750,000-to-1: The ratio at the heart of America’s electoral issues

The memes I see online are seldom enlightening, often featuring kittens that somehow relate to how I, as a college student, feel about finals.

But one meme in particular points out a terrifying, overlooked fact about the American electoral system — one that reveals its utter ineptness.

Over a picture of the U.S. Congress, two numbers are layered, “11 percent approval rating. 96.4 percent re-elected.”

It’s easy to write off such crazy numbers on your news feed and keep scrolling, but according to PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking organization, the meme is rated “true.”

A nation that prides itself on being a democracy cannot have such a massive discrepancy between opinion and results. To ensure we the people get the government we want, America must change the structure of their election laws by removing the cap on the number of representatives and redistributing the number of voices they represent.

There is some low-hanging fruit in this conversation attached to alternate solutions. Repealing the Citizens United ruling — which allows unlimited campaign donations by corporations — is a popular route for better elections. According to a Bloomberg poll, 78 percent of Americans — across all party and demographic lines — want unlimited contributions eliminated.

Getting rid of Citizens United’s precedent would require a constitutional amendment, a process that needs a congressional super majority and ratification by two-thirds of the states. Considering Congress can’t even get a simple majority to pass a budget, an amendment might be asking too much of them — which kind of explains the approval rating, doesn’t it?

So how can the people get their power back? Well, the power may lie in your third grade nemesis: ratios.

From the first Congress in 1789 to the 63rd in 1913, the United States had increased the number of representatives in the House of Representatives proportionally with the nation’s population, from 59 to 435. That meant the ratio of people per representative grew from 67,796 to 223,505.

But the 435 seats the 63rd Congress contained did not grow for the next 40 years. When the population distribution changed, Congress simply moved existing seats between states.

Congress added two temporary representatives for Alaska and Hawaii in 1959, which only lasted until the next seat realignment. Then, the number of representatives dropped back down to 435, where it has stayed until the present day.

This is all due to the Apportionment Act of 1911, which arbitrarily capped the number of representatives at 435. Even though America’s population has increased exponentially since 1913, the number of representatives has remained fixed due to this odd act.

Now, the average congressman represents 733,104 citizens. That’s a 228 percent increase in people per representative since 1913.

How can we expect any one person to represent 733,104 individual voices?

Compare that to the United Kingdom, where 650 elected Members of Parliament represent 64 million people — that’s just under 100,000 per MP.

Granted, U.S. voters have two other elected bodies to choose as extensions of their voices.

The Founding Fathers always considered the House of Representatives the electoral body of the people. Popular vote didn’t elect U.S. Senators until the 17th Amendment in 1913. The Founding Fathers dictated congressmen respond to public opinion, but now, with three-fourths of a million individual voices, that opinion is becoming harder and harder for representatives to comprehend.

Information technology may have increased exponentially in the last century, but the limiting factor for representation isn’t the technology — it’s the elected officials themselves.

Even if email means your congressman’s desk is just a click away, how much time do you think they are giving your sternly worded letter on student debt or supporting a National Cat Meme Day if you are competing with 733,103 other voices?

Add in the brutal campaigning schedule for congressmen — every two years they must fight for re-election — and their attention is naturally going to gravitate to those who can help them stay in power. That means those with deep pockets and special interests.

For comparison, in the United Kingdom, MPs hold their seats for five years, plenty of time to learn what their constituents care about — or at least learn it better than in the United States. The U.K.’s government currently has an approval rating of 38 percent.

But if the miffed citizen goes to the polls to teach their representative a lesson, a limited number of parties leaves them with few options. In an ideological age, we are unlikely to vote for a Republican just to stick it to a Democrat beholden to some special interest, or vice versa. Third party candidates seem to have no chance of success.

That’s because a person running for office only needs more votes than the next guy — not a majority — to win. In districts of 750,000 people, even getting 40 percent to go along with a brand new political party is tough. That’s 300,000 people trying something completely new politically.

Instead, voters go with the safe candidate, who may take money under the table from the local mining conglomerate — but hey, they’re a Democrat.

This makes the average voter’s voice relatively unimportant, in the grand scheme of things, for a Congressmen. As long as you don’t royally screw up, a combination of inertia, special interests and apathy will keep you in office.

With smaller districts though, third parties need to convince fewer people to win a district, thus gaining a national stage to convince more voters of their worth as a political organization.

The United Kingdom — with just under 100,000 people per voting district — has 11 different parties elected to the House of Commons, as well as some independents.

In fact, the biggest third party in the United Kingdom, the Liberal Democrats, had such a large share of Parliament before the 2015 elections that the Conservative Party was forced to ally with them in order to have a majority voice.

Smaller districts mean more third parties, and more third parties means more compromise. And more compromise? That can only have positive results for the voters.

If we want democracy of the people, for the people, by the people, then the secret isn’t an amendment or any radical change — it’s fighting one silly, arbitrary law passed 100 years ago.

The old motto of American patriots needs only one tweak. It’s not, “No taxation without representation.” It’s, “No taxation with underrepresentation.”

Stephen Caruso is a senior columnist at The Pitt News. He mainly writes on economic and social issues. He is also the Production Manager.

Email Stephen at stephencaruso23@gmail.com.