"The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929" or "Why your vote doesn't matter much&q

Something I've heard over and over again is that our votes don't really matter. Some people claim their votes don't matter because they're not in swing states so they know which party will get the seats. Others claim that their votes don't matter because they live in heavily populated states and the Constitution gives smaller states an out sized voice.

This second point is actually true but it doesn't have anything to do with the Constitution.

The Constitution states that it shall be empaneled with "at least one Representative per state and will have no more than one for every 30,000 persons." Congress's size was dynamic for most of history with new Congressmen and Senators added each census or as new territories became states. However, this was always a very rough and tumble process as new congressmen and new senators disrupted the established balance of power between the parties.

Finally in 1929, Herbert Hoover signed the Permanent Apportionment Act which froze the size of Congress at 435 people permanently.

For most of history Congressional seats were allocated according to the D'Hort formula (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method) also known as the Jefferson formula since Jefferson was the one who proposed using it. The way this works isn't terribly important but the formula is intended to ensure that if party 'A' receives 30% of the vote, they should obtain 30% of the total seats.

In 1920 the Republican Party had unified control of the Government for the very first time and refused to expand Congress again after the Census. There were a couple of reasons for this: Throughout history the parties (as well as individual states) had fought tooth and nail to keep their larger voices in Congress. The 19th century had been especially turbulent as following the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the southern states received a huge influx of new congressmen since their African American populations now counted fully instead of each African American only counting for 3/5 a vote. The northern states went up in flames over this new southern political power (because they received it as a result of losing a war to secede from the Union) and the Congress was artificially balanced to keep the same number of Congressmen between north and south.

This state of affairs continued until the beginning of the twentieth century when cities began to explode in population due to mass immigration and a mass migration of rural Americans traveling from the country to the city in search of better opportunities.

Following the 1921 Census, Congress realized that this reapportion would result in many of their seats being lost.

The smaller states panicked at the thought of losing votes to the more populated cities and refused to concede their seats. Reapportion in 1929 in the traditional fashion would have increased the size of Congress to 483 seats but Congress refused to take action, justifying their decision with the claim that the Capital building couldn't hold that many seats. As a result, nothing was done after the Census.

By 1929 the districts in the United States were badly deformed. Some districts contained twice as many citizens as the ones they adjoined. However rural Congress men refused to lose their seats and they passed the Permanent Reappointment Act freezing the size of Congress at 435 seats. The Act also did away with any mention of districts at all. This provided a solution to the problem of threatened incumbents by allowing the political parties in control of the state legislatures to draw districting lines at will and to elect some or all representatives at large. At the time, the average Congressional district contained 210,328 people. Today the average Congressional district contains 994,416 people.

The number of districts per state has changed after each Census, however the total number of districts can not, resulting in less and less voting power from population centers.

As a result of this act political power has shifted drastically away from population centers giving smaller and less populous states an oversized voice in national affairs. This has resulted in the House of Representatives becoming much more the way the founders envisioned the Senate working, constraining the power of the most populated areas. Even at the time of its passage, the Act was controversial with some Senators claiming it was unconstitutional since Article One of the Constitution claims no Congressman can represented more than "30,000" people, however there has never been a serious effort to challenge the Act.

The good news is that this can be fixed and it takes no more than an act of Congress to do so. No amendment is required to correct this situation. Congress can, at its own discretion, pass a law that allocates Congressional seats by population.

If Congress repealed the Permanent Reapportion Act and set the standard district size as 30,000 (as the Constitution explicitly requires), the current size of the House of Representatives would be 11,000 representing 330 million people. 11,000 may be too large and far too unwieldy (even if it is what the Constitution requires) but each district being limited at 100,000 citizens still produces a Congress of 3,300 with most of these seats clustered in large metropolitan areas giving the densest population more of a voice in national politics. This would also guarantee that never again could a President lose the popular vote but win the Electoral college.

As a side note, Congress is also empowered to remove gerrymandered districts. It could easily pass a law to abandon traditional districting and simply give each state "N" representatives which could be elected state wide. It wouldn't matter where in the states the aspiring reps lived, the ones who received the most votes would represent the state. This would eliminate gerrymandering.

Live in a heavily populated area and feel like your vote doesn't matter? Well now you know why. You also know how to fix it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929

http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-Permanent-Apportionment-Act-of-1929/