The most important yet unknown American political history involves the size of electoral districts.
It may sound boring, but it’s enormously consequential.
The story features George Washington, who presided over the drafting of the US Constitution, but he had nothing to say until the very end of the proceeding. That’s when “the father of his country” rose to call for US House Districts of 30,000 inhabitants each, instead of 40,000. Washington spoke in favor of the lower number because word on the street (“objections taken against the Constitution out of doors”) was worried about overly large electoral districts. With Washington’s prestige behind 30,000 inhabitants per district, it easily passed.
However, 30,000 was a minimum number, not a maximum one. There was no ceiling on the growth of House district sizes.
Keeping electoral districts small was a big concern for the generation that established the United States. The issue frequently came up during the Constitution’s ratifying conventions in the states.
Two years after Washington rose at the drafting Convention to address the issue of House district sizes, Congressman James Madison, aka “the father of the Constitution,” rose in the US House of Representatives to propose a series of amendments to the Constitution that would become our Bill of Rights.
But here is what almost nobody knows. The first, first amendment to the Constitution offered by Madison had nothing to do with freedom of the press, the establishment of religion, or the right to assembly.
No, the original first amendment to the Constitution would have limited the growth of US House districts. That it was the first, first amendment suggests how important it was.
The amendment was never ratified because it was poorly written and against the interests of the smallest states. It also faced imminent obsolescence, given that the amendment stopped limiting House district sizes after the US House reached 200 members.
In fact, there was a more general reason the amendment failed. During colonial times and in the early republic, elected bodies had struggled to gather enough representatives to conduct public business due to the vast distances to be traveled under horsepower, over poor roads, through wilderness conditions, and often in harsh weather. If relatively few legislators had sometimes struggled to achieve a quorum, then how could many more be gathered from increasingly greater distances as frontiers expanded?
The result of the founding generation’s inability to mandate community-sized electoral districts in the Constitution means that US House districts today are allowed to grow to infinity.
Congress made reasonable attempts to expand the US House with population growth during the early republic, but districts grew significantly in the late 19th Century. In 1929, the US Congress locked in its current lower house size arbitrarily at 435 members, never to expand again, so that House districts have ballooned hugely since then. The historical growth of US House districts is illustrated below:
(source: Enlarging the House | American Academy of Arts and Sciences)
It’s not just US House Districts that have grown into gigantic proportions. US Senate Districts today usually encompass millions of people, since each US Senator represents an entire state. Even state and local electoral districts can include hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.
Unnoticed and undiscussed, the insidious crisis of American democracy is based on ever-growing electoral districts.
Elections that were supposed to be about reputations and relationships have become all about money and marketing. The results are fatal to popular self-government.
The incumbent reelection rate in the US House remains consistently at around 95%. To win a competitive US House seat in 2024 cost $5 million.
The 95% incumbent reelection rate stands in stark contrast to public approval of Congress, which hovers around a lowly 20%.
These numbers, indicative of a failed and corrupted democratic political system, are the direct result of enormous electoral districts.
What normal citizen, with a productive career, would ever interrupt that career for true public service, given the burden of campaign fundraising, the odds of winning an election, and the unlikelihood of accomplishing anything useful if elected?
So of course, the best, brightest and most public-spirited people don’t go into politics. Instead, the public is saddled with professional politicians as “leaders.”
Government by professional politicians has resulted in catastrophically bad public policies, which is what explains the pathetic 20% public approval of Congress. The American people well understand how awful their government has become.
If the growth of electoral districts is the source of our political system’s failure, then reducing the size of electoral districts is the solution.
The graph above is produced by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which proposes an expansion of the US House to 585 members. Unfortunately, it is a number without a serious rationale. At 585 members, each US House district would encompass 570,000 inhabitants. What would adding 150 Members of Congress accomplish? Would any of the negative incentives in the current system meaningfully change?
Before considering what is proper for US House district sizes, we should first establish what goals we wish to achieve. What is it about our political system that most needs to be changed?
Every thoughtful and normal citizen could probably agree on a wish list of two objectives:
1. Get the corrupting influence of money out of politics
2. Replace self-centered professional politicians with public-spirited normal citizens
That’s it. The above is what we all want, regardless of our politics, yes?
To get the corrupting influence of money out of politics, electoral districts must be community-sized and walkable, so that elections can be won 1) based on a candidate’s personal reputation known within that community, and 2) with some knocking on doors, inexpensive fliers and maybe yard signs.
Elections tend to be about having enough money, and not necessarily the most money. In community-sized districts, a few thousand dollars is sufficient to win an election. In a small district, big money expenditures that are out of proportion have diminishing returns and make voters suspicious that someone is trying to buy the election.
Scaling all American electoral districts back to the size originally suggested by George Washington would mostly solve our money-in-politics problem.
Imagine limits on US House districts at 30,000 inhabitants, state legislative districts at 20,000 and local government districts at 10,000.
Or maybe a still more walkable scale of 20,000, 10,000 and 5,000 would be a more certain way to achieve government “of the people,” instead of government for politicians and interests.
If we care about our democratic future, districts should evolve directionally smaller, not larger. In the Information Age, they can.
Importantly, the system would be based on large bodies of elected citizen-legislators who would serve part-time and keep their day jobs. The negative incentives that go with political careerism would disappear. Counterintuitively, massively increasing the number of elected representatives need not multiply “politicians;” rather, it can replace them with everyday citizens.
The elephant in the room—and it’s a big elephant—are the large sizes of our new legislatures. A US House of Representatives, elected from districts of 30,000 inhabitants, would have over 11,000 members.
Admittedly, it’s a shocking number, but only because we are unaccustomed to the idea. Keep in mind what we will accomplish.
The controlling influence of money will be removed from electoral politics, and professional politicians will mostly go the way of the dinosaur.
Very many new representatives, connected on the Web, will serve from home, among the people they are supposed to represent.
We will have proportionally far fewer people with personality disorders in office, and we will have eliminated the toxic political and partisan acculturation that takes place at distant capitals among politicians and lobbyists cozily clumped together.
Everyday people, including accomplished citizens who would never dream of running for office under the current system, will be our new elected leaders.
The people, in George Washington’s time, understood the importance of keeping electoral districts small and not permitting government to grow too distant from those it is supposed to serve. Yet, with their primitive transportation technology, the founders were unsure how maintain equitable political representation in the future. Happily, for us in the 21st Century, we have the technology to realize true representative democracy.
It’s going to take greater understanding, popular deliberation and planning in our time. We have no other choice if we want to live under a democratic political system and ultimately, if we value our freedom.
(Next: Why government by large numbers of people makes much better decisions than government by the few).