In 1913, Chauncey Olcott hit the top of the charts with Irish Eyes Are Smiling. The Ford Motor Company, which would later say “You can buy the Model T in any color you want, as long as it is black,” didn’t manufacture the Model T in black yet, and that wouldn’t happen until 1914. Instead, the color choices were grey, green, blue, and red. The U.S. population was less than one-third of what it is today. The U.S. House of Representatives had 435 members.
At the time, they represented roughly 200,000 citizens. Today, each U.S. House member represents a little less than 750,000 citizens and by 2020, that number will rise a bit more. From the founding of our nation until 1920, the U.S. House grew every decade. Now, for more than a century, the number of representatives in the House has stayed flat even as districts have grown. As a result, these legislators have a more difficult time representing larger districts.
Expanding the U.S. House isn’t the only area where our government needs to step into the modern era, but it is a significant example of a broader need to modernize our government.
The U.S. House will be key in 2020
In 2020, we will likely see more states drift into the category of having only one U.S. House member, as Rhode Island is expected to join states like Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Population growth has created a tug-of-war that directly punishes one group—voters. Sean Trende at Sabato’s Crystal Ball saw this in 2014:
This will become more pressing in 2020, when Rhode Island is expected to lose one of its two House seats. Unless Montana gains one back, there will be more single-member states than at any time in our country’s history. Roughly one in six states will be single member; the only time that ratio was higher was immediately following the 1820 apportionment, and then only because three single-member states had been admitted to the Union shortly before the reapportionment.
As a side note, and as a result of the next apportionment after the 2020 census, New Jersey will likely have its smallest congressional delegation since the first decade of the 1900s, New York since the first decade of the 1800s, Ohio since the 1820s and Pennsylvania since the 1790s. As a result of the last apportionment, Illinois has its smallest delegation since the 1860s, Indiana since the 1830s, Iowa and Missouri since the 1850s and Massachusetts since the original apportionment. This is all despite massive increases in population size.
It has now been more than 100 years since the House expanded, and that lack of expansion has led to one outcome: gerrymandering. With representatives covering more constituents and with states contracting districts, we find that some states end up significantly underrepresented while others are overrepresented.
Expanding the U.S. House isn’t the only area where government needs modernization.
People need better access to government resources
Have you tried to navigate data on U.S. jobs lately? Or any federal website? What you will find is that government websites exist in another era as well, with the sites relying heavily on users printing out PDFs and mailing them in, or presenting bad email addresses, broken URLs, ancient CGI, and layouts that don’t work on mobile devices.
Every day, millions of Americans interact with the federal and state governments online, but the architecture that the government uses is so old and creaky that it is no wonder when people give up. While sites like Healthcare.gov and USAJobs.gov get a lot of the attention, most government websites need a serious rethink.
And while modernizing websites is certainly a step (the 21st Century IDEA act took that issue on), it is only a start. Updating websites and IT infrastructure needs to mean more than fast websites: it needs to also modernize their purpose.
Improving interactions with the government will also improve participation. If we look at ways to boost citizen involvement, we make a better government.
Ideas that would never happen—but ...
Finally, here are a few radical ideas that will never happen, but should be discussed. Revising the number of U.S. House members and changing technology can be done by statute, with no need to revise the Constitution. Other solutions would require constitutional changes, and as a result, are unlikely to ever happen.
That said, expanding the U.S. Senate as well is not a bad idea. At a recent government improvement forum, one well-received hypothetical was that on top of the two senators each state receives, some states could receive an extra senator for every 10 million in population. As a result, while states like Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma would keep their two senators, states like Texas, California, New York, Florida, and so on would receive more.
It may also be time to realize that lifetime judicial appointments come from an era where people simply didn’t live as long. Capping appointment lengths at 15 or 18 years would create stability within our courts. Presidential elections would have knowable consequences when it comes to which judges would be retiring, and the courts would be kept more modern, as a higher turnover would mean more views come into the court system.
Even Republicans see some value in this proposal. Justice John Roberts once argued this point in 1983, as covered by the New York Times:
Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence.
Creating turnover would make it far easier for individuals to understand their vote’s impact on the court system. It would also provide more opportunities to build a bench that looks more like America.
We’re roughly 20 years in now and can no longer say this is the “new” century, as people born after the turn of the century were eligible to vote in the last election. It’s time to modernize our government to reflect the realities of the century we live in.