Blogs For Victory

Naturally, the concept comes to us in modern America in the form of a lawsuit:

…The U.S. Supreme Court could decide as soon as today if justices will hear a case on whether those disparities violate the principle of “one man, one vote.” Justices were scheduled to discuss the case behind closed doors Friday.

The lawsuit, Clemons v. U.S. Department of Commerce, seeks a court order to force Congress to add more members so that the sizes of congressional districts would be more equal.

Last July, in a decision that quoted liberally from the Founding Fathers, a special three-judge panel ruled against changing the current system. “We see no reason to believe that the Constitution as originally understood or long applied imposes the requirements of close equality among districts in different states,” it ruled…

Attentive readers will remember that I’m in favor of this – have been, for a long time. In fact, not only do I want the size of the House increased, I’d like to see us break up some of the larger States and thus increase the size of the Senate, as well.

As the linked article notes, changing the size of the House was a routine exercise in American politics up until 1910. After that, we fixed the size of it at 435 members. The Senate increased in size pretty steadily through American history as new States were added. But since 1910, we’ve been at 435 House members, and since 1960 at 100 Senators (and there was a big gap in time between getting to 96 and going to 100 – Arizona became a State in 1912 and Alaska and Hawaii weren’t admitted until 1959). The nation has trebled in population during this time and part of the reason for the government becoming remote and arrogant has been the fact that vastly increased numbers of people are represented by a relatively small number of elected officials.

I know there is an ingrained opposition to adding more Congresscritters to bother us – but a democratic republic only works if the government, and especially the legislative power, is close to the people and to their interests. Representatives of lower population districts will be more in tune with the people – and smaller States will have Senators who genuinely represent the interests of the States.

Think of it like this – whom do California’s Senators represent? The interests of California? Heck, no. They represent Los Angeles and San Francisco…carry those areas, and you’ve got it made…but, meanwhile, the rest of the State doesn’t have a voice in the Senate and thus mining, logging, manufacturing and farming have been left to whither and die. San Francisco’s Senator doesn’t get much mileage out of helping a California farmer…and, so, California should be broken up – at least in to two States, but perhaps as many as four.

Meanwhile, over in the House, how can a Representative really look after the needs of 700,000 people? That is the size of the districts coming up. How can someone with little money break in to House politics when there is that large a number of people to get to know and attempt to convince? As we have seen, in most elections most of the incumbents win re-election and “name recognition” plays a key roll in that…just because the person is known, the person keeps getting re-elected…while the vast size of the district’s population works against a new comer. An entrenched political class has developed – and increasing the size of the House would be a good way to break it up.

I figure we should have at least 100 more House members – and the States ripe for breaking up (California, New York, Florida and Texas) would add at least 8 new Senators, and maybe more depending on just how they are broken up. No party would gain an insuperable advantage over this as, say, if you broke California up in to West and East California the Democrats would do well in West and the GOP in East…same situation if you broke up Florida along the Panhandle, and broke off NYC and Long Island from the rest of the State (as for breaking CA in to four – that would be North California {north of SF Bay to Oregon}, South California {Orange County to border}, West California {coastal counties plus Sacramento) and West Nevada (rest of the State}).

What we dare not do is think of our way of government as static. What is immovable in American politics is our Declaration of Independence – our Constitution and our States are creations of politics and subject to being altered or abolished as the people decide. Just because that is the way it is should not dictate how it always shall be – that isn’t conservatism; that is being reactionary (and, please note, it is our liberals who are reactionary – demanding that we keep everything as it is with the only change allowed being that which strengthens the status quo). We’ve got a lot of problems in our nation, and our thinking should not run in the old, familiar grooves – we need to think anew and act anew to reform and restore our nation…and part of that thinking anew means taking on the current power structure and seeing if we can really shake it up.