As he was leaving Independence Hall after having helped draft the new Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was stopped by a woman on the street. “Well Doctor” she asked Franklin, “what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin replied.
Have we kept it?
A “republic” is the system where the government is controlled by representatives elected by the people. One of the hallmarks of the republican form of government is that those representatives are chosen to understand and protect the interests of their constituents. As James Madison said in the Federalist Papers, a Representative should “possess a proper knowledge of the local circumstances of their numerous constituents.”
When representatives were elected to the First Congress, after the Constitution was ratified in 1789, there was one Representative for every 33,000 people. Of course, as every school kid knows, at that time only a limited number of people could vote. Women, slaves, Indians, and free blacks, were denied the vote. There were property restrictions in most states, and religious restrictions in others, so only a small percentage of free white men could vote. By some estimates it was barely ten percent of the population. That means that in the First Congress roughly 3,000 people chose each Representative.
Studies suggest that the average person has a few hundred friends and family members, and casually knows about a thousand people. A politician probably knows more than the average. So Representatives in the First Congress probably knew a good majority of the people who voted for them. They certainly know the prominent men in the community, the bankers and the businessmen, the lawyers and the major landowners. They clearly knew the local circumstances and the concerns of their constituents. That is the quintessential representative democracy.
Madison thought this was the foundation or a Republic, and he proposed a Constitutional Amendment that set the ratio of one representative for every 50,000 people. That wasn’t enacted, of course, but throughout American history the number of Representatives increased as the nation’s population grew. There were 65 members in the First Congress, and by the Civil War the House had grown to 183 members. The ration of Representative to citizen also increased, from 33,000 to 93,000 by the Civil War. By 1900 there were 386 Representatives and one representative for every 195,000 citizens. By 1920 there were 435 Representatives, and each represented 230,000 citizens. Of course women gained the right to vote in 1920, so far more people were actually voting for these Representatives.
The 1911 apportionment set the number of Representatives at 435. Congress failed to re-apportion after the 1920 census, and in 1929 passed a bill making the number of Representatives “permanent” at 435. This was, in part, to appease rural states that were not having population growth and therefore were not gaining Representatives. In 1929 there was one representative for every 280,000 people. Today there are still 435 Representative, but each represents 750,000 people.
One common complaints about Congress is that Representatives are “out of touch” with the people and concerns of their districts. With this ratio how could they not be?
The Representatives in the First Congress likely knew a third of the people who elected them. Today a Representative is luck to know one tenth of one percent.
In a district that large, who can a Representative know? Friends, family, and profession colleagues, sure. They certainly know the other politicians, the mayors and state legislators. They’ll know the owners and managers of the major businesses or other enterprises in the district like colleges, hospitals, and military bases.
What about the other 749,000 people? How does a Representative, or candidate, get introduced to them? The simple answer is television. And that’s very expensive: the average cost of a Congressional campaign is just over a million dollars.
That means that a Representative, or candidate, must spend a great deal of time fundraising, which means they meet people with money who are willing to contribute to a campaign. It’s no wonder the public thinks politicians are beholden to special interests.
Have we kept faith with Dr. Franklin or James Madison? Have we kept our Republic? Have we kept a representative democracy with the representatives having “proper knowledge of the local circumstances of their numerous constituents”?
Not even close. We no longer have a representative democracy in any meaningful sense. We have a government run by people with little connection to their constituents and disproportionately beholden to people with money.
It’s time to revive our Republic and restore representative democracy. It’s time to recreate a system where representatives know their constituents, and understand their problems and concerns. It is time to repeal an antiquated law from the 1920’s and allow the number of Representatives to again increase.