In light of the 2020 census results released by the US Census Bureau, I've decided to revisit the topic of apportioning seats to the United States House of Representatives. You may remember
my earlier thread on this matter, in which I stated four objectives: correcting disproportionate representation between peer states, preventing political minorities within each state from being silenced, providing more granular representation to voters, and safeguarding the "one man, one vote" standard.
Looking back on my own work with fresh eyes, I found that the solution I devised then was too open-ended - in that it did not make a definitive commitment as to the precise electoral system to be used. It was also ham-fisted and clunky, using a minimum apportionment per state to provide political minority representation to voters within each state. It also could not account for edge cases, like providing representation in non-territorial constituencies (for example, providing representation to American Indians).
To correct these deficiencies, I devised a Second System for apportionment to the United States House of Representatives. It works on the principle of party-list proportional representation, in which political parties present lists of candidates to voters on Election Day. Voters then vote for the party which they believe most likely to act in their interests. After the proper share of seats are allocated to each party through proportional representation, party candidates are seated according to their order on each party's list.
The Second System operates on the closed list principle, in which the party lists are determined by internal processes within each party, prior to the election. Individual candidates' positions on the lists can be adjusted by the party leadership, to either reward or punish candidates, and provide senior party leadership with safe seats. This promotes internal party cohesion and discipline, avoids party candidates being set against each other for votes, allows each party to negotiate as a group, and prevents the party's messaging from being divided by factionalism.
Before I elaborate more on the specific implementation, I would like to remind you of several things to keep in mind:
- Like the First System, this is a "clean sheet" design, completely ignoring any effect on the Electoral College or other subtleties of the 1789 constitution. The goal is to correct aforementioned deficiencies, and build a more representative House - not to get bogged down in contemporary politics.
- Unlike the First System, the Second System is designed to be used with multiple-member districts, except for cases in which sparse state populations require the use of an at-large district. States with fewer than six representatives would be prohibited from subdividing their state into districts, and any such district must have a minimum magnitude of three.
- The political status of the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the territories has been set aside for the purposes of this implementation. It's best left for another thread. Hence, apportionment has been deliberately limited to the fifty states.
- The implementation is designed to be used in a parliamentary or semi-presidential political system, and incentivize multiple smaller, disciplined parties to compete against each other for votes, forming governing and opposition caucuses.
- Apportionments have been calculated with 2020 census data. You will get different results with different data, in regards to both the total number of seats and state-by-state apportionments.
With these factors in mind, the apportionment for the Second System observes the following characteristics:
- The size of the House of Representatives is always equal to the cubic root of the sum of the populations of the several States, rounded down.
- Each state is always guaranteed to have at least one representative in the United States House of Representatives.
- The quota for additional representation for each state is always equal to the sum of the populations of the several states, divided by the total number of seats available in the United States House of Representatives.
- No particular state is ever awarded an additional seat for having met a fractional quota for additional representation.
This produces a House of Representatives with 691 seats. Of these, 667 seats are assigned to states in territorial constituencies, while 24 seats are assigned to the United States, in a non-territorial, national constituency. The apportionment map appears as follows:
Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.
Under this apportionment system, the average population-to-seat ratio is 535,793:1.
Florida had the lowest average population-to-seat ratio, at 479,345:1.
South Dakota had the highest average population-to-seat ratio, at 877,770:1.
Particularly of note with the Second System is the decision to introduce the United States as a distinct constituency, separate from state-level representation. Some may understandably balk at such a decision to introduce this type of representation, but actually, there are very good reasons to do so:
- By rounding down individual states' delegations and passing those seats through to the United States, it avoids political questions of which state is most deserving of the fractional seat, and avoids litigation between states regarding which populations count for apportionment purposes.
- By providing national-level representation in addition to state-level representation, political minorities within each state can still affect policy through their votes at the national-level count, even if their preferred party is unpopular at the state level.
- By providing a national constituency, it provides national party leadership with safe seats, and gives them latitude to focus on matters affecting all 50 states - rather than being beholden to the parochial interests of any particular state.
- Legal permanent residents, military personnel stationed outside the United States, United States citizens living in the United States territories, and Americans living abroad, can be represented in the national constituency - all without compromising or diluting state residents' votes at the state level.
Broader implications of this system must be considered. The Second System is a radical departure from prior conceptions of how the United States Congress has historically been structured, and challenges assumptions of how it ought to be structured going forward.
Practical implementation of the Second System in real life would require the administration of future elections to the United States House of Representatives by the Federal Elections Commission, with the concomitant removal of responsibility for these duties from state boards of elections. It would also entail a unified system of vote casting, counting, tabulation, and certification, as well as unified distribution and provision of ballot boxes and election personnel within each precinct.
