The New Ideas Blog

If no congressman I vote for has ever been elected, am I represented? This isn’t a hypothetical. I don’t like any of the choices on the ballot, and when I have voted in national elections, none of my choices have been elected. This is a problem that isn’t unique to me.

A possible solution is to get rid of the house of representatives in its current form. What I mean is to no longer elect representatives based on geography. Instead of representing people of an area, why not have representation of groups who share common political values? This would allow libertarians, socialists, greens and other political groups to actually be represented, instead of these people having to forever choose the lesser of evils (in their view) as a “voter of the blank congressional district.”

To understand this we have to look at reality facing small political parties and other potentially political groups now. There are about 150 million voters in the country, and 435 representatives in the “House,” which means one for every 345,000 voters. Now, suppose you build a new political party up to a membership of 15 million voters. That’s a lot of people seeking representation of their beliefs and values, right? It’s ten percent of all the voters out there.

Now you might think that they could have elect ten percent of the representatives, or something close to that. But in reality, that amounts to only 34,500 per district, or about 10%. With Republicans and Democrats making up most of the other 90%, what are the odds that a candidate from this party would ever be elected? Even if they were spread unevenly, with 70,000 in a district or two, it would be virtually impossible to get even one representative elected.

Let’s lay this out clearly: There’s a representative for every 345,000 people in this country, but a group of 15 million who share common cause can have no opportunity at all to be represented. A similar number of Republicans or Democrats could elect 43 representatives. Our group gets not one.

Some will argue that I can at least be represented as a member of the district I live in. Yet, as suggested, my choice will likely never win if he or she isn’t from one of the two dominant parties. And there is something else wrong here.

why in a NATIONAL election, to elect those who make NATIONAL laws, should we want representatives who serve regional interests? Isn’t that a big reason we have pork barrel spending and other problems? Shouldn’t we want local officials to handle local issues, state lawmakers to look out for the interests of the state, and national legislators to serve the whole nation?

My suggestion? Anyone who can get 400,000 signatures of registered voters designating him or her as a representative can go to Washington and represent those voters. As voters we get to sign for one each six years. By the way, there might be 4 million people who share some of my basic concerns, and we can get no true representation now, even if we were organized. Under this new system we could have ten representatives.

Of course there is little chance of this change ever being implemented. There are also technical challenges in implementing such a system (although less so than ever before). Still, it does point out a real flaw in the current way we are supposedly “represented.”

Tags: house of representatives, national elections, voters

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 6:19 am and is filed under Political Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.