatives should really just submit succinct laws that apply to very specific things. We would still need a huge bill from time to time to address social and other national issues, and the national budget, but we would pretty much end riders that plague the current system. We can even use 21st Century technology to make such bills easier to process. (Anyone hear of this Wonder called The Internet?)
Ok, so now the author is suggesting not just reforming law but reforming voting behavior. Good luck? What the author seems to be complaining about is an individual's access to their representative. This is fair, but reducing the number of constituents in no way guarantee that. The same dynamics discussed by Mayhew would still be in play. [1]
Access can be increased via modern technologies, but that's a seprate argument.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress:_The_Electoral_Connec...
To me it seems like you have a lot higher chance of personally knowing someone who represents 30k people instead of the current figure. Finding a bad apple among a lot more apples sounds harder, but each 'apple' will have a closer relationship with the people they represent.
What fights corruption is overall social trust, which is a wash because changing the size of the legislature won't change it, official policies, and oversight by regulators, courts, and journalists. And increasing the number of representatives would be bad for that oversight--more people to keep track of.
An "issue tracker", if you will.
Though I suppose elections are kind of like this.
If the foundational debates were happening today, I would argue for a 4th branch of government: operational.
A modern system should avail itself of available technology. An 'open source' operational branch of the constitutinal state would be afforded the power of runtime oversight of the executive, and ideally be crowd sourced. The issue of 'state secrets' is somewhat legitimate, but imo a healthy system would strive to minimize such requirements, and worst case it can refer such matter to the much more compact legislative body.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_b...
[p.s. For example, detach from the deliberative legislative body functions such as United States House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.]
Then again, the US system of government is not exactly a model for the 21st century.
Decoupling the leadership of the oversight of the executive from the dominant party in the legislative would be benefitial. This is already possible in context of executive and judiciary. As it is now, these committees are subject to partisan games.
Further, the legislative permits lobbying whereas there is no room for lobbyist pressure on this body. None.
> the US system of government is not exactly a model for the 21st century.
I am drawing a blank imagining which existing system today would fit that bill.
Looking at larger democratic bodies, the US doesn't seem that underrepresented compared to the European Union (1.4 per million) and India (0.6 per million!)
Having nearly ten thousand MPs seems very complicated, although I think it could be a good application of modern technology. However, how could this every be implemented? Even the most ardent supporters wouldn't be able to deny that it would be quite an experiment, and can you really do experiments on a nation state with hundreds of millions of people? We could try in a smaller country first, but using actual countries as "guinea pigs" sounds totally ludicrous.
1: https://jakubmarian.com/number-of-seats-in-the-national-parl...
Either I'm reading this wrong (what do you mean by "parliament"?), or this can't possibly be correct.
This ratio is likely only going to get lower. The number of senators is equal to (2 x number of states)[0]. The number of representatives is set by law at 435, and has not changed since 1911[1].
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_Stat...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911
[1] http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gov/gc/gc92_1_2.pdf see page 19
That's something of an understatement...Los Angeles (just the city proper, not the metro area) would have more members of the House of Representatives than there the total members of the California State Assembly and California State Senate combined. (133 vs. 120).
It would seem getting this through 27 states would a lower barrier than a lot of other options.
Add in term limits and repeal of the 17th amendment is a better formula then amending the constitution to overturn Citizen United.
As for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, I'm not favor of that, as this is the only hedge we currently have against gerrymandering that keeps our House in the hands of the two parties. There's a reason that there is commonly a party mismatch between the House and Senate. Once gerrymandering is removed from our system, then maybe the Senate itself is redundant in any form, and it can be removed completely.
I also agree with you regrading Citizens United, but it really shouldn't need an amendment since the idea of a corporation existing on its own is a modern day fabrication in the first place. However, since the courts went a bit sideways on this issue, it seems like an amendment will be necessary.
The Senate is only redundant because it is popularly-elected, just like the House.
What it ought to be is the voice of the states. The state legislatures and governors should select senators (I'd like to leave the exact mechanism up to each state, but the key is that the senators should represent the state; honestly, I'd like to make them responsible to the legislature & governor as well).
Our federal system was gravely damaged by the 17th Amendment; the states have become not much more than glorified local governments, rather than the sovereign states they ought to be (and, legally, still are).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act
There is no need for our state governments to have direct representation in our Federal government. All representatives should be voted upon by the people directly. The idea that the state governments themselves need representation at the Federal level was misguided from the start, in my opinion.
The EU does not act in this fashion because they have strong sovereign states who act in their own interest, and are much the worse for it. When an EU member state gets something like a refugee crisis all the other member states just tell them it's their problem and they need to deal with it. They view monetary policy in the light of which member states it will benefit and which it will harm. They can't even raise an effective Federal military force.
Frankly this type of government already failed as the Articles of Confederation and the Federal system was drafted as a response, but that still doesn't stop some people from clamoring for its return. The Federal system already contains numerous sops to the interests of states, and should not be weakened further.
The House of Representatives already does a pretty good job of representing geographic areas. That's somewhat contrarian since people think of the Senate as the one that's supposed to represent geographic areas (states), but in modern times the House represents the geographic areas (large sparsely-populated areas with conservative membership) and the Senate represents the actual popular vote (nationwide, moderately liberal by a small margin but highly concentrated in urban areas). This is amplified somewhat by gerrymandering, but the truth is that congressional districts are inherently geographic areas and that's the feature the representation conforms to.
If you wanted the House of Representatives to be restored to its original vision, you would need to do exactly what the topic suggests and massively increase the number of representatives to drive the error caused by districting down to a reasonable level. That would be very different from any other large-scale government and would be ruled by informal power structures inside the parties, at which point you might as well just go to a parliamentary system.
While we're on the topic, if I could change one simple feature of US politics it would be for Senators to serve 4 year terms, with every state electing one senator every 2 years. The current system of 6-year terms sucks because parties very predictably dominate presidential elections and off-year elections, and you end up with Senators who are thrown out based only on the fact that they now face an opposite electoral climate from the one they were elected in, that will inevitably reverse on the next 6-year term cycle. There is a huge amount of "churn" here that in my opinion serves no purpose.
Single member districts, first-past-the-post elections, and the Presidential system (which creates a big winner-take-all election, and makes the parties competitive for that election even stronger relative to other parties than they otherwise would be in downballot elections) are what keeps the House (and Senate, you will note, so the gerrymander-proof nature of the Senate is no defense against duopoly) in the hands of the two major parties.
Gerrymandering may effect which of those two parties is likely to hold which seats in the House, and effect competitiveness between the parties for particular seats, but is pretty much irrelevant to duopoly.
Right now, it is nothing like that. My representative lives in another town, and I have never even seen her face in person except at a rally.
This should be unconstitutional.
Even with almost 10k representatives in Congress, representatives would still have 30k constituents each to deal with. It would be almost impossible to meet 30k people in a year, let alone give each of them time to discuss issues and fit in actually being a legislator.
At that time (ending in 1856), travel was also arduous and slow; nobody was going back home for the weekend.
Rather, it would be easier; the larger a body is, the less the body actually works in a flat egalitarian manner, and the more the work of the body gets done through formal or informal power structures created within the body; this is already a substantial difference between the Senate and the House when the latter has a bit over 4 times the size of the former, at 94 times the size it would be even a bigger distinction.
Lobbyists are experts at understanding and leveraging both the formal and informal power structures in governing bodies to focus efforts at influence.
Modern technology could make very large parliaments feasible, and make them more visible and accountable to the public.
If we are looking at modernizing the system, could we stop tying ourselves to a time when communcation was by horseback?