And now for the “not going to happen any time soon, but wouldn’t it be great” solutions. Let’s start with an explosive realignment of the American political structure. Blow apart the current parties and come back with more than two parties capable of representing the American people. We can put Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis and their like into a far-right party. People like Mike Lawler and Justin Amash can form the core of a moderate, center-right party. Joe Manchin could be the leader of a center-left party. And we’ll leave the far-left party in the hands of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Libertarians might very well find a home in the new center-right party while the Green Party may well see their voice amplified as well. With 4 distinct parties, it becomes impossible for any one party to hold a majority in either house of Congress. This is especially key in the House where partisan rancor rules the day and compromise is the dirtiest word ever.
Take a minute and imagine a House that has to select a
speaker from among 4 different parties.
The voting couldn’t be any worse than what we recently witnessed with
Kevin McCarthy’s election and there would definitely be deals made. Would the two centrist parties coalesce
around one moderate leader? Would the
two left/right parties band together to put a solid, if not extreme, partisan
in charge? Imagine the conversations
going on this week if McCarthy wasn’t trying to bring the MAGA wing to
heel. With 4 distinct parties, it’s
entirely likely that the center right would look over to the center left and
say, “Let’s make a deal”. Then the
center right candidates can go back home and tell their constituents how they
got a deal done to keep America running.
Compromise might actually come back into favor in the halls of
Congress. There would still be disputes
and negotiations and points where the centrist parties band together with the
polar parties to pass or block some legislation. But hopefully this would reduce the partisan
fighting that is tearing America apart.
As for the impact on skewed delegations, I can’t really
say. How many voters end up choosing the
extreme candidate because that’s who won the closed primary? With more moderate candidates in play, would
voters move away from the polar ends?
Would the impact of current 3rd party candidates be
weakened? We would probably see a move
back toward mostly centrist candidates winning, but would the delegation align
with the voting totals. Maybe. Depends on the quality of the
candidates.
If we want to go in a different, if equally improbably,
direction. Let’s change the size of
Congress. It’s been fixed at 435 since
the 1930 census – before Alaska and Hawaii joined the union. To help illustrate where we actually are and also where we
could be, I’ve got two new vizzes for you to explore:
Idealized
Congressional Representation – explores the size of Congress based
on the 2020 census. You can adjust the Target
Pop per Seat to see how different levels of representation would impact
Congress.
Congressional
Representation by Population – explores the average population
per seat for each state based on actual apportionment data from the US Census
Bureau. You can view each census from
1910-2020. This viz also has the Top 10
and Bottom 10 Best Represented states.
As a point of fact for all the Constitutional purists out there,
Article 1 Section 2 Paragraph 3 contains this line – “The Number of Representatives shall
not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least
one Representative.” Needless to say,
abiding by that 1:30,000 ratio isn’t realistic.
While it would certainly solve the 2-party problem, the partisan fighting
among 11,000+ Representatives would be insane.
The Census Bureau appears to be aiming for a target of 750,000 people/seat
while also remaining constrained by the 435 member limit. Taking the limit off only adds 8 members to
Congress. The problem with the current
arrangement is the wide disparity in how well represented a state is. Montana, at 1:542,704, is the best
represented. Delaware is the worst
represented at 1:990,837. The gap
between those two ends is nearly 450,000.
We can do better than that. If we
set the target at 500,000 the gap between best and worst represented shrinks to
about 267,000. Admittedly, the size on
Congress increases to 662 members, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.
If we
increased the size of Congress, it would result in smaller districts that might
have a better chance of electing a more representative individual. In my home district (IN-3), the urban
(Democrat) core of Fort Wayne doesn’t stand a chance against all the rural
(Republican) farmers. The result is that
we end up being represented by the fairly extreme right-wing Jim Banks. Combining smaller districts with independently
drawn districts may result in a more diverse group in Congress that may have a
greater ability to find common cause and pass meaningful legislation that works
for everyone.
At this point, both ideas are rather theoretical and not likely to happen any time soon. While there are some 3rd parties, Libertarian and Green, that can influence the conversation, they don’t have enough to momentum to change the shape of Congress. Maybe we might see the break up of the two major parties, but we’re more likely to see shifting ideologies that maintain the two-party system. Changing the size of Congress is really a pipedream since no one in power has even offered a whiff of thinking about such a drastic shakeup of American politics. But we can always hope for a better, bipartisan, functional Congress.
