what is equal representation in congress

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How Congress Can Better Represent the People

Elected officials across the country affirm that public campaign financing — one of the reforms proposed in the For the People Act — can empower small donors.

• Public Campaign Financing

The Senate is currently considering the  For the People Act , a historic democracy reform bill passed by the House this month. In addition to sweeping reforms to improve voting, redistricting, financial transparency, and ethics laws, the bill would establish a voluntary small donor match public financing system for candidates running for federal office.

Public financing for congressional campaigns is a transformative reform. By matching and multiplying small donations from everyday Americans, it would allow candidates to stop chasing big checks and special interest money, and to focus instead on grassroots supporters. But even though it’s a new idea for congressional elections, public financing already has an established track record. The For the People Act would update and improve an existing system used by virtually every major presidential candidate for decades. Public financing systems have also flourished in state and local elections.

A new Brennan Center report,  Faces of Small Donor Public Financing 2021 , illustrates the power of public financing by featuring success stories from across the nation. We interviewed elected officials who ran with public funds: Democrats and Republicans, longtime incumbents and new challengers, representatives of small rural districts and those serving urban communities with more than one million constituents. The insights of several interviewees were informed by their experiences running for Congress.

Elected officials offered compelling testimony about the ways that public financing allowed them to fundraise through door-knocking, house parties, and other forms of constituent contact, rather than call time to wealthy donors. We heard about how public financing brings people into politics, encouraging first-time donors, many of whom go on to volunteer. And many lawmakers spoke about how public financing makes government more responsive to the people and enables policies that better serve the public.

Among our interviewees, women and people of color spoke powerfully about the value of public financing given the challenges that traditional fundraising mechanisms posed for them. For example, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who previously held offices for over a decade in New York City, told us that the city’s public financing program made it possible for her to run without connections to wealth, relying on support from people who have historically been left out of politics.

This testimony is consistent with research showing that women and people of color running for Congress would  particularly benefit  from a multiple public match on small contributions. To be sure, no single reform can address all the inequities in the campaign finance system, but empowering small donors is one of the most powerful options available. As Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL)  explained  during the House deliberation on the For the People Act, our research shows that public financing can “increase the racial and gender diversity of our elected officials.”

For all the benefits to democracy of broad participation, small donors are in desperate need of a boost. The 2020 election cycle was by far the most expensive in American history, with  $14.4 billion  spent between the presidential and congressional races. Though small donors contributed record amounts —  more than $4 billion  combined — big donors were still responsible for the majority of campaign funds. Small-money donors were outspent by a much smaller number of megadonors — “mega” indicating contributions over $10,000 — who collectively  gave  $5 billion.

Public financing would amplify the voices of the millions of small-dollar contributors, fundamentally shifting the balance so that  small donors become the most important source of campaign funds . It is designed to encourage broader engagement in the political process so that elected officials are hearing from their many constituents, not just a handful of  ideologically extreme  megadonors.

The new report’s bipartisan chorus of firsthand testimony shows how an emphasis on grassroots supports improves elections and policy making. And it adds to a well-established record of success. In 2016, we published a  collection  of officials’ testimonies illustrating the benefits for candidates and constituents. Since then, several new programs have been enacted, demonstrating the continued popularity and success of the reform. Last year, New York State became the first to enact public financing for state offices since the Supreme Court’s  Citizens United  decision brought a flood of unlimited money into politics. Newly implemented programs, like in  Montgomery County, Maryland , and  Seattle , join decades-old programs like those in Arizona and New York City, which have together financed thousands of candidacies.

Public financing is a key step toward making our political systems more inclusive and responsive to the public. As shown by the elected officials and jurisdictions highlighted in the new  Faces of Small Donor Public Financing , the future of the reform is bright.

Related Issues:

Related resources.

Faces of Small Donor Public Financing 2021

Elected officials who benefited from public campaign financing explain why it’s a boon for democracy across the nation.

Checkbook Candidacies

RFK Jr.’s running mate is a living symbol of our troubled campaign finance system.

The Answer to Citizens United Is Becoming Reality

New York’s small donor public match will shift power away from megadonors.

Small Donor Public Financing Explained

How to counter big money in politics, how to make government more representative in the age of big money and megadonors, public campaign financing will make a difference in new york – if it’s properly funded, major strides for public campaign financing, informed citizens are democracy’s best defense.

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Many voters say Congress is broken. Could proportional representation fix it?

Hansi Lo Wang

A perimeter fence surrounds the U.S. Capitol in February ahead of President Biden's State of the Union speech in Washington, D.C. Mariam Zuhaib/AP hide caption

A perimeter fence surrounds the U.S. Capitol in February ahead of President Biden's State of the Union speech in Washington, D.C.

With an increasingly polarized Congress and fewer competitive elections , there are growing calls among some election reformers to change how voters elect members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

One potential alternative to the current winner-take-all approach for House races is known as proportional representation.

Instead of the single candidate with the most votes winning a House district's seat, a proportional representation system would elect multiple representatives in each district, distributing seats in the legislature roughly in proportion to the votes each party receives.

Supporters say proportional representation could help temper the rise of political extremism, eliminate the threat of gerrymandering and ensure the fair representation of people of color, as well as voters who are outnumbered in reliably "red" or "blue" parts of the country.

This story is part of a series of reports on alternatives to how U.S. voters cast ballots and elect their political leaders. Click here for more NPR voting stories .

And last year, a group of more than 200 political scientists, legal scholars and historians across the U.S. said the time for Congress to change is now.

"Our arcane, single-member districting process divides, polarizes, and isolates us from each other," they wrote in an open letter to lawmakers. "It has effectively extinguished competitive elections for most Americans, and produced a deeply divided political system that is incapable of responding to changing demands and emerging challenges with necessary legitimacy."

But how exactly proportional representation could change House elections is an open question with major hurdles. There's a federal law that bans it, and many of its supporters acknowledge it would likely be years, if not decades, before a majority of lawmakers allow such a big, untested restructuring of Congress.

What could proportional representation in the House look like?

There's a spectrum of ways to reform the House using proportional representation. Two key factors are how many representatives a multi-member district would have and how winners of House seats would be proportionally allocated.

In 2021, Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia led a group of other House Democrats in reintroducing a proposal that's been floating around Congress since 2017 . The Fair Representation Act would require states to use ranked choice voting for House races. It calls for states with six or more representatives to create districts with three to five members each, and states with fewer than six representatives to elect all of them as at-large members of one statewide district.

Some advocates also raise the possibility of increasing the total number of House seats, which has been stuck at 435 seats for decades .

Stuck at 435 representatives? Why the U.S. House hasn't grown with census counts

While there's no consensus on the mechanics, supporters say moving toward proportional representation could allow the country's diversity to be better represented — including in communities where elections, outside of primaries, have become non-competitive.

"When you're looking at New York City, where I live, it's a city of almost 8.5 million people. And there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Republican voters who find themselves in districts with lopsided Democratic majorities," says Reihan Salam, a Brooklyn-based Republican who heads the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and has written in support of proportional representation .

Salam sees proportional representation as "something that would be hugely healthy for our politics to see to it that you don't just have competitive elections in a small, tiny handful of swing districts or swing states."

And that increased competition could push political parties to be more willing to compromise and negotiate, says Didi Kuo, a fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Kuo, who has studied versions of proportional representation systems in New Zealand, Italy and Japan, notes that many other democracies around the world have rewritten their rules "when some people are marginalized or excluded from representation, or when votes are not being translated into seats."

"How would you like it if there were a system where you could at least ensure that one person you like gets elected or one person of the party that you support?" Kuo says about what proportional representation could offer.

It could also lead to the rise of more political parties, which supporters say could boost voter turnout by expanding voters' choices in candidates.

But that could come with complications, warns Ruth Bloch Rubin, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

"We've seen how difficult it was to elect a speaker with just two parties, that when you introduce multiple parties, it increases the odds that you're going to have collective action problems, coordination problems. It's just going to be slower and harder to get people to reach agreement," says Bloch Rubin, who has written about the potential challenges that could come with switching from the current system of two major parties.

Why is proportional representation in the House against the law?

In 1967, Congress passed a law that bans a House district from electing more than one representative.

Courts hearing redistricting lawsuits at the time were considering ordering states with contested maps to use multi-member districts and hold statewide at-large elections as a temporary fix — a scenario that many lawmakers wanted to avoid. After the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law, many lawmakers also wanted to block southern states from using multi-member districts and at-large, winner-take-all elections for the House to weaken the voting power of Black voters.

Since then, lawmakers, including Beyer, have introduced bills that would undo that requirement of single-member congressional districts and allow for multi-member districts.

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell of California is seen in 2010. While serving in Congress back in 1999, Campbell testified in support of multi-member districts, which he says he still supports. Paul Sakuma/AP hide caption

While serving in Congress back in 1999, now-former Republican Rep. Tom Campbell of California testified in support of multi-member districts, which he says he still supports.

"No one looks at the House of Representatives today and says, 'There's a good model of functioning governance.' No one says that. And so the interest in trying something else has never been higher," says Campbell, who is now a law professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and has left the GOP to form the Common Sense Party of California.

But in recent years, there's been no public support for proportional representation from Republicans in Congress, which Campbell sees as a sign of how polarized Capitol Hill has become.

"A Republican who puts her name or his name on such a bill will be targeted in the next primary election for the simple reason that you are attempting to move towards a system that might allow more members of Congress who are not Republican," Campbell says.

For many representatives, regardless of party, there's not a lot of incentive to try and disrupt the status quo that got them elected, says Bloch Rubin, the political scientist at the University of Chicago.

"Everyone's adapted their campaign and electoral strategies for the way the rules currently function," Bloch Rubin adds.

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How could proportional representation ensure fair representation for people of color.

The U.S. Supreme Court's weakening of the Voting Rights Act over the past decade has helped fuel interest in proportional representation among some civil rights advocates.

While the high court upheld its past rulings on a key remaining section of that landmark law, the loss of other legal protections against racial discrimination in the election process has made it harder to ensure fair representation for people of color around the country.

"If you go into communities of color, they're increasingly disillusioned with the political process. And the system that we have now, in many ways, adds to that disillusionment," says Alora Thomas-Lundborg, strategic director of litigation and advocacy at Harvard Law School's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. "It's a winner-take-all system, meaning that if you happen to be in a district where you don't represent the plurality of votes, then you just get no representation and folks feel as though they're not represented. And even when you're in a district where maybe you are being represented, if that district is no longer competitive, you may still feel that your elected representative is not responsive to your needs because they're not out there having to curry your vote."

For communities of color, proportional representation could, in theory, set up a House of Representatives that is more reflective of their shares of the U.S. population, which is becoming increasingly diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, Thomas-Lundborg adds.

But that promise is untested.

Thomas-Lundborg says more state and local governments adopting proportional representation systems could help assuage some concerns about what impact it would actually have in racially and ethnically diverse parts of the country.

"We are at a point where we're asking a lot of questions and trying to think about the future as the nature of the Supreme Court is changing and the demographics of our country is changing," Thomas-Lundborg says. "And it's a really important time to start thinking proactively about these issues."

Edited by Benjamin Swasey

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Article I, Section 1:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Although the states generally favored a bicameral legislature, 1 Footnote 1 The Records of The Federal Convention of 1787 , at 54–55 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) . the states were heavily divided over the representation in each branch of Congress. 2 Footnote Id. at 509 ; Max Farrand , The Framing of the Constitution of the United States 92 (1913) . To resolve these concerns, the Convention delegates approved forming a “compromise committee” to devise a compromise among the proposed plans for Congress. 3 Footnote Farrand , Framing of the Constitution , supra note 2, at 97–98 . The committee proposed a plan that became known as the Great Compromise. 4 Footnote See generally id. at 91–112 (discussing the process that led to the Great Compromise). Roger Sherman and other delegates from Connecticut repeatedly advanced a legislative structure early in the Convention debates that eventually was proposed as the Great Compromise. See 1 The Records of The Federal Convention of 1787 , supra note 2, at 196 . Historians often credit Sherman and the Connecticut delegates as the architects of the Great Compromise. Mark David Hall , Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic 96–98 (2013) (discussing Sherman’s proposal during the Convention debates that led to the “Connecticut Compromise” ); Farrand , Framing of the Constitution , supra note 2, at 106 . See also Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 12–13 (1964) (discussing Sherman’s role in the Great Compromise). The plan provided for a bicameral legislature with proportional representation based on a state’s population for one chamber and equal state representation in the other. 5 Footnote 1 The Records of The Federal Convention of 1787 , supra note 1, at 524 . See Farrand , Framing of the Constitution , supra note 2, at 104–07 . For the House of Representatives, the plan proposed that each state would have “one representative for every 40,000 inhabitants,” elected by the people. 6 Footnote 1 The Records of The Federal Convention of 1787 , supra note 1, at 526 . The compromise was amended to allow that state inhabitants would also include “three-fifths of the slaves” in the state. Id. at 603–06 ; Farrand , Framing of the Constitution , supra note 2, at 99 . For discussion of the “three-fifths” clause, see Intro.6.1 Continental Congress and Adoption of the Articles of Confederation. For the Senate, the committee proposed that each state would have an equal vote with members elected by the individual state legislatures. 7 Footnote 1 The Records of The Federal Convention of 1787 , supra note 1, at 160 . In 1913, the states ratified the Seventeenth amendment that requires members of the Senate to be elected by the people. After significant debate, the Convention adopted the Great Compromise on July 16, 1787. 8 Footnote Farrand , Framing of the Constitution , supra note 2, at 104–07 ; 1 Congressional Quarterly, Inc. , Guide to Congress 358, 367–68 (5th ed. 2000) (discussing of the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment ).

During the state ratification debates that followed the Convention, one of the central objections from the Anti-Federalists was that the consolidation of government power in a national Congress could “destroy” state legislative power. 9 Footnote Gordon S. Wood , Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 , at 526–530 (1969) (discussing state ratifications concerning the jurisdiction of federal and state legislatures under the Constitution). The Federalists attempted to curb these fears by noting that the sovereign power of the Nation resides in the people, and the Constitution merely “distribute[s] one portion of power” to the state and “another proportion to the government of the United States.” 10 Footnote Id. at 530 (quoting James Wilson from the Pennsylvania ratifying convention from Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution 1787–1788 , at 302 (John Bach McMaster & Frederick D. Stone, eds. 2011) ). To further allay Anti-Federalist concerns regarding concentrated federal power in Congress, the Federalists emphasized that bicameralism, which lodged legislative power directly in the state governments through equal representation in the Senate, would serve to restrain, separate, and check federal power. 11 Footnote See id. at 559 (analyzing the Federalists’ views of bicameralism).

In vesting the legislative power in a bicameral Congress, the Framers of the Constitution purposefully divided and dispersed that power between two chambers—the House of Representatives with representation based on a state’s population and the Senate with equal state representation. 12 Footnote U.S. Const. art. I, § 7. cl. 2 . See The Federalist No. 39 (James Madison) ( “The house of representatives will derive its powers from the people of America, and the people will be represented in the same proportion, and on the same principle, as they are in the Legislature of a particular State. So far the Government is national not federal. The Senate on the other hand will derive its powers from the States, as political and co-equal societies; and these will be represented on the principle of equality in the Senate, as they now are in the existing Congress. So far the government is federal, not national.” ). The Framers recognized that the division of legislative power between two distinct chambers of elected members was needed “to protect liberty” and address the states’ fear of an imbalance of power in Congress. 13 Footnote See Immigration & Naturalization Serv. v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 950 (1983) ( “[T]he Framers were . . . concerned, although not of one mind, over the apprehensions of the smaller states. Those states feared a commonality of interest among the larger states would work to their disadvantage; representatives of the larger states, on the other hand, were skeptical of a legislature that could pass laws favoring a minority of the people.” See also The Federalist No. 51 (James Madison) ( “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.” ); Farrand , Framing of the Constitution , supra note 2, at 99–112 (describing the debate among the states regarding the structure of Congress). As later explained by Chief Justice Warren Burger, “the Great Compromise, under which one House was viewed as representing the people and the other the states, allayed the fears of both the large and small states.” 14 Footnote Chadha , 462 U.S. at 950 . See also Farrand , Framing of the Constitution , supra note 2, at 105–06 (explaining the structure of Congress as achieved under the “Great Compromise” ).

By diffusing legislative power between two chambers of Congress in the legislative Vesting Clause, the Framers of the Constitution sought to promote the separation of powers, federalism, and individual rights. 15 Footnote See The Federalist No. 62 (James Madison) ( “[A] senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government. It doubles the security to the people, by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient.” ). See also John F. Manning , Textualism as a Nondelegation Doctrine , 97 Colum. L. Rev. 673 , 708–09 (1997) (describing how the legislative procedures “promote caution and deliberation; by mandating that each piece of legislation clear an intricate process involving distinct constitutional actors, bicameralism and presentment reduce the incidence of hasty and ill-considered legislation” ). They designed the bicameral Congress so that “legislative power would be exercised only after opportunity for full study and debate in separate settings.” 16 Footnote Chadha , 462 U.S. at 951 . While acknowledging that the bicameral legislative process often produces conflict, inefficiency, and “in some instances [can] be injurious as well as beneficial,” the Framers believed that the intricate law-making process promotes open discussion and safeguards against “against improper acts of legislation.” 17 Footnote The Federalist No. 62 (James Madison) . John F. Manning , Textualism as a Nondelegation Doctrine , 97 Colum. L. Rev. 673 , 709–10 (1997) (discussing the legislative process as protection against “hasty and ill-considered legislation” ). Some scholars have argued that the Framers deliberately designed the lawmaking process to be slow and inefficient so that the laws that passed were sufficiently deliberative, representative, and accountable. See, e.g. , Cynthia R. Farina , Statutory Interpretation and the Balance of Power in the Administrative State , 89 Colum. L. Rev. 452 , 524 (1989) ( “The Confederation period led [the Framers] to conclude that government which moved too quickly in establishing and altering policy was, over time, less likely to make wise choices and more likely to threaten individual liberty. Therefore, they deliberately created a lawmaking process that was slow, even cumbersome.” ). As the Supreme Court later explained, the “legislative steps outlined in Art. I are not empty formalities” but serve to “make certain that there is an opportunity for deliberation and debate.” 18 Footnote Chadha , 462 U.S. at 958 n.23 .

The House Explained

We the People of the United States…

As per the Constitution, the U.S. House of Representatives makes and passes federal laws. The House is one of Congress’s two chambers (the other is the U.S. Senate), and part of the federal government’s legislative branch. The number of voting representatives in the House is fixed by law at no more than 435, proportionally representing the population of the 50 states.

Learn About:

What is a representative.

Also referred to as a congressman or congresswoman, each representative is elected to a two-year term serving the people of a specific congressional district. Among other duties, representatives introduce bills and resolutions, offer amendments and serve on committees. The number of representatives with full voting rights is 435, a number set by Public Law 62-5 on August 8, 1911, and in effect since 1913. The number of representatives per state is proportionate to population.

Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution provides for both the minimum and maximum sizes for the House of Representatives. Currently, there are five delegates representing the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. A resident commissioner represents Puerto Rico. The delegates and resident commissioner possess the same powers as other members of the House, except that they may not vote when the House is meeting as the House of Representatives.

To be elected, a representative must be at least 25 years old, a United States citizen for at least seven years and an inhabitant of the state he or she represents.

Go to the Clerk’s site for more information about representatives.

View the list of House members.

Find Your Representative

Enter your ZIP code in the banner of this page to find the representative for your congressional district.

Did You Know?

After extensive debate, the framers of the Constitution agreed to create the House with representation based on population and the Senate with equal representation. This agreement was part of what is referred to as The Great Compromise .

House leadership includes the speaker, majority and minority leaders, assistant leaders, whips and a party caucus or conference. The speaker acts as leader of the House and combines several institutional and administrative roles. Majority and minority leaders represent their respective parties on the House floor. Whips assist leadership in managing their party's legislative program on the House floor. A party caucus or conference is the name given to a meeting of or organization of all party members in the House. During these meetings, party members discuss matters of concern.

The majority party members and the minority party members meet in separate caucuses to select their leader. Third parties rarely have had enough members to elect their own leadership, and independents will generally join one of the larger party organizations to receive committee assignments.

Learn more about the history of the majority and minority leaders from the Office of the Clerk .

Leadership List

View the list of leadership offices and links to the websites.

Past Leadership

Curious about who else has been Speaker of the House or Majority Leader?  Read more about  past house leadership .

Do You Know?

How many people have served as Speaker of the House? Has the Speaker ever become President? Find out more about the history of the Speakership!

The House’s standing committees have different legislative jurisdictions. Each considers bills and issues and recommends measures for consideration by the House. Committees also have oversight responsibilities to monitor agencies, programs, and activities within their jurisdictions, and in some cases in areas that cut across committee jurisdictions.

The Committee of the Whole House is a committee of the House on which all representatives serve and which meets in the House Chamber for the consideration of measures from the Union calendar.

Before members are assigned to committees, each committee’s size and the proportion of Republicans to Democrats must be decided by the party leaders. The total number of committee slots allotted to each party is approximately the same as the ratio between majority party and minority party members in the full chamber.

Get answers to frequently asked questions about committees from the Clerk of the House.

Committee Websites

All committees have websites where they post information about the legislation they are drafting.

What's a Select Committee?

The House will sometimes form a special or select committee for a short time period and specific purpose, frequently an investigation.

Each committee has a chair and a ranking member. The chair heads the full committee. The ranking member leads the minority members of the committee.

Congress has created a wide variety of temporary and permanent commissions to serve as advisory bodies for investigative or policy-related issues, or to carry out administrative, interparliamentary, or commemorative tasks. Such commissions are typically created by either law or House resolution, and may be composed of House members, private citizens, or a mix of both. In some cases, the commissions are entities of the House or Congress itself; in other cases, they are crafted as independent entities within the legislative branch.

Examples of commissions

• Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: a temporary, independent investigative body created by law and made up of private citizens.
• Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission): an independent U.S. government agency composed of nine members of the United States Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce.
• House Page Board: a permanent, Congressional advisory group created by law and made up of House members, Officers, and private citizens.

House Commissions

• Congressional Executive Commission on China
• Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission)
• House Democracy Partnership Commission
• Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
• U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

Whether working on Capitol Hill or in his / her congressional district, a representative’s schedule is extremely busy. Often beginning early in the morning with topical briefings, most representatives move quickly among caucus and committee meetings and hearings. They vote on bills, speak with constituents and other groups, and review constituent mail, press clips and various reports. Work can continue into the evening with receptions or fundraising events.

Key Concept

Representatives carry out a broad scope of work in order to best represent their constituents.

Contact Your Representative

Share your thoughts with your representative. Use the Find Your Representative box in the banner of this site to identify your representative, then use the contact form to share your thoughts.

Representatives’ schedules are sometimes planned out in increments as short as five minutes.

House Rules

The Rules of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress were established by the House with the adoption of H. Res. 5 (PDF) on January 9, 2023. A section by section analysis is also available.

Rules of Conduct

The Committee on Ethics has jurisdiction over the rules and statutes governing the conduct of members, officers and employees while performing their official duties.

The Rules Committee controls what bills go to the House Floor and the terms of debate.

Majority Rules

The makeup of the Rules Committee has traditionally been weighted in favor of the majority party, and has been in its current configuration of 9 majority and 4 minority members since the late 1970s.

The Rules Committee has an online Parliamentary Bootcamp that gives an overview of House Floor procedures, process and precedents.

As outlined in the Constitution , the House represents citizens based on district populations, while the Senate represents citizens on an equal state basis. This agreement was part of what is called The Great Compromise which, in turn, led to the Permanent Seat of Government Act establishing the nation’s federal capital in Washington, DC. In 1789, the House assembled for the first time in New York. It moved to Philadelphia in 1790 and then to Washington, DC, in 1800.

Each member of the House represents a set number of constituents.

More House History

Learn more about the History of the House from the Clerk’s website.

The House of Representatives moved into the House wing on the south side of the Capitol in 1807, four years before the wing was fully completed.

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The first amendment, module 7: the legislative branch: how congress works.

The Constitution grants Congress—our nation’s legislative branch—the power to make laws. The legislative branch is outlined in Article I of the Constitution. The Constitution divides Congress into two houses—the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The House of Representatives is composed of representatives proportionate to each state’s population. At the same time, the Senate is organized under the principle of equal state representation—with each state, regardless of its population, receiving two Senators. 

In this module, students will examine primary and secondary sources to learn about the legislative branch’s structure, functions, and powers as granted by the Constitution and defined by the courts over time. Students will also explore the legislative process and the role that civil dialogue and political compromise play in crafting national laws.

Download all materials for this module as a PDF

Learning Objectives

• Explain the Founders’ vision for Congress and explore the key debates and compromises at the Constitutional Convention.
• Describe the role that Congress plays in the national government.
• Identify the powers that the Constitution grants to Congress.
• Discuss how the Supreme Court has interpreted the powers of Congress over time.
• Compare the Founders’ vision for Congress with how Congress works in practice.

7.1 Activity: How does Congress Work?

• Student Instructions
• Teacher Notes

Purpose In this activity, you will explore how Congress works and learn about how the founders expected it to work. You will discuss the value of using a slow and deliberative process to make national laws. However, you will also debate the tradeoffs of this system. 

Process What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word Congress? Next, review the Visual Info Brief: Political Cartoon image and explain what the political cartoonist is trying to say about Congress. Finally, list three words or terms that you hear people say about Congress outside of this class. Think about the ways that the news portrays Congress.

After reviewing the image, answer the following questions:

• What is the cartoonist trying to say about Congress?
• List three action words that explain what you hear people saying about Congress.

Now, review the following quotes about Congress’s lawmaking process by a leading scholar of the founding era and of the constitutional thought of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 70

  “Madison’s overall aim was not to stymie the will of the majority, but rather to place obstacles in the path of factions, including majority faction. At the same time, he sought to facilitate the development of a just majority, or in other words, the reason of the public. . . . Too swift and facile political communication allows the mere will of the majority, or sheer power, to rule in the regime.   The slow, measured process of the communication of ideas, however, refines and modifies the will of the society, subjecting power to the test of right reason.” - Colleen Sheehan Professor, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University

“The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in [Congress], though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 70

Reflect on the quotes and record your answers to the following questions:

• What is the scholar trying to say about Congress and the value of a demanding political process?
• List three ideas that explain how Congress is supposed to work.

Launch Ask the students the first thing that comes to mind when they hear the word “Congress.” Write ideas on the board and note any patterns.

Give students time to analyze the political cartoon and as a group answer the guiding questions.  What is the cartoonist trying to say about Congress? The goal of this analysis is to address the impressions that students may already have—that Congress is dysfunctional, with a lot of partisan fights. The system can be nasty. It can be slow. Often, Congress struggles to get anything done—even when it seems to many Americans like there are serious problems worth addressing.

Then, you can pivot to the founders’ vision and the benefits of the system. Give students time to analyze the scholarly quotes about the value of a demanding political process and as a group answer the guiding questions. 

The Colleen Sheehan quote is from the following article: A Madisonian Constitution for All .    Activity Synthesis Now, share the following big idea: What if I told you that the founders wanted to slow down the political process in Congress? Discuss the idea of deliberation and the benefits and drawbacks of a slow process for making national laws. The goal is to get the students to see (and/or debate) the benefits of a slow, demanding process. When the process works, it is designed to promote deliberation, debate, compromise, and (ideally) better laws. However, the founders hoped that this demanding process would also ease public passions, curb bad laws, guard against government abuses, protect minority rights, and avoid government by faction (or, in today’s terms, parties). 

• What are the benefits of a slow, deliberative process? Why do you think that the Founding generation designed it this way? 
• What are the drawbacks of such a system?  
• How can such a process benefit a growing (and diverse) society with different needs and viewpoints? 
• What are some of the challenges of such a system in this context?

Activity Extension (optional) Now that students have a better understanding of the debate, ask the following question:

• What are examples of the advantages and disadvantages of a slow lawmaking process? 

7.1 Visual Info Brief: Political Cartoon

7.2 activity: structure, powers and limits of congress.

Purpose Article I establishes the national government’s legislative branch—Congress.

Article I is the longest part of the Constitution. That’s because the Founding generation expected Congress to be the most powerful—and most dangerous—branch of government. Article I also sets out the powers of Congress and lists certain limits to those powers.

In this activity, you will explore the structure, powers, and limits of Congress. 

Process As a group, read and review the Article I, Section 8 text , on the Powers of Congress from the Interactive Constitution . Then read the Common Interpretation essay Article I, Sec. 8: Federalism and the Scope of National Power by Randy Barnett and Heather Gerken and answer the questions in the Activity Guide: Powers and Structure of Congress worksheet. 

Next, your group will then be assigned an additional Interactive Constitution Common Interpretation essay on Congress. Read the assigned essay and complete the final section of the Activity Guide: Powers and Structure of Congress worksheet for your group. 

As a class, read the following article:

• Article I, Section 8, Text, IC Essay on Federalism and the Scope of National Power  

Then read the following sections:

• Text of the Constitution
• Common Interpretation

When finished, work with your groups to create a class poster that shows how Congress works.

• Define the structure, powers, or limits on a Post-it note and add it to the correct circle.
• Add elements to the poster to support main ideas and contribute details, for example, drawings, videos, or QR codes.
• Add combination jobs to the center of the diagram.

Launch Review the overall summary of how Congress works and the flow/process of its lawmaking functions.

• Role of Congress: Students define the role of Congress in the national government. 
• Parts of Congress: Students define the different parts of Congress and their roles and authority.
• Defined Powers: Students list the powers of Congress and tag it as a role of the House, the Senate, or both. Include how Congress checks the other branches.
• Defined Limits: Students list the limits of Congress’s power. Also define the other branches that set those limits.

Split the class into groups and assign part(s) of Article I. Then, ask students to complete the Activity Guide: Powers and Structure of Congress worksheet for your assigned group.

Each group will contribute to a full class poster that shows how Congress works. The poster will be a large Venn diagram that will list structure, powers, and limits, and students will define the structure, power, or limit on a Post-it note and add it to the correct circle. Combination jobs will be added to the center. 

Activity Synthesis Have students explain their contribution to the poster and summarize how Congress works.

7.2 Activity Guide: Powers and Structure of Congress

7.3 video activity: powers of congress.

Purpose In this activity, you will explore how Article I of the Constitution sets out the powers of Congress and also establishes limits on those powers. You will also explore how Supreme Court cases have interpreted those powers over time. 

Process Watch the following video about the powers of Congress. 

Then, complete the Video Reflection: Powers of Congress worksheet.

Identify any areas that are unclear to you or where you would like further explanation. Be prepared to discuss your answers in a group and to ask your teacher any remaining questions.

Launch Give students time to watch the video and complete the worksheet. 

Hand out the Video Reflection: Powers of Congress worksheet and ask students to organize the decisions by the Supreme Court and the effects on congressional power over time.

Activity Synthesis Have students share their responses with one or two students and then review as a class. 

Activity Extension (optional) Now that students have a better understanding of the powers of Congress, ask students to find a current news article about Congress. 

7.3 Video Reflection: Powers of Congress

7.4 activity: tests of congressional power.

Purpose In this activity, you will explore how various Supreme Court cases have interpreted the scope of congressional power in the Supreme Court’s own words. Examine these three cases to understand how the Court’s rulings shaped these powers over time.

Process Work in your group to review one of the following cases:

• Primary Source: McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
• Primary Source: Wickard v. Filburn (1942)  
• Primary Source: United States v. Lopez (1995)

After you review the case brief, complete the Case Brief: Tests of Congressional Power worksheet.

After you have completed the worksheet, create a podcast (3-5 minutes) with your group covering the following topics: 

• What is the main topic of the case?
• What is the constitutional question in the case?
• Tell us what happened and who are the people in the case.
• How did it affect the powers of Congress back then and today?

Launch Divide class into three groups and assign a case to each group to review and answer the questions in the worksheet. Then, the group will create a podcast about their case.

Looking for some support on how to do a podcast in class? Check out this list of helpful websites to support this fun and educational learning experience for your students. 

• Hello Teacher Lady
• New York Times: Project Audio
• Reading Rockets: Creating Podcasts with Your Students

Activity Synthesis Have students share their podcast recordings with the rest of the class.

Activity Extension (optional) Now that students have a better understanding of current court cases, ask the following question:

• The Supreme Court has trimmed back a bit on the powers of Congress. Do you think that is a good thing or bad thing?

7.4 Primary Source: McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

7.4 primary source: wickard v. filburn (1942), 7.4 primary source: united states v. lopez (1995), 7.4 case brief: tests of congressional power, 7.5 activity: how a bill becomes a law.

Purpose The role of a member of Congress is to craft laws that are consistent with the Constitution and that promote the common good. However, the Constitution itself lays out a demanding process—one that slows politics down, promotes deliberation and debate, and (often) requires compromise. In this activity, you will explore what the Constitution says about how Congress works and get to experience how a bill becomes a law and more importantly how to build consensus. 

Process You are a U.S. senator. Work with your team to complete the Activity Guide: Building Consensus  worksheet. 

After you write your law, you can begin to work with other teams to persuade, re-write, and compromise to make a law that is consistent with the Constitution and works for the entire country. 

Launch Break students into groups that represent regions of the United States. Each team will represent a different region (NE, SE, NW, SW, etc.) and their interests, but all groups will be given the same topic to address in a new law. Provide details on how each step of the process works from the Activity Guide. Depending on how much time you have in class, have students brainstorm national issues and pick from the list they develop. Some issues for students to consider are education, taxes, the economy, national security, health care, immigration, the environment, guns, and crime.

A key to productive consensus building is building norms and civil dialogue practices in your classroom. For more information on these classroom tools check out the Civil Dialogue Toolkit .  

Activity Synthesis Have students share their thoughts on engaging in the process of writing a new law. Which parts were the most frustrating? Which parts were most satisfying? How does the system compare to the founders’ vision?

Activity Extension (optional) Now that students have a better understanding of how to create a new law, have them read the article, Political Polarization Killed the Filibuster and answer the following questions:

• What are the benefits of having a filibuster? What are the drawbacks?
• What would be the implications of removing the filibuster?

7.5 Activity Guide: Building Consensus

7.6 test your knowledge.

Congratulations for completing the activities in this module! Now it’s time to apply what you have learned about the basic ideas and concepts covered.

Complete the questions in the following quiz to test your knowledge.

This activity will help students determine their overall understanding of module concepts. It is recommended that questions are completed electronically so immediate feedback is provided, but a downloadable copy of the questions (with answer key) is also available.

7.6 Interactive Knowledge Check: The Legislative Branch: How Congress Works

7.6 printable knowledge check: the legislative branch: how congress works, previous module, module 6: separation of powers and federalism, next module, module 8: the presidency and executive power.

Article II of the Constitution establishes the executive branch of the national government, headed by a single President. Article II outlines the method for electing the President, the scope of the President’s powers and duties, and the process of removing one from office. The President’s primary responsibility is to carry out the executive branch’s core function—namely, enforcing the nation’s laws. From the debates over how to structure the Presidency at the Constitutional Convention to modern debates over executive orders, this module will explore the im...

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Chapter 11: Congress

Congressional Representation

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the basics of representation
• Describe the extent to which Congress as a body represents the U.S. population
• Explain the concept of collective representation
• Describe the forces that influence congressional approval ratings

The tension between local and national politics described in the previous section is essentially a struggle between interpretations of representation. Representation is a complex concept. It can mean paying careful attention to the concerns of constituents, understanding that representatives must act as they see fit based on what they feel best for the constituency, or relying on the particular ethnic, racial, or gender diversity of those in office. In this section, we will explore three different models of representation and the concept of descriptive representation. We will look at the way members of Congress navigate the challenging terrain of representation as they serve, and all the many predictable and unpredictable consequences of the decisions they make.

TYPES OF REPRESENTATION: LOOKING OUT FOR CONSTITUENTS

By definition and title, senators and House members are representatives. This means they are intended to be drawn from local populations around the country so they can speak for and make decisions for those local populations, their constituents, while serving in their respective legislative houses. That is, representation refers to an elected leader’s looking out for his or her constituents while carrying out the duties of the office. [1]

Theoretically, the process of constituents voting regularly and reaching out to their representatives helps these congresspersons better represent them. It is considered a given by some in representative democracies that representatives will seldom ignore the wishes of constituents, especially on salient issues that directly affect the district or state. In reality, the job of representing in Congress is often quite complicated, and elected leaders do not always know where their constituents stand. Nor do constituents always agree on everything. Navigating their sometimes contradictory demands and balancing them with the demands of the party, powerful interest groups, ideological concerns, the legislative body, their own personal beliefs, and the country as a whole can be a complicated and frustrating process for representatives.

Traditionally, representatives have seen their role as that of a delegate, a trustee, or someone attempting to balance the two. A representative who sees him- or herself as a delegate believes he or she is empowered merely to enact the wishes of constituents. Delegates must employ some means to identify the views of their constituents and then vote accordingly. They are not permitted the liberty of employing their own reason and judgment while acting as representatives in Congress. This is the delegate model of representation .

In contrast, a representative who understands their role to be that of a trustee believes he or she is entrusted by the constituents with the power to use good judgment to make decisions on the constituents’ behalf. In the words of the eighteenth-century British philosopher Edmund Burke, who championed the trustee model of representation , “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests . . . [it is rather] a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole.” [2] In the modern setting, trustee representatives will look to party consensus, party leadership, powerful interests, the member’s own personal views, and national trends to better identify the voting choices they should make.

Understandably, few if any representatives adhere strictly to one model or the other. Instead, most find themselves attempting to balance the important principles embedded in each. Political scientists call this the politico model of representation . In it, members of Congress act as either trustee or delegate based on rational political calculations about who is best served, the constituency or the nation.

For example, every representative, regardless of party or conservative versus liberal leanings, must remain firm in support of some ideologies and resistant to others. On the political right, an issue that demands support might be gun rights; on the left, it might be a woman’s right to an abortion. For votes related to such issues, representatives will likely pursue a delegate approach. For other issues, especially complex questions the public at large has little patience for, such as subtle economic reforms, representatives will tend to follow a trustee approach. This is not to say their decisions on these issues run contrary to public opinion. Rather, it merely means they are not acutely aware of or cannot adequately measure the extent to which their constituents support or reject the proposals at hand. It could also mean that the issue is not salient to their constituents. Congress works on hundreds of different issues each year, and constituents are likely not aware of the particulars of most of them.

DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS

In some cases, representation can seem to have very little to do with the substantive issues representatives in Congress tend to debate. Instead, proper representation for some is rooted in the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and sexual identity of the representatives themselves. This form of representation is called descriptive representation .

At one time, there was relatively little concern about descriptive representation in Congress. A major reason is that until well into the twentieth century, white men of European background constituted an overwhelming majority of the voting population. African Americans were routinely deprived of the opportunity to participate in democracy, and Hispanics and other minority groups were fairly insignificant in number and excluded by the states. While women in many western states could vote sooner, all women were not able to exercise their right to vote nationwide until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and they began to make up more than 5 percent of either chamber only in the 1990s.

Many advances in women’s rights have been the result of women’s greater engagement in politics and representation in the halls of government, especially since the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966 and the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) in 1971. The NWPC was formed by Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and other leading feminists to encourage women’s participation in political parties, elect women to office, and raise money for their campaigns. For example, Patsy Mink (D-HI), the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, was the coauthor of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Title IX of which prohibits sex discrimination in education. Mink had been interested in fighting discrimination in education since her youth, when she opposed racial segregation in campus housing while a student at the University of Nebraska. She went to law school after being denied admission to medical school because of her gender. Like Mink, many other women sought and won political office, many with the help of the NWPC. Today, EMILY’s List, a PAC founded in 1985 to help elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, plays a major role in fundraising for female candidates. In the 2012 general election, 80 percent of the candidates endorsed by EMILY’s List won a seat. [3]

In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, African American representatives also began to enter Congress in increasing numbers. In 1971, to better represent their interests, these representatives founded the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), an organization that grew out of a Democratic select committee formed in 1969. Founding members of the CBC include Ralph Metcalfe (D-IL), a former sprinter from Chicago who had medaled at both the Los Angeles (1932) and Berlin (1936) Olympic Games, and Shirley Chisholm, a founder of the NWPC and the first African American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.

In recent decades, Congress has become much more descriptively representative of the United States. The 116th Congress, which began in January 2019, had a historically large percentage of racial and ethnic minorities. African Americans made up the largest percentage, with fifty-seven members, while Latinos accounted for forty-six members, up from thirty just a decade before. [4] Yet, demographically speaking, Congress as a whole is still a long way from where the country is and remains largely white, male, and wealthy. For example, although more than half the U.S. population is female, only 25 percent of Congress is. Congress is also overwhelmingly Christian.

REPRESENTING CONSTITUENTS

Ethnic, racial, gender, or ideological identity aside, it is a representative’s actions in Congress that ultimately reflect his or her understanding of representation. Congress members’ most important function as lawmakers is writing, supporting, and passing bills. And as representatives of their constituents, they are charged with addressing those constituents’ interests. Historically, this job has included what some have affectionately called “bringing home the bacon” but what many (usually those outside the district in question) call pork-barrel politics . As a term and a practice, pork-barrel politics—federal spending on projects designed to benefit a particular district or set of constituents—has been around since the nineteenth century, when barrels of salt pork were both a sign of wealth and a system of reward. While pork-barrel politics are often deplored during election campaigns, and earmarks—funds appropriated for specific projects—are no longer permitted in Congress (see feature box below), legislative control of local appropriations nevertheless still exists. In more formal language, allocation , or the influencing of the national budget in ways that help the district or state, can mean securing funds for a specific district’s project like an airport, or getting tax breaks for certain types of agriculture or manufacturing.

GET CONNECTED!

Language and Metaphor

The language and metaphors of war and violence are common in politics. Candidates routinely “smell blood in the water,” “battle for delegates,” go “head-to-head,” “cripple” their opponent, and “make heads roll.” But references to actual violence aren’t the only metaphorical devices commonly used in politics. Another is mentions of food. Powerful speakers frequently “throw red meat to the crowds;” careful politicians prefer to stick to “meat-and-potato issues;” and representatives are frequently encouraged by their constituents to “bring home the bacon.” And the way members of Congress typically “bring home the bacon” is often described with another agricultural metaphor, the “earmark.”

In ranching, an earmark is a small cut on the ear of a cow or other animal to denote ownership. Similarly, in Congress, an earmark is a mark in a bill that directs some of the bill’s funds to be spent on specific projects or for specific tax exemptions. Since the 1980s, the earmark has become a common vehicle for sending money to various projects around the country. Many a road, hospital, and airport can trace its origins back to a few skillfully drafted earmarks.

Relatively few people outside Congress had ever heard of the term before the 2008 presidential election, when Republican nominee Senator John McCain touted his career-long refusal to use the earmark as a testament to his commitment to reforming spending habits in Washington. [5] McCain’s criticism of the earmark as a form of corruption cast a shadow over a previously common legislative practice. As the country sank into recession and Congress tried to use spending bills to stimulate the economy, the public grew more acutely aware of its earmarking habits. Congresspersons then were eager to distance themselves from the practice. In fact, the use of earmarks to encourage Republicans to help pass health care reform actually made the bill less popular with the public.

In 2011, after Republicans took over the House, they outlawed earmarks. But with deadlocks and stalemates becoming more common, some quiet voices have begun asking for a return to the practice. They argue that Congress works because representatives can satisfy their responsibilities to their constituents by making deals. The earmarks are those deals. By taking them away, Congress has hampered its own ability to “bring home the bacon.”

Are earmarks a vital part of legislating or a corrupt practice that was rightly jettisoned? Pick a cause or industry, and investigate whether any earmarks ever favored it, or research the way earmarks have hurt or helped your state or district, and decide for yourself.

Follow-up activity: Find out where your congressional representative stands on the ban on earmarks and write to support or dissuade him or her.

Such budgetary allocations aren’t always looked upon favorably by constituents. Consider, for example, the passage of the ACA in 2010. The desire for comprehensive universal health care had been a driving position of the Democrats since at least the 1960s. During the 2008 campaign, that desire was so great among both Democrats and Republicans that both parties put forth plans. When the Democrats took control of Congress and the presidency in 2009, they quickly began putting together their plan. Soon, however, the politics grew complex, and the proposed plan became very contentious for the Republican Party.

Nevertheless, the desire to make good on a decades-old political promise compelled Democrats to do everything in their power to pass something. They offered sympathetic members of the Republican Party valuable budgetary concessions; they attempted to include allocations they hoped the opposition might feel compelled to support; and they drafted the bill in a purposely complex manner to avoid future challenges. These efforts, however, had the opposite effect. The Republican Party’s constituency interpreted the allocations as bribery and the bill as inherently flawed, and felt it should be scrapped entirely. The more Democrats dug in, the more frustrated the Republicans became.

The Republican opposition, which took control of the House during the 2010 midterm elections, promised constituents they would repeal the law. Their attempts were complicated, however, by the fact that Democrats still held the Senate and the presidency. Yet, the desire to represent the interests of their constituents compelled Republicans to use another tool at their disposal, the symbolic vote. During the 112th and 113th Congresses, Republicans voted more than sixty times to either repeal or severely limit the reach of the law. They understood these efforts had little to no chance of ever making it to the president’s desk. And if they did, he would certainly have vetoed them. But it was important for these representatives to demonstrate to their constituents that they understood their wishes and were willing to act on them.

Historically, representatives have been able to balance their role as members of a national legislative body with their role as representatives of a smaller community. The Obamacare fight, however, gave a boost to the growing concern that the power structure in Washington divides representatives from the needs of their constituency. [6] This has exerted pressure on representatives to the extent that some now pursue a more straightforward delegate approach to representation. Indeed, following the 2010 election, a handful of Republicans began living in their offices in Washington, convinced that by not establishing a residence in Washington, they would appear closer to their constituents at home. [7]

COLLECTIVE REPRESENTATION AND CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL

The concept of collective representation describes the relationship between Congress and the United States as a whole. That is, it considers whether the institution itself represents the American people, not just whether a particular member of Congress represents his or her district. Predictably, it is far more difficult for Congress to maintain a level of collective representation than it is for individual members of Congress to represent their own constituents. Not only is Congress a mixture of different ideologies, interests, and party affiliations, but the collective constituency of the United States has an even-greater level of diversity. Nor is it a solution to attempt to match the diversity of opinions and interests in the United States with those in Congress. Indeed, such an attempt would likely make it more difficult for Congress to maintain collective representation. Its rules and procedures require Congress to use flexibility, bargaining, and concessions. Yet, it is this flexibility and these concessions, which many now interpret as corruption, that tend to engender the high public disapproval ratings experienced by Congress.

After many years of deadlocks and bickering on Capitol Hill, the national perception of Congress is near an all-time low. According to Gallup polls, Congress has a stunningly poor approval rating of about 16 percent. This is unusual even for a body that has rarely enjoyed a high approval rating. For example, for nearly two decades following the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, the national approval rating of Congress hovered between 30 and 40 percent. [8]

Yet, incumbent reelections have remained largely unaffected. The reason has to do with the remarkable ability of many in the United States to separate their distaste for Congress from their appreciation for their own representative. Paradoxically, this tendency to hate the group but love one’s own representative actually perpetuates the problem of poor congressional approval ratings. The reason is that it blunts voters’ natural desire to replace those in power who are earning such low approval ratings.

As decades of polling indicate, few events push congressional approval ratings above 50 percent. Indeed, when the ratings are graphed, the two noticeable peaks are at 57 percent in 1998 and 84 percent in 2001. In 1998, according to Gallup polling, the rise in approval accompanied a similar rise in other mood measures, including President Bill Clinton’s approval ratings and general satisfaction with the state of the country and the economy. In 2001, approval spiked after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Bush administration launched the “War on Terror,” sending troops first to Afghanistan and later to Iraq. War has the power to bring majorities of voters to view their Congress and president in an overwhelmingly positive way. [9]

Nevertheless, all things being equal, citizens tend to rate Congress more highly when things get done and more poorly when things do not get done. For example, during the first half of President Obama’s first term, Congress’s approval rating reached a relative high of about 40 percent. Both houses were dominated by members of the president’s own party, and many people were eager for Congress to take action to end the deep recession and begin to repair the economy. Millions were suffering economically, out of work, or losing their jobs, and the idea that Congress was busy passing large stimulus packages, working on finance reform, and grilling unpopular bank CEOs and financial titans appealed to many. Approval began to fade as the Republican Party slowed the wheels of Congress during the tumultuous debates over Obamacare and reached a low of 9 percent following the federal government shutdown in October 2013.

One of the events that began the approval rating’s downward trend was Congress’s divisive debate over national deficits. A deficit is what results when Congress spends more than it has available. It then conducts additional deficit spending by increasing the national debt. Many modern economists contend that during periods of economic decline, the nation should run deficits, because additional government spending has a stimulative effect that can help restart a sluggish economy. Despite this benefit, voters rarely appreciate deficits. They see Congress as spending wastefully during a time when they themselves are cutting costs to get by.

The disconnect between the common public perception of running a deficit and its legitimate policy goals is frequently exploited for political advantage. For example, while running for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama slammed the deficit spending of the George W. Bush presidency, saying it was “unpatriotic.” This sentiment echoed complaints Democrats had been issuing for years as a weapon against President Bush’s policies. Following the election of President Obama and the Democratic takeover of the Senate, the concern over deficit spending shifted parties, with Republicans championing a spendthrift policy as a way of resisting Democratic policies.

LINK TO LEARNING

Find your representative at the U.S. House website and then explore his or her website and social media accounts to see whether the issues on which your representative spends time are the ones you think are most appropriate.

CHAPTER REVIEW

See the Chapter 11.3 Review for a summary of this section, the key vocabulary , and some review questions to check your knowledge.

• Steven S. Smith. 1999. The American Congress. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. ↵
• Edmund Burke, "Speech to the Electors of Bristol," 3 November 1774, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.html (May 1, 2016). ↵
• "Claire McCaskill, Emily’s List Celebrate Women’s Wins in 2012," 14 November 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/claire-mccaskill-emilys-list-celebrate-womens-wins-in-2012/ (May 1, 2016). ↵
• Grace Panetta and Samantha Lee. 12 January 2019. "This Graphic Shows How Much More Diverse the House of Representatives Is Getting." Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/changes-in-gender-racial-diversity-between-the-115th-and-116th-house-2018-12 . ↵
• "Statement by John McCain on Banning Earmarks," 13 March 2008, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=90739 (May 15, 2016); "Press Release - John McCain’s Economic Plan," 15 April 2008, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=94082 (May 15, 2016). ↵
• Kathleen Parker, "Health-Care Reform’s Sickeningly Sweet Deals," The Washington Post, 10 March 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/09/AR2010030903068.html (May 1, 2016); Dana Milbank, "Sweeteners for the South," The Washington Post, 22 November 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102272.html (May 1, 2016); Jeffry H. Anderson, "Nebraska’s Dark-Horse Candidate and the Cornhusker Kickback," The Weekly Standard, 4 May 2014. ↵
• Phil Hirschkorn and Wyatt Andrews, "One-Fifth of House Freshmen Sleep in Offices," CBS News, 22 January 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-fifth-of-house-freshmen-sleep-in-offices/ (May 1, 2016). ↵
• "Congress and the Public," http://www.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx (May 15, 2016). ↵

an elected leader’s looking out for his or her constituents while carrying out the duties of the office

a model of representation in which representatives feel compelled to act on the specific stated wishes of their constituents

a model of representation in which representatives feel at liberty to act in the way they believe is best for their constituents

a model of representation in which members of Congress act as either trustee or delegate, based on rational political calculations about who is best served, the constituency or the nation

the extent to which a body of representatives represents the descriptive characteristics of their constituencies, such as class, race, ethnicity, and gender

federal spending intended to benefit a particular district or set of constituents

the relationship between Congress and the United States as a whole, and whether the institution itself represents the American people

American Government (2e - Second Edition) Copyright © 2019 by OpenStax and Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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11.4: Congressional Representation

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the basics of representation
• Describe the extent to which Congress as a body represents the U.S. population
• Explain the concept of collective representation
• Describe the forces that influence congressional approval ratings

The tension between local and national politics described in the previous section is essentially a struggle between interpretations of representation. Representation is a complex concept. It can mean paying careful attention to the concerns of constituents, understanding that representatives must act as they see fit based on what they feel best for the constituency, or relying on the particular ethnic, racial, or gender diversity of those in office. In this section, we will explore three different models of representation and the concept of descriptive representation. We will look at the way members of Congress navigate the challenging terrain of representation as they serve, and all the many predictable and unpredictable consequences of the decisions they make.

Types of Representation: Looking out for Constituents

By definition and title, senators and House members are representatives. This means they are intended to be drawn from local populations around the country so they can speak for and make decisions for those local populations, their constituents, while serving in their respective legislative houses. That is, representation refers to an elected leader’s looking out for his or her constituents while carrying out the duties of the office. 26

Theoretically, the process of constituents voting regularly and reaching out to their representatives helps these congresspersons better represent them. It is considered a given by some in representative democracies that representatives will seldom ignore the wishes of constituents, especially on salient issues that directly affect the district or state. In reality, the job of representing in Congress is often quite complicated, and elected leaders do not always know where their constituents stand. Nor do constituents always agree on everything. Navigating their sometimes contradictory demands and balancing them with the demands of the party, powerful interest groups, ideological concerns, the legislative body, their own personal beliefs, and the country as a whole can be a complicated and frustrating process for representatives.

Traditionally, representatives have seen their role as that of a delegate, a trustee, or someone attempting to balance the two. A representative who sees him- or herself as a delegate believes he or she is empowered merely to enact the wishes of constituents. Delegates must employ some means to identify the views of their constituents and then vote accordingly. They are not permitted the liberty of employing their own reason and judgment while acting as representatives in Congress. This is the delegate model of representation.

In contrast, a representative who understands their role to be that of a trustee believes he or she is entrusted by the constituents with the power to use good judgment to make decisions on the constituents’ behalf. In the words of the eighteenth-century British philosopher Edmund Burke, who championed the trustee model of representation, “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests . . . [it is rather] a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole.” 27 In the modern setting, trustee representatives will look to party consensus, party leadership, powerful interests, the member’s own personal views, and national trends to better identify the voting choices they should make.

Understandably, few if any representatives adhere strictly to one model or the other. Instead, most find themselves attempting to balance the important principles embedded in each. Political scientists call this the politico model of representation. In it, members of Congress act as either trustee or delegate based on rational political calculations about who is best served, the constituency or the nation.

For example, every representative, regardless of party or conservative versus liberal leanings, must remain firm in support of some ideologies and resistant to others. On the political right, an issue that demands support might be gun rights; on the left, it might be a woman’s right to an abortion. For votes related to such issues, representatives will likely pursue a delegate approach. For other issues, especially complex questions the public at large has little patience for, such as subtle economic reforms, representatives will tend to follow a trustee approach. This is not to say their decisions on these issues run contrary to public opinion. Rather, it merely means they are not acutely aware of or cannot adequately measure the extent to which their constituents support or reject the proposals at hand. It could also mean that the issue is not salient to their constituents. Congress works on hundreds of different issues each year, and constituents are likely not aware of the particulars of most of them.

Descriptive Representation in Congress

In some cases, representation can seem to have very little to do with the substantive issues representatives in Congress tend to debate. Instead, proper representation for some is rooted in the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and sexual identity of the representatives themselves. This form of representation is called descriptive representation.

At one time, there was relatively little concern about descriptive representation in Congress. A major reason is that until well into the twentieth century, white men of European background constituted an overwhelming majority of the voting population. African Americans were routinely deprived of the opportunity to participate in democracy, and Hispanics and other minority groups were fairly insignificant in number and excluded by the states. While women in many western states could vote sooner, all women were not able to exercise their right to vote nationwide until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and they began to make up more than 5 percent of either chamber only in the 1990s.

Many advances in women’s rights have been the result of women’s greater engagement in politics and representation in the halls of government, especially since the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966 and the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) in 1971. The NWPC was formed by Bella Abzug (Figure 11.11), Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and other leading feminists to encourage women’s participation in political parties, elect women to office, and raise money for their campaigns. For example, Patsy Mink (D-HI) (Figure 11.11), the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, was the coauthor of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Title IX of which prohibits sex discrimination in education. Mink had been interested in fighting discrimination in education since her youth, when she opposed racial segregation in campus housing while a student at the University of Nebraska. She went to law school after being denied admission to medical school because of her gender. Like Mink, many other women sought and won political office, many with the help of the NWPC. Today, EMILY’s List, a PAC founded in 1985 to help elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, plays a major role in fundraising for female candidates. In the 2018 midterm elections, thirty-four women endorsed by EMILY's List won election to the U.S. House. 28 In 2020, the Republicans took a page from the Democrats' playbook when they made the recruitment and support of quality female candidates a priority and increased the number of Republican women in the House from thirteen to twenty-eight, including ten seats formerly held by Democrats. 29

In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, African American representatives also began to enter Congress in increasing numbers. In 1971, to better represent their interests, these representatives founded the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), an organization that grew out of a Democratic select committee formed in 1969. Founding members of the CBC include John Conyers (D-MI), currently the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, Charles Rangel (D-NY), and Shirley Chisholm, a founder of the NWPC and the first African American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives (Figure 11.12).

In recent decades, Congress has become much more descriptively representative of the United States. The 117th Congress, which began in January 2021 had a historically large percentage of racial and ethnic minorities. African Americans made up the largest percentage, with sixty-two members (including two delegates and two people who would soon resign to serve in the executive branch), while Latinos accounted for fifty-four members (including two delegates and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico), up from thirty just a decade before. 30 Yet, demographically speaking, Congress as a whole is still a long way from where the country is and is composed of largely White wealthy men. For example, although more than half the U.S. population is female, only 25 percent of Congress is. Congress is also overwhelmingly Christian (Figure 11.13).

Representing Constituents

Ethnic, racial, gender, or ideological identity aside, it is a representative’s actions in Congress that ultimately reflect his or her understanding of representation. Congress members’ most important function as lawmakers is writing, supporting, and passing bills. And as representatives of their constituents, they are charged with addressing those constituents’ interests. Historically, this job has included what some have affectionately called “bringing home the bacon” but what many (usually those outside the district in question) call pork-barrel politics. As a term and a practice, pork-barrel politics—federal spending on projects designed to benefit a particular district or set of constituents—has been around since the nineteenth century, when barrels of salt pork were both a sign of wealth and a system of reward. While pork-barrel politics are often deplored during election campaigns, and earmarks—funds appropriated for specific projects—are no longer permitted in Congress (see feature box below), legislative control of local appropriations nevertheless still exists. In more formal language, allocation , or the influencing of the national budget in ways that help the district or state, can mean securing funds for a specific district’s project like an airport, or getting tax breaks for certain types of agriculture or manufacturing.

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Language and Metaphor

The language and metaphors of war and violence are common in politics. Candidates routinely “smell blood in the water,” “battle for delegates,” go “head-to-head,” and “make heads roll.” But references to actual violence aren’t the only metaphorical devices commonly used in politics. Another is mentions of food. Powerful speakers frequently “throw red meat to the crowds”; careful politicians prefer to stick to “meat-and-potato issues”; and representatives are frequently encouraged by their constituents to “bring home the bacon.” And the way members of Congress typically “bring home the bacon” is often described with another agricultural metaphor, the “earmark.”

In ranching, an earmark is a small cut on the ear of a cow or other animal to denote ownership. Similarly, in Congress, an earmark is a mark in a bill that directs some of the bill’s funds to be spent on specific projects or for specific tax exemptions. Since the 1980s, the earmark has become a common vehicle for sending money to various projects around the country. Many a road, hospital, and airport can trace its origins back to a few skillfully drafted earmarks.

Relatively few people outside Congress had ever heard of the term before the 2008 presidential election, when Republican nominee Senator John McCain touted his career-long refusal to use the earmark as a testament to his commitment to reforming spending habits in Washington. 31 McCain’s criticism of the earmark as a form of corruption cast a shadow over a previously common legislative practice. As the country sank into recession and Congress tried to use spending bills to stimulate the economy, the public grew more acutely aware of its earmarking habits. Congresspersons then were eager to distance themselves from the practice. In fact, the use of earmarks to encourage Republicans to help pass health care reform actually made the bill less popular with the public.

In 2011, after Republicans took over the House, they outlawed earmarks. But with deadlocks and stalemates becoming more common, some quiet voices have begun asking for a return to the practice. They argue that Congress works because representatives can satisfy their responsibilities to their constituents by making deals. The earmarks are those deals. By taking them away, Congress has hampered its own ability to “bring home the bacon.”

Are earmarks a vital part of legislating or a corrupt practice that was rightly jettisoned? Pick a cause or industry, and investigate whether any earmarks ever favored it, or research the way earmarks have hurt or helped your state or district, and decide for yourself.

Follow-up activity: Find out where your congressional representative stands on the ban on earmarks and write to support or dissuade them.

Such budgetary allocations aren’t always looked upon favorably by constituents. Consider, for example, the passage of the ACA in 2010. The desire for comprehensive universal health care had been a driving position of the Democrats since at least the 1960s. During the 2008 campaign, that desire was so great among both Democrats and Republicans that both parties put forth plans. When the Democrats took control of Congress and the presidency in 2009, they quickly began putting together their plan. Soon, however, the politics grew complex, and the proposed plan became very contentious for the Republican Party.

Nevertheless, the desire to make good on a decades-old political promise compelled Democrats to do everything in their power to pass something. They offered sympathetic members of the Republican Party valuable budgetary concessions; they attempted to include allocations they hoped the opposition might feel compelled to support; and they drafted the bill in a purposely complex manner to avoid future challenges. These efforts, however, had the opposite effect. The Republican Party’s constituency interpreted the allocations as bribery and the bill as inherently flawed, and felt it should be scrapped entirely. The more Democrats dug in, the more frustrated the Republicans became (Figure 11.14).

The Republican opposition, which took control of the House during the 2010 midterm elections, promised constituents they would repeal the law. Their attempts were complicated, however, by the fact that Democrats still held the Senate and the presidency. Yet, the desire to represent the interests of their constituents compelled Republicans to use another tool at their disposal, the symbolic vote. During the 112th and 113th Congresses, Republicans voted more than sixty times to either repeal or severely limit the reach of the law. They understood these efforts had little to no chance of ever making it to the president’s desk. And if they did, he would certainly have vetoed them. But it was important for these representatives to demonstrate to their constituents that they understood their wishes and were willing to act on them.

Historically, representatives have been able to balance their role as members of a national legislative body with their role as representatives of a smaller community. The Obamacare fight, however, gave a boost to the growing concern that the power structure in Washington divides representatives from the needs of their constituency. 32 This has exerted pressure on representatives to the extent that some now pursue a more straightforward delegate approach to representation. Indeed, following the 2010 election, a handful of Republicans began living in their offices in Washington, convinced that by not establishing a residence in Washington, they would appear closer to their constituents at home. 33

Collective Representation and Congressional Approval

The concept of collective representation describes the relationship between Congress and the United States as a whole. That is, it considers whether the institution itself represents the American people, not just whether a particular member of Congress represents his or her district. Predictably, it is far more difficult for Congress to maintain a level of collective representation than it is for individual members of Congress to represent their own constituents. Not only is Congress a mixture of different ideologies, interests, and party affiliations, but the collective constituency of the United States has an even-greater level of diversity. Nor is it a solution to attempt to match the diversity of opinions and interests in the United States with those in Congress. Indeed, such an attempt would likely make it more difficult for Congress to maintain collective representation. Its rules and procedures require Congress to use flexibility, bargaining, and concessions. Yet, it is this flexibility and these concessions, which many now interpret as corruption, that tend to engender the high public disapproval ratings experienced by Congress.

After many years of deadlocks and bickering on Capitol Hill, the national perception of Congress has tended to run under 20 percent approval in recent years, with large majorities disapproving. Through mid-2021, the Congress, narrowly under Democratic control, was receiving higher approval ratings, above 30 percent. However, congressional approval still lags public approval of the presidency and Supreme Court by a considerable margin. In the two decades following the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, the national approval rating of Congress hovered between 30 and 40 percent, then trended upward in the 1990s, before trending downward in the twenty-first century. 34

Yet, incumbent reelections have remained largely unaffected. The reason has to do with the remarkable ability of many in the United States to separate their distaste for Congress from their appreciation for their own representative. Paradoxically, this tendency to hate the group but love one’s own representative actually perpetuates the problem of poor congressional approval ratings. The reason is that it blunts voters’ natural desire to replace those in power who are earning such low approval ratings.

As decades of polling indicate, few events push congressional approval ratings above 50 percent. Indeed, when the ratings are graphed, the two noticeable peaks are at 57 percent in 1998 and 84 percent in 2001 (Figure 11.15). In 1998, according to Gallup polling, the rise in approval accompanied a similar rise in other mood measures, including President Bill Clinton’s approval ratings and general satisfaction with the state of the country and the economy. In 2001, approval spiked after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Bush administration launched the "War on Terror," sending troops first to Afghanistan and later to Iraq. War has the power to bring majorities of voters to view their Congress and president in an overwhelmingly positive way. 35

Nevertheless, all things being equal, citizens tend to rate Congress more highly when things get done and more poorly when things do not get done. For example, during the first half of President Obama’s first term, Congress’s approval rating reached a relative high of about 40 percent. Both houses were dominated by members of the president’s own party, and many people were eager for Congress to take action to end the deep recession and begin to repair the economy. Millions were suffering economically, out of work, or losing their jobs, and the idea that Congress was busy passing large stimulus packages, working on finance reform, and grilling unpopular bank CEOs and financial titans appealed to many. Approval began to fade as the Republican Party slowed the wheels of Congress during the tumultuous debates over Obamacare and reached a low of 9 percent following the federal government shutdown in October 2013.

One of the events that began the approval rating’s downward trend was Congress’s divisive debate over national deficits. A deficit is what results when Congress spends more than it has available. It then conducts additional deficit spending by increasing the national debt. Many modern economists contend that during periods of economic decline, the nation should run deficits, because additional government spending has a stimulative effect that can help restart a sluggish economy. Despite this benefit, voters rarely appreciate deficits. They see Congress as spending wastefully during a time when they themselves are cutting costs to get by.

The disconnect between the common public perception of running a deficit and its legitimate policy goals is frequently exploited for political advantage. For example, while running for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama slammed the deficit spending of the George W. Bush presidency, saying it was “unpatriotic.” This sentiment echoed complaints Democrats had been issuing for years as a weapon against President Bush’s policies. Following the election of President Obama and the Democratic takeover of the Senate, the concern over deficit spending shifted parties, with Republicans championing a spendthrift policy as a way of resisting Democratic policies.

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How the Great Compromise and the Electoral College Affect Politics

By: Amanda Onion

Updated: August 9, 2023 | Original: April 17, 2018

The Great Compromise was forged in a heated dispute during the 1787 Constitutional Convention: States with larger populations wanted congressional representation based on population, while smaller states demanded equal representation. To keep the convention from dissolving into chaos, the founding fathers came up with the Great Compromise. The agreement, which created today’s system of congressional representation, now influences everything from “pork barrel” legislation to the way votes are counted in the electoral college during presidential elections.

The debate almost destroyed the U.S. Constitution.

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, delegates from larger states believed each state’s representation in the newly proposed Senate should be proportionate to population.

Smaller states with lower populations argued that such an arrangement would lead to an unfair dominance of larger states in the new nation’s government, and each state should have equal representation, regardless of population.

The disagreement over representation threatened to derail the ratification of the U.S. Constitution since delegates from both sides of the dispute vowed to reject the document if they didn’t get their way. The solution came in the form of a compromise proposed by statesmen Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut.

The Great Compromise created two legislative bodies in Congress.

Also known as the Sherman Compromise or the Connecticut Compromise, the deal combined proposals from the Virginia (large state) plan and the New Jersey (small state) plan.

According to the Great Compromise, there would be two national legislatures in a bicameral Congress. Members of the House of Representatives would be allocated according to each state’s population and elected by the people.

In the second body—the Senate —each state would have two representatives regardless of the state’s size, and state legislatures would choose Senators. (In 1913, the 17th Amendment was passed, tweaking the Senate system so that Senators would be elected directly by the people.)

The plan was at first rejected, but then approved by a slim margin on July 23, 1787.

Smaller states have disproportionately more power in the Senate.

At the time of the convention, states’ populations varied, but not by nearly as much as they do today. As a result, one of the main lingering political effects of the Great Compromise is that states with smaller populations have a disproportionately bigger voice in the nation’s Congress.

As political scientist George Edwards III of Texas A&M University points out, California hosts about 68 times more people than Wyoming, yet they have the same number of votes in the Senate.

“The founders never imagined … the great differences in the population of states that exist today,” says Edwards. “If you happen to live in a low-population state you get a disproportionately bigger say in American government.”

The imbalance of proportionate power favoring smaller states in the Senate means that interests in those states, such as mining in West Virginia or hog farming in Iowa, are more likely to get attention—and money—from federal coffers.

“In the Senate when they’re trying to get to 51 votes to pass a bill, every vote counts,” says Todd Estes, a historian at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. “That’s when the smaller states can demand amendments and additions to bills to look out for their own state’s interest.”

The Great Compromise also skewed the electoral college.

The principle of protecting small states through equal representation in the Senate carries over into the electoral college, which elects the president since the number of electoral votes designated to each state is based on a state’s combined number of representatives in the House and Senate.

That means, for example, even though Wyoming only has three votes in the electoral college, with the smallest population of all the states, each elector represents a far smaller group of people than each of the 55 electoral votes in the most populous state of California.

The system ensures power is distributed geographically.

Some scholars see the small-state bias in the Senate as critical. The arrangement means that power in the Senate is distributed geographically, if not by population, ensuring that interests across the entire country are represented.

Gary L. Gregg II, a political scientist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, argues in a 2012 article in Politico that major metropolitan areas already hold power by hosting major media, donor, academic and government centers. The structure of the Senate and the corresponding representation in the electoral college, he says, ensures that the interests of rural and small-town America are preserved.

Was that the intention of the Founding Fathers? Edwards is doubtful since, as he points out, the majority of Americans at the time of Constitutional Congress came from rural areas—not urban. “No one was thinking about protecting rural interests,” Edwards says. “Rural interests were dominant at the time.”

Whatever the viewpoint on the fairness of the Great Compromise’s distribution of delegates to the Senate, it is unlikely to ever change. This is because equal-state representation in the Senate is specifically protected in the Constitution.

According to Article V of the Constitution, no state can lose its equal representation in the Senate without the state’s permission. And no state is likely to willingly give up their say in the Senate.

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Why Access to Voting is Key to Systemic Equality

Voting is a fundamental civil right and it shouldn’t be infringed upon, no matter your race or zip code. Although the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits racially discriminatory voting tactics and policies, including diluting the voting strength of racial minorities, Black people and communities of color in particular continue to face numerous obstacles to voting.

Let’s break down why equal access to voting is critical to the fight for systemic equality.

Why is equal access to voting a civil rights issue?

Having fair and equal representation is the cornerstone of American democracy. Every citizen should have equal access to the ballot box to choose those representatives who will fight for the issues and policies they care about. Having equal access to voting is a civil right that is recognized and protected by the Constitution. The Constitution requires states to apportion their congressional, state, and local electoral districts according to the “one person, one vote” principle, and state legislatures have an obligation to ensure fair and equal representation for all people. These obligations uphold the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and comply with the requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What is the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law. The VRA was a monumental piece of legislation meant to end state and local voter suppression tactics designed to keep Black and Brown voters from casting ballots.

• The Voting Rights Act

Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has protected minority voters at the polls.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

For decades, the Voting Rights Act successfully protected Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other marginalized voters — but 10 years ago, the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down its core “preclearance” requirement, which mandated that jurisdictions with long records of racially discriminatory voting practices seek federal approval before altering their voting laws and practices. On top of this, eight years after Shelby , the Supreme Court weakened another provision of the VRA — Section 2, a nationwide ban on voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or language — making court challenges to discriminatory tactics even harder.

What types of discriminatory voting practices have Black, Brown, and other marginalized voters continued to face at the polls?

In the years since the Shelby Supreme Court case, states have unleashed a torrent of voter suppression laws that disproportionately impact voters of color. These discriminatory anti-voter efforts continue today and include unnecessary photo ID laws, restraints on voter registration, voter purges, cuts to early voting and vote by mail, documentary proof of citizenship requirements, and polling place closures. Voters across the country continue to face arbitrary restrictions on absentee voting, bans on providing water to voters as they wait in hours-long lines, dropbox limitations, gerrymandering, and other restrictive policies that disproportionately burden marginalized communities.

What is redistricting? What is gerrymandering?

Every decade, states must redraw district lines at the federal, state, and local levels to balance population shifts. These lines influence who wins elections, which communities are represented, and whose votes can be influential. These district lines determine the electoral boundaries for representation in Congress, state legislatures, and in many county and municipal offices. This process is called redistricting.

The drawing of district lines can dictate not only who runs for public office and who is elected, but also how financial resources are allocated for schools, hospitals, roads and more. The representatives who are elected have the power to make decisions that greatly impact the communities they represent.

Sometimes, people talk about how redistricting can be used to “gerrymander” these electoral district lines. Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating electoral boundaries to give an unfair political advantage to a particular political party or group. Legislators can gerrymander by cracking specific voters — spreading them thinly across multiple districts — or packing them into as few districts as possible. Those drawing the district lines can use gerrymandering to suppress the voting power of Black, Indigenous and other communities of color.

How are Black voters and other voters of color disproportionately impacted by redistricting efforts?

Communities of color have faced numerous obstacles to meaningful participation in the political process, including the redistricting process. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the drawing of district lines that dilute the voting strength of communities of color in such a way that prevents them from participating in the political process on equal terms. However, the redistricting process in many states continues to result in district lines that crack and pack Black people and communities of color in ways that minimize their voting strength. As a result, they are not adequately represented in our democracy, perpetuating the systemic inequality many voters of colors already face.

Fifty-Seven Years After its Enactment, the Voting Rights Act is in Peril

On this anniversary of the VRA, the fight to secure the right to vote faces its greatest battles in over a generation.

Redistricting plans should fairly reflect the political strength of communities of color. As the Census data confirms, nearly all of the country’s growth over the past decade is attributable to the growth in our nation’s communities of color. Fair maps must adequately reflect that reality, and the right to vote should be equally accessible to everyone.

What is the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act?

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore and strengthen the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its full power after the Supreme Court eviscerated its core protections a decade ago. Since enactment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been reauthorized and updated five times with large, bipartisan majorities. It is long past time for Congress to put voters first and return to this strong bipartisan tradition that protects every citizen’s right to vote and moves us closer to a democracy that works for all of us.

Had the Supreme Court not gutted the VRA, voters in states and localities with the worst history of voting discrimination would still be protected. These jurisdictions would have had to preclear changes to their voting laws or processes with the federal government, preventing discriminatory changes before they could be implemented and taint an election. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would begin to root out racially-driven voting barriers. This legislation is vital to securing and preserving our fundamental right to vote without encountering racially discriminatory barriers.

What does the ACLU’s work in voting rights look like today?

Through litigation and advocacy, the ACLU is fighting back against attempts to curtail our right to vote and working to ensure the right to vote is equally accessible to everyone. As part of our ongoing work to ensure that legislatures accurately reflect their constituencies and to obtain more equal representation for Black voters, we’re advocating for fairer voting maps across six states in the South: Alabama , Arkansas , Georgia , Louisiana , Mississippi , and South Carolina . We are continuing to advocate for the passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would help strengthen core voting rights protections for all. Additionally, we are fighting for the rights of disenfranchised citizens who live in Florida , Iowa, and Kentucky, states with extreme policies of disenfranchising people with certain felony convictions for life. These states are also among those that disproportionately suppress the voting rights of Black communities.

Florida’s Statewide Prosecution of Voting with a Past Conviction is Unlawful

The state’s confusing voter registration system sets people up to fail and further disenfranchises Black voters.

The ACLU will continue to fight to ensure the right to vote is equally accessible to everyone. But we can’t do it without you — become a Democracy Defender and join these fights with us.

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The Electoral College, the Senate & the Quest for Fair Representation

Does the U.S. political system live up to the principle of one person, one vote? In this lesson, students explore arguments about whether the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate might hinder the quest for fair, democratic representation. 

To the Teacher  

We are often told that American democracy is founded on the principle of equal representation: one person, one vote. In a democratic process, the majority is supposed to prevail. However, we have recently seen that some important American political institutions may be falling short of those ideals.

In two of the last five presidential elections, the victorious candidates received a smaller number of the votes than their leading opponent. By taking advantage of the Electoral College, a candidate can ascend into office without securing the popular vote. The Senate is another institution that raises questions of fair representation. Because each state gets two senators, regardless of the state's population, states with fewer people have their interests disproportionately represented in the Senate: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed with the votes of 51 senators, yet these senators, many of whom who hailed from less populated states, represented just 44 percent of the American public. Moreover, residents of Washington, DC (population 693,000) and U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico (some 3.3 million people) are not represented in the Senate.

This lesson looks into arguments about whether these two institutions might hinder the quest for fair, democratic representation. Reading one takes on the Electoral College. Reading two examines the Senate. Questions for discussion follow each reading.

Click here for a pdf version of the readings and questions.  

Reading One: Does the Electoral College Uphold Democracy?

In two of the last five presidential elections, the victorious candidate was able to win even though they received a smaller number of the votes than their leading opponent. By taking advantage of the Electoral College, a candidate can ascend into office without securing the popular vote.

So what is the Electoral College and why does it exist in the first place? In a February 11, 2008 article for FactCheck.org Joe Miller, a writer at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy, explained some of the background behind the institution. He wrote:

When U.S. citizens go to the polls to “elect” a president, they are in fact voting for a particular slate of electors. In every state but Maine and Nebraska , the candidate who wins the most votes (that is, a plurality) in the state receives all of the state’s electoral votes. The number of electors in each state is the sum of its U.S. senators and its U.S. representatives. (The District of Columbia has three electoral votes, which is the number of senators and representatives it would have if it were permitted representation in Congress.) The electors meet in their respective states 41 days after the popular election. There, they cast a ballot for president and a second for vice president. A candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes to be elected president. The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that most of the nation’s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear – which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed “the tyranny of the majority” – was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” Madison has a solution for tyranny of the majority: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”…. The Electoral College was not the only Constitutional limitation on direct democracy, though we have discarded most of those limitations. Senators were initially to be appointed by state legislatures, and states were permitted to ban women from voting entirely. Slaves got an even worse deal, as a slave officially was counted as just three-fifths of a person. The 14th Amendment abolished the three-fifths rule and granted (male) former slaves the right to vote. The 17th Amendment made senators subject to direct election, and the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote.  

But there is another, more troubling, story about the origins of the Electoral College. Akhil Reed Amar, who teaches constitutional law at Yale University, explained this more disturbing history in an article for Time magazine right after the 2016 election.

Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery. At the Philadelphia [Constitutional] convention [of 1787], the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count…. If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency. Southerner Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800-01 against Northerner John Adams in a race where the slavery-skew of the electoral college was the decisive margin of victory: without the extra electoral college votes generated by slavery, the mostly southern states that supported Jefferson would not have sufficed to give him a majority. As pointed observers remarked at the time, Thomas Jefferson metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.  

The Electoral College not only has a problematic history, it continues to create troubling outcomes. In the 2016 presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million more popular votes than Republican Donald Trump, yet Trump won the Electoral College and thus the presidency.

What can be done to change the Electoral College? Advocates for directly electing the president would need a Constitutional amendment, which requires three-quarters of states to sign on. One alternative proposal is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement through which states would commit to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome in their particular state. The compact would take effect when states whose total electoral college votes surpass 270 pass legislation in favor of it.

However, this effort has encountered opposition in Congress. In a January 21, 2018, article for PBS, reporter Kamala Kelkar described the effort to pass one such piece of legislation in Ohio:

Within months of Trump winning the presidential election in 2016, despite failing to capture the majority of votes, lawmakers such as [Ohio State Representative Emilia] Sykes in Ohio as well as Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and at least a dozen other states supported bills to transform the process. If enacted by enough states to influence the majority, they would agree to give all their electoral votes to the most popular presidential candidate, regardless of who wins their state. Ten states and Washington, D.C., have already agreed to join the compact. But in Ohio’s two-thirds Republican legislature, the effort languished and the impetus started to fade. Lawmakers in other states, too, abandoned their fights. Attempts to change the Electoral College system that were once seen as bipartisan fell victim to the same kind of divide that fueled this weekend’s federal government shutdown. “The idea was to pitch this as something that was of interest to Democrats and Republicans alike,” said Joshua Tucker, a professor of politics at New York University. “Now it’s seen as a way of undermining the Republican party.” A Gallup poll after the election showed that Republicans who favored a national popular vote dipped from 54 percent in 2011 to 19 percent in December 2016.  

While the popularity of abolishing the Electoral College may depend on the temperature of the political moment, eliminating the institution would allow for a more direct exercise of democratic will than the process currently in place.

For Discussion:

• How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
• According to the reading, what are some reasons that the Electoral College was created?
• What might be some arguments for keeping the Electoral College? What are some arguments for eliminating it?
• Do you think an effort like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact be successful in changing the Electoral College? Why or why not?
• One problem with the Electoral College is that most states appoint their electors entirely to one candidate. One alternative to eliminating the Electoral College would be for states to appoint their electors proportionally, as Maine and Nebraska already do. For example, under this system instead of California giving all of its 55 electors to the candidate who wins the majority in the state, it would divide its electoral votes proportionally in order to reflect the number of votes cast in favor of each candidate. What do you think of this possibility? What might be some arguments for or against states continuing to devote all of their electoral votes to one candidate?

Reading Two: Does the Senate Provide Fair Representation?  

The Senate is another institution that raises questions of fair representation. Under the  Constitution, each state gets two senators, regardless of the state's population.

This means that states with fewer people have their interests disproportionately represented in the Senate. For example, the 39 million residents of California have the same representation (two senators) as the 579,000 residents of Wyoming.

Recently, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed with the votes of 51 senators, yet these senators, many of whom who hailed from less populated states, represented just 44 percent of the American public. Moreover, residents of Washington, DC (population 693,000) and U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico (some 3.3 million people) are not represented in the Senate.

Why was the Senate designed in such a manner? The website for the U.S. Senate describes its own history like this:

During the summer of 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia established equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representatives. Called the “Great Compromise” or the “Connecticut Compromise,” the unique plan for congressional representation resolved the most controversial aspect of the drafting of the Constitution.  In the weeks before the Constitution’s framers agreed to the compromise, the delegates from the states with large populations argued that each state’s representation in the Senate should correspond to the size of the state…. Small-state delegates hoped to protect states’ rights within a confederate system of government. Fearing the effects of majority rule, they demanded equal representation in Congress, as was practiced under the Articles of Confederation and assumed in William Paterson’s New Jersey Plan . In fact, some framers threatened to withdraw from the convention if a proportional representation measure passed.  Other delegates sought a compromise between large-state and small-state interests.  As early as 1776, Connecticut’s Roger Sherman had suggested that Congress represent the people as well as the states. During the 1787 convention, Sherman proposed that House representation be based on the population, while in the Senate, the states would be equally represented.  

This compromise also sought to create a body that would move slowly and with more careful deliberation than the House of Representatives. Yet critics of the Senate have noted that, in creating a structure that would slow the process of change and thus preserve the social and political order, the Founders expressed a skepticism of unfettered democracy. In an article on April 6, 2017, entitled “The United States Senate is a failed institution,” ThinkProgress justice editor Ian Millhiser argued that, prior to the Civil War, the structure of the Senate ended up serving the interests slave-holding states. He wrote:

Not long after the Constitution was ratified, slaveholders discovered that they had a problem — most of the nation lived in free states. By the early 1820s, free states controlled 105 of the 187 seats in the House of Representatives — and that’s after you account for the fact that the Three-Fifths Compromise permitted slave states to count 60 percent of their enslaved and disenfranchised population when it came time to allocate seats in the House. If the House were the only game in town, in other words, it could conceivably have banned the slave trade — or at least taken fairly aggressive steps to hobble the South’s “peculiar institution.”... The reason why no new civil rights bill emerged from Congress until 1957 was the Senate. Though five such bills cleared the House in the 12 years following World War II alone, Senate malapportionment gave the southern senators far more influence over the legislative process than their states’ population could justify.  

The disproportionate power of Senators from less populated states continues to draw criticism today. In an October 16, 2018 piece for GQ Magazine, staff writer Jay Willis argues that the structure of the Senate creates a body that does not reflect the current demographics of the country:

The Senate's transformation into a funhouse-mirror version of the House is a quiet emergency for democracy, because its members are still allocated equally among states. And since there now are a greater number of sparsely-populated, mostly-white, right-leaning states than there are heavily-populated, racially-diverse, left-leaning states, the Senate acts to preserve power for people and groups who would otherwise have failed to earn it. A voter in Wyoming (population 579,000) enjoys roughly 70 times more influence in the Senate than a voter in California (population 39.5 million), which sounds like the most unfair statistic in American politics, until you remember that taxpaying U.S. citizens in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico still have no influence in the Senate at all…. In practice, the upper chamber now functions less often as a modest, ideologically-agnostic restraint on majority rule than it does as affirmative action for a particular party's agenda. As these demographic shifts continue and population disparities widen, on scales the Founders never could have imagined, the Senate's legitimacy will continue to evaporate.  

Because the Senate, like the Electoral College, is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, changing the institution would be a politically difficult task. Nevertheless, if enough citizens become dissatisfied with the undemocratic aspects of the body, it may face a serious challenge.

For Discussion:  

• According to the article, what are some of the reasons the Senate created in the form that it was?
• What are some potentially positive or potentially negative effects that the Senate as it currently exists has on law-making and the democratic process?
• Part of the reason for the creation of the Senate was to increase the power and protect the well-being of smaller, less-popular states. Look up the population of your state and compare it to other states. Does your state gain power in the Senate relative to its population, or does it lose power? Does this affect how you think about Congress and your representatives in it?
• In the article from GQ Magazine quoted above, Jay Willis discusses the idea of abolishing the Senate and having a unicameral legislature—in other words, a Congress with just a House of Representatives. In order to maintain the idea that this single branch of Congress would act with caution and restraint, he suggests requiring that passing a bill through this House might require a supermajority of votes--for example, 60%. What do you think of these proposals? What might be some of the pros and cons?  

--Research assistance provided by John Bergen.

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The Historic Present

Our past matters today

Representation to Congress: Anti-Federalist and Federalist options

Here in the second to last post in our colossal series on the Federalist debates that gave us our Constitution we look at the final large-scale thorny issue dividing Federalists and Anti-Federalists: representation to Congress.

We talked last time about the division of the Legislature into two bodies , the House and Senate, and how contentious this internal division in an already divided, three-branch federal government was for Anti-Federalists. After it was adopted, the question of how to people this Congress arose, and the debate fell out along now-familiar lines: whether members of Congress should be elected by the people directly, or indirectly, by some carefully considered elite.

Before this issue could be addressed, however, the question of how many members would be elected had to be solved. The larger states believed they should have more representation than the smaller states, and would have established a majority-rule system where might made right. Smaller states, of course, did not want to be marginalized in this way, and accused the large states of promoting  tyranny of the majority . Smaller states also did not want to get locked into a small number of representatives in Congress when most of them planned on expanding west in the near-term. If they did this, and were much bigger in 1817 than they were in 1787 when their representation was set in stone, they would be large states with small representation. The large states in 1787 had the same plans to expand—when Virginia’s western border was the Pacific (as was that state’s plan), it would need even more representatives than it had been allotted in 1787.

On this issue, Anti-Federalists and Federalists were able to work together more, as the question of how many  representatives each state could send was not really about the power of the federal government, and with relatively minimal debate the Connecticut Compromise was adopted. This created a system in which each state, regardless of its size now or in the future, would send 2 members to the Senate  and one Representative to the House for every 30,000 people.

The idea of equal numbers of Senators for all states, and proportional representation in the House did not pit Federalists and Anti-Federalists against each other. But the reality of defining “proportional representation” did. Anti-Federalists pointed out the impossibility of one person capably and honestly representing the wants and needs of 30,000 people. The Federalists replied that lowering the number (1 Rep for every 1,000 people, for example) would not solve the problem of one person representing multiple constituents—any time one person represents a group there is no way that person can fully represent their wants and needs unless that group is fully united. Since it is very rare for any group to be fully united, no representative can ever do justice to that group. But as usual, the Federalists used this flaw of human nature as a strength: the one thing that can give a Representative some authority to say that he accurately represents his many constituents is elections themselves. In elections, the people are forced to choose someone they think will do the best possible job representing their basic wants and needs. Not everyone will be happy, but the majority of the people will be satisfied, and if too many people are not satisfied, then they elect someone new. Elections will also force the people to focus their wants and needs into a few main issues, on which candidates will campaign. What the people really want most will come out during election campaigns, and the person who best represents what the people think is most important will go to the House.

The Federalists also pointed out, yet again, that the growing nation would soon have so many millions of citizens that it would be impossible to have 1:1 or even 1:1,000 or 1:100,000 representation in the House. The House had to be a figurative representation of the nation; it could not be a literal one.

This argument, of course, is based on the premise that the people would vote directly for their House Representatives. Some Federalists were against this, but they knew that there was no way the Anti-Federalists, or the majority of the American people, who had just fought a war to ensure their political representation, would accept a Congress made up entirely of indirectly elected members. So the Federalists went along fairly easily with the proposal that the House would be directly elected and the Senate would not. Senators would be chosen by the state legislatures, which meant the people had an indirect voice in the process, as they directly elected those state legislators. But in reality, the legislators could choose whomever they liked, and they would ideally choose someone who seemed the most capable, and the most likely to bring honor to the state, not simply someone who was the most popular. This solution made it possible to test the Federalists’ theory that if a small elite of educated, passionately sincere and devoted republican patriots controlled the federal government, that government could never become corrupted.

The big compromise on representation at the Constitutional Convention, of course, was on slavery, not the Senate. Southern states wanted their entire population counted when it came to apportioning House Representatives, and that included enslaved people. The northern states, of course, rejected this as the sham it was—no Representative from the south was going to represent the wants and needs of enslaved people. Enslaved Americans were not considered citizens, and had none of the rights of citizens. They were governed by black codes and slave laws and the whims and whips of individual slaveholders. To pretend that the south needed Representatives for these people was to turn the whole idea of representative government into a cruel parody. The whole issue of counting the enslaved in state populations was originally about taxation, and is a different topic than we are pursuing here—though we will come back to it in the future. For now, we note this compromise, see that it is really outside the scope of arguments about the size and strength of the federal government, and close.

Next time, we will wrap up—at last!—our series with some reflections on what we can take from the Federalist debates.

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Module 8: The Formal Institutions of American Government: Congress

Congressional representation, learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the basics of representation
• Describe the extent to which Congress as a body represents the U.S. population
• Explain the concept of collective representation
• Describe the forces that influence congressional approval ratings

The tension between local and national politics described in the previous section is essentially a struggle between interpretations of representation. Representation is a complex concept. It can mean paying careful attention to the concerns of constituents, understanding that representatives must act as they see fit based on what they feel best for the constituency, or relying on the particular ethnic, racial, or gender diversity of those in office. In this section, we will explore three different models of representation and the concept of descriptive representation. We will look at the way members of Congress navigate the challenging terrain of representation as they serve, and all the many predictable and unpredictable consequences of the decisions they make.

Types of Representation: Looking Out for Constituents

By definition and title, senators and House members are representatives. This means they are intended to be drawn from local populations around the country so they can speak for and make decisions for those local populations, their constituents, while serving in their respective legislative houses. That is, representation refers to an elected leader’s looking out for his or her constituents while carrying out the duties of the office. [1]

Theoretically, the process of constituents voting regularly and reaching out to their representatives helps these congresspersons better represent them. It is considered a given by some in representative democracies that representatives will seldom ignore the wishes of constituents, especially on salient issues that directly affect the district or state. In reality, the job of representing in Congress is often quite complicated, and elected leaders do not always know where their constituents stand. Nor do constituents always agree on everything. Navigating their sometimes contradictory demands and balancing them with the demands of the party, powerful interest groups, ideological concerns, the legislative body, their own personal beliefs, and the country as a whole can be a complicated and frustrating process for representatives.

Traditionally, representatives have seen their role as that of a delegate, a trustee, or someone attempting to balance the two. A representative who sees him- or herself as a delegate believes he or she is empowered merely to enact the wishes of constituents. Delegates must employ some means to identify the views of their constituents and then vote accordingly. They are not permitted the liberty of employing their own reason and judgment while acting as representatives in Congress. This is the delegate model of representation .

In contrast, a representative who understands their role to be that of a trustee believes he or she is entrusted by the constituents with the power to use good judgment to make decisions on the constituents’ behalf. In the words of the eighteenth-century British philosopher Edmund Burke, who championed the trustee model of representation , “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests . . . [it is rather] a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole.” [2]  In the modern setting, trustee representatives will look to party consensus, party leadership, powerful interests, the member’s own personal views, and national trends to better identify the voting choices they should make.

Understandably, few if any representatives adhere strictly to one model or the other. Instead, most find themselves attempting to balance the important principles embedded in each. Political scientists call this the politico model of representation . In it, members of Congress act as either trustee or delegate based on rational political calculations about who is best served, the constituency or the nation.

For example, every representative, regardless of party or conservative versus liberal leanings, must remain firm in support of some ideologies and resistant to others. On the political right, an issue that demands support might be gun rights; on the left, it might be a woman’s right to an abortion. For votes related to such issues, representatives will likely pursue a delegate approach. For other issues, especially complex questions the public at large has little patience for, such as subtle economic reforms, representatives will tend to follow a trustee approach. This is not to say their decisions on these issues run contrary to public opinion. Rather, it merely means they are not acutely aware of or cannot adequately measure the extent to which their constituents support or reject the proposals at hand. It could also mean that the issue is not salient to their constituents. Congress works on hundreds of different issues each year, and constituents are likely not aware of the particulars of most of them.

Descriptive Representation in Congress

In some cases, representation can seem to have very little to do with the substantive issues representatives in Congress tend to debate. Instead, proper representation for some is rooted in the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and sexual identity of the representatives themselves. This form of representation is called descriptive representation .

At one time, there was relatively little concern about descriptive representation in Congress. A major reason is that until well into the twentieth century, white men of European background constituted an overwhelming majority of the voting population. African Americans were routinely deprived of the opportunity to participate in democracy, and Hispanics and other minority groups were fairly insignificant in number and excluded by the states. While women in many western states could vote sooner, all women were not able to exercise their right to vote nationwide until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and they began to make up more than 5 percent of either chamber only in the 1990s.

Many advances in women’s rights have been the result of women’s greater engagement in politics and representation in the halls of government, especially since the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966 and the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) in 1971. The NWPC was formed by Bella Abzug , Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and other leading feminists to encourage women’s participation in political parties, elect women to office, and raise money for their campaigns. For example, Patsy Mink (D-HI), the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, was the coauthor of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Title IX of which prohibits sex discrimination in education. Mink had been interested in fighting discrimination in education since her youth, when she opposed racial segregation in campus housing while a student at the University of Nebraska. She went to law school after being denied admission to medical school because of her gender. Like Mink, many other women sought and won political office, many with the help of the NWPC. Today, EMILY’s List, a PAC founded in 1985 to help elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, plays a major role in fundraising for female candidates. In the 2012 general election, 80 percent of the candidates endorsed by EMILY’s List won a seat. [3]

Patsy Mink (a), a Japanese American from Hawaii, was the first Asian American woman elected to the House of Representatives. In her successful 1970 congressional campaign, Bella Abzug (b) declared, “This woman’s place is in the House… the House of Representatives!”

In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement , African American representatives also began to enter Congress in increasing numbers. In 1971, to better represent their interests, these representatives founded the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), an organization that grew out of a Democratic select committee formed in 1969. Founding members of the CBC include John Conyers (D-MI), currently the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, Charles Rangel (D-NY), and Shirley Chisholm, a founder of the NWPC and the first African American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.

This photo shows the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which at the time of its founding in 1971 had only thirteen members. Currently, forty-six African Americans serve in Congress.

In recent decades, Congress has become much more descriptively representative of the United States. The 114th Congress, which began in January 2015, had a historically large percentage of racial and ethnic minorities. African Americans made up the largest percentage, with forty-eight members, while Latinos accounted for thirty-two members, up from nineteen just over a decade before. [4]

Yet, demographically speaking, Congress as a whole is still a long way from where the country is and remains largely white, male, and wealthy. For example, although more than half the U.S. population is female, only 20 percent of Congress is. Congress is also overwhelmingly Christian.

The diversity of the country is not reflected in the U.S. Congress, whose current membership is approximately 80 percent male, 82 percent white, and 92 percent Christian.

Representing Constituents

Ethnic, racial, gender, or ideological identity aside, it is a representative’s actions in Congress that ultimately reflect his or her understanding of representation. Congress members’ most important function as lawmakers is writing, supporting, and passing bills. And as representatives of their constituents, they are charged with addressing those constituents’ interests. Historically, this job has included what some have affectionately called “bringing home the bacon” but what many (usually those outside the district in question) call pork-barrel politics . As a term and a practice, pork-barrel politics—federal spending on projects designed to benefit a particular district or set of constituents—has been around since the nineteenth century, when barrels of salt pork were both a sign of wealth and a system of reward. While pork-barrel politics are often deplored during election campaigns, and earmarks—funds appropriated for specific projects—are no longer permitted in Congress (see feature box below), legislative control of local appropriations nevertheless still exists. In more formal language, allocation , or the influencing of the national budget in ways that help the district or state, can mean securing funds for a specific district’s project like an airport, or getting tax breaks for certain types of agriculture or manufacturing.

Language and Metaphor

The language and metaphors of war and violence are common in politics. Candidates routinely “smell blood in the water,” “battle for delegates,” go “head-to-head,” “cripple” their opponent, and “make heads roll.” But references to actual violence aren’t the only metaphorical devices commonly used in politics. Another is mentions of food. Powerful speakers frequently “throw red meat to the crowds;” careful politicians prefer to stick to “meat-and-potato issues;” and representatives are frequently encouraged by their constituents to “bring home the bacon.” And the way members of Congress typically “bring home the bacon” is often described with another agricultural metaphor, the “earmark.”

In ranching, an earmark is a small cut on the ear of a cow or other animal to denote ownership. Similarly, in Congress, an earmark is a mark in a bill that directs some of the bill’s funds to be spent on specific projects or for specific tax exemptions. Since the 1980s, the earmark has become a common vehicle for sending money to various projects around the country. Many a road, hospital, and airport can trace its origins back to a few skillfully drafted earmarks.

Relatively few people outside Congress had ever heard of the term before the 2008 presidential election, when Republican nominee Senator John McCain touted his career-long refusal to use the earmark as a testament to his commitment to reforming spending habits in Washington. [5]

McCain’s criticism of the earmark as a form of corruption cast a shadow over a previously common legislative practice. As the country sank into recession and Congress tried to use spending bills to stimulate the economy, the public grew more acutely aware of its earmarking habits. Congresspersons then were eager to distance themselves from the practice. In fact, the use of earmarks to encourage Republicans to help pass health care reform actually made the bill less popular with the public.

In 2011, after Republicans took over the House, they outlawed earmarks. But with deadlocks and stalemates becoming more common, some quiet voices have begun asking for a return to the practice. They argue that Congress works because representatives can satisfy their responsibilities to their constituents by making deals. The earmarks are those deals. By taking them away, Congress has hampered its own ability to “bring home the bacon.”

Are earmarks a vital part of legislating or a corrupt practice that was rightly jettisoned? Pick a cause or industry, and investigate whether any earmarks ever favored it, or research the way earmarks have hurt or helped your state or district, and decide for yourself.

Follow-up activity: Find out where your congressional representative stands on the ban on earmarks and write to support or dissuade him or her.

Such budgetary allocations aren’t always looked upon favorably by constituents. Consider, for example, the passage of the ACA in 2010. The desire for comprehensive universal health care had been a driving position of the Democrats since at least the 1960s. During the 2008 campaign, that desire was so great among both Democrats and Republicans that both parties put forth plans. When the Democrats took control of Congress and the presidency in 2009, they quickly began putting together their plan. Soon, however, the politics grew complex, and the proposed plan became very contentious for the Republican Party.

Nevertheless, the desire to make good on a decades-old political promise compelled Democrats to do everything in their power to pass something. They offered sympathetic members of the Republican Party valuable budgetary concessions; they attempted to include allocations they hoped the opposition might feel compelled to support; and they drafted the bill in a purposely complex manner to avoid future challenges. These efforts, however, had the opposite effect. The Republican Party’s constituency interpreted the allocations as bribery and the bill as inherently flawed, and felt it should be scrapped entirely. The more Democrats dug in, the more frustrated the Republicans became.

In 2009, the extended debates and legislative maneuvering in Congress over the proposed health care reform bill triggered a firestorm of disapproval from the Republicans and protests from their supporters. In many cases, hyperbole ruled the day. (credit: “dbking”/Flickr)

The Republican opposition, which took control of the House during the 2010 midterm elections, promised constituents they would repeal the law. Their attempts were complicated, however, by the fact that Democrats still held the Senate and the presidency. Yet, the desire to represent the interests of their constituents compelled Republicans to use another tool at their disposal, the symbolic vote. During the 112th and 113th Congresses, Republicans voted more than sixty times to either repeal or severely limit the reach of the law. They understood these efforts had little to no chance of ever making it to the president’s desk. And if they did, he would certainly have vetoed them. But it was important for these representatives to demonstrate to their constituents that they understood their wishes and were willing to act on them.

Historically, representatives have been able to balance their role as members of a national legislative body with their role as representatives of a smaller community. The Obamacare fight, however, gave a boost to the growing concern that the power structure in Washington divides representatives from the needs of their constituency. [6]

This has exerted pressure on representatives to the extent that some now pursue a more straightforward delegate approach to representation. Indeed, following the 2010 election, a handful of Republicans began living in their offices in Washington, convinced that by not establishing a residence in Washington, they would appear closer to their constituents at home. [7]

Collective Representation and Congressional Approval

The concept of collective representation describes the relationship between Congress and the United States as a whole. That is, it considers whether the institution itself represents the American people, not just whether a particular member of Congress represents his or her district. Predictably, it is far more difficult for Congress to maintain a level of collective representation than it is for individual members of Congress to represent their own constituents. Not only is Congress a mixture of different ideologies, interests, and party affiliations, but the collective constituency of the United States has an even-greater level of diversity. Nor is it a solution to attempt to match the diversity of opinions and interests in the United States with those in Congress. Indeed, such an attempt would likely make it more difficult for Congress to maintain collective representation. Its rules and procedures require Congress to use flexibility, bargaining, and concessions. Yet, it is this flexibility and these concessions, which many now interpret as corruption, that tend to engender the high public disapproval ratings experienced by Congress.

After many years of deadlocks and bickering on Capitol Hill, the national perception of Congress is near an all-time low. According to Gallup polls, Congress has a stunningly poor approval rating of about 16 percent. This is unusual even for a body that has rarely enjoyed a high approval rating. For example, for nearly two decades following the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, the national approval rating of Congress hovered between 30 and 40 percent. [8]  Yet, incumbent reelections have remained largely unaffected. The reason has to do with the remarkable ability of many in the United States to separate their distaste for Congress from their appreciation for their own representative. Paradoxically, this tendency to hate the group but love one’s own representative actually perpetuates the problem of poor congressional approval ratings. The reason is that it blunts voters’ natural desire to replace those in power who are earning such low approval ratings.

As decades of polling indicate, few events push congressional approval ratings above 50 percent. Indeed, when the ratings are graphed, the two noticeable peaks are at 57 percent in 1998 and 84 percent in 2001. In 1998, according to Gallup polling, the rise in approval accompanied a similar rise in other mood measures, including President Bill Clinton ’s approval ratings and general satisfaction with the state of the country and the economy. In 2001, approval spiked after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Bush administration launched the “War on Terror,” sending troops first to Afghanistan and later to Iraq. War has the power to bring majorities of voters to view their Congress and president in an overwhelmingly positive way. [9]

Congress’s job approval rating reached a high of 84 percent in October 2001 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It has declined fairly steadily ever since, reaching a low of 9 percent in November 2013, just after the federal government shutdown in the previous month.

Nevertheless, all things being equal, citizens tend to rate Congress more highly when things get done and more poorly when things do not get done. For example, during the first half of President Obama’s first term, Congress’s approval rating reached a relative high of about 40 percent. Both houses were dominated by members of the president’s own party, and many people were eager for Congress to take action to end the deep recession and begin to repair the economy. Millions were suffering economically, out of work, or losing their jobs, and the idea that Congress was busy passing large stimulus packages, working on finance reform, and grilling unpopular bank CEOs and financial titans appealed to many. Approval began to fade as the Republican Party slowed the wheels of Congress during the tumultuous debates over Obamacare and reached a low of 9 percent following the federal government shutdown in October 2013.

One of the events that began the approval rating’s downward trend was Congress’s divisive debate over national deficits. A deficit is what results when Congress spends more than it has available. It then conducts additional deficit spending by increasing the national debt. Many modern economists contend that during periods of economic decline, the nation should run deficits, because additional government spending has a stimulative effect that can help restart a sluggish economy. Despite this benefit, voters rarely appreciate deficits. They see Congress as spending wastefully during a time when they themselves are cutting costs to get by.

The disconnect between the common public perception of running a deficit and its legitimate policy goals is frequently exploited for political advantage. For example, while running for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama slammed the deficit spending of the George W. Bush presidency, saying it was “unpatriotic.” This sentiment echoed complaints Democrats had been issuing for years as a weapon against President Bush’s policies. Following the election of President Obama and the Democratic takeover of the Senate, the concern over deficit spending shifted parties, with Republicans championing a spendthrift policy as a way of resisting Democratic policies.

Some representatives follow the delegate model of representation, acting on the expressed wishes of their constituents, whereas others take a trustee model approach, acting on what they believe is in their constituents’ best interests. However, most representatives combine the two approaches and apply each as political circumstances demand. The standard method by which representatives have shown their fidelity to their constituents, namely “bringing home the bacon” of favorable budget allocations, has come to be interpreted as a form of corruption, or pork-barrel politics.

Representation can also be considered in other ways. Descriptive representation is the level at which Congress reflects the nation’s constituents in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. Collective representation is the extent to which the institutional body of Congress represents the population as a whole. Despite the incumbency advantage and high opinion many hold of their own legislators, Congress rarely earns an approval rating above 40 percent, and for a number of years the rating has been well below 20 percent.

Practice Questions

• How has the growing interpretation of earmarks and other budget allocations as corruption influenced the way congresspersons work?
• What does polling data suggest about the events that trigger exceptionally high congressional approval ratings?

2. The peaks of congressional approval ratings have each occurred when the United States began military involvements overseas. This suggests that the start of a foreign war is one of the few things that triggers a positive reevaluation of Congress.

collective representation the relationship between Congress and the United States as a whole, and whether the institution itself represents the American people

delegate model of representation a model of representation in which representatives feel compelled to act on the specific stated wishes of their constituents

descriptive representation the extent to which a body of representatives represents the descriptive characteristics of their constituencies, such as class, race, ethnicity, and gender

politico model of representation a model of representation in which members of Congress act as either trustee or delegate, based on rational political calculations about who is best served, the constituency or the nation

pork-barrel politics federal spending intended to benefit a particular district or set of constituents

representation an elected leader’s looking out for his or her constituents while carrying out the duties of the office

trustee model of representation a model of representation in which representatives feel at liberty to act in the way they believe is best for their constituents

• Steven S. Smith. 1999. The American Congress . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. ↵
• Edmund Burke, "Speech to the Electors of Bristol," 3 November 1774, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch23s7.html (May 1, 2016). ↵
• "Claire McCaskill, Emily’s List Celebrate Women’s Wins in 2012," 14 November 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/claire-mccaskill-emilys-list-celebrate-womens-wins-in-2012/ (May 1, 2016). ↵
• Jennifer E. Manning, "Membership of the 114th Congress: A Profile," 1 December 2015, http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid=%260BL*RLC2 (May 15, 2016); "The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Conference," http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/HAIC/Historical-Essays/Strength-Numbers/Caucus-Conference/ (May 15, 2016). ↵
• "Statement by John McCain on Banning Earmarks," 13 March 2008, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=90739 (May 15, 2016); "Press Release - John McCain’s Economic Plan," 15 April 2008, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=94082 (May 15, 2016). ↵
• Kathleen Parker, "Health-Care Reform’s Sickeningly Sweet Deals," The Washington Post , 10 March 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/09/AR2010030903068.html (May 1, 2016); Dana Milbank, "Sweeteners for the South," The Washington Post , 22 November 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102272.html (May 1, 2016); Jeffry H. Anderson, "Nebraska’s Dark-Horse Candidate and the Cornhusker Kickback," The Weekly Standard , 4 May 2014. ↵
• Phil Hirschkorn and Wyatt Andrews, "One-Fifth of House Freshmen Sleep in Offices," CBS News, 22 January 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-fifth-of-house-freshmen-sleep-in-offices/ (May 1, 2016). ↵
• "Congress and the Public," http://www.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx (May 15, 2016). ↵
• American Government. Authored by : OpenStax. Provided by : OpenStax; Rice University. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:Y1CfqFju@5/Preface . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/9e28f580-0d1b-4d72-8795-c48329947ac2@1.
• Share icon. Authored by : Quan Do. Provided by : The Noun Project. Located at : https://thenounproject.com/term/share/7671/ . License : CC BY: Attribution

PUBLISHED Aug. 12, 2021, at 6:00 AM

What If The House Of Representatives Had More Than 435 Seats?

See how adding more seats makes congress more representative.

By Ryan Best

See also: How The House Got Stuck At 435 Seats

The number of voting members in the U.S. House of Representatives has been stuck at 435 for more than 100 years 1 This number increased to 437 in 1959 to accommodate the statehood of Alaska and Hawaii but returned to 435 in 1963, after the reapportionment process in 1960. even though the country’s population has more than tripled in that time. This has created the perfect recipe for unequal representation: Every decade, these 435 seats in the House must be reapportioned to adjust for population changes, even though more seats aren’t added. This means representatives in some states like Delaware end up representing way more people than in other states like Montana.

Here’s how apportionment works and which states are over- and underrepresented as a result

First, click the button below to give each state its minimum one House seat, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

seats allocated:

under represented

over represented

The closer states get to the national average ( even ), the more equal their representation is

With all 435 House seats apportioned, we see significant discrepancies in district sizes across states. Montana and Rhode Island, for instance, will each have about 215,000 fewer people per district than the national average. Delaware, by contrast, will be the most underrepresented state in the union: Its 990,837 residents will have just one representative. But it’s not just the smaller — that is, less populous — states that get a raw deal. Bigger states also suffer from underrepresentation compared with some smaller states. Take California: Its population is 68.5 times as large as Wyoming’s, but based on the 2020 census, California was apportioned only 52 seats compared with Wyoming’s one. This means the average California House member will represent more than 761,000 constituents, while Wyoming’s will represent just shy of 578,000.

To be sure, perfectly equal representation in the House isn’t actually attainable — the fact that each state is guaranteed at least one seat and that districts can’t cross state lines limits what’s possible. But we could get much closer to equal representation if we expanded the size of the House beyond our current (and rather arbitrary) cap of 435.

One method we could use to add more seats to the House is the small state rule , where we’d divide the total U.S. population by that of the smallest state (Wyoming). Another is the cube root law , or the trend observed in political science that the number of seats in many countries’ lower chambers is quite close to the cube root of that nation’s population. And in some countries that have even more representatives like the U.K., France and Germany , political scientists have found that number is closer to the cube root of twice the country’s population ( 2x cube root law ).

Try implementing these strategies — or any House size up to 1,000 seats

 seats

As you’ve probably discovered, the more seats we add to the House, the more equal representation generally gets across all 50 states. That said, there are some pretty big limitations to how many seats we could realistically add to the chamber. (Can you imagine the electoral and logistical chaos that would ensue from doubling the size of the House in one fell swoop?) Bottom line: Each seat we do add to our current cap of 435 does get us just that much closer to the one-person, one-vote ethos that the House was ultimately created to fulfill.

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H.R. 7109: Equal Representation Act

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118th CONGRESS

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 29, 2024

Mr. Edwards (for himself and Mr. Davidson ) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Accountability

To require a citizenship question on the decennial census, to require reporting on certain census statistics, and to modify apportionment of Representatives to be based on United States citizens instead of all persons.

Short title

This Act may be cited as the Equal Representation Act .

Citizenship status on decennial census

Section 141 of title 13, United States Code, is amended—

by redesignating subsection (g) as subsection (h); and

by inserting after subsection (f) the following:

In conducting the 2030 decennial census and each decennial census thereafter, the Secretary shall include in any questionnaire distributed or otherwise used for the purpose of determining the total population by States a checkbox or other similar option for the respondent to indicate, for the respondent and for each of the members of the household of the respondent, whether that individual is—

a citizen of the United States;

a national of the United States but not a citizen of the United States;

an alien lawfully residing in the United States; or

an alien unlawfully residing in the United States.

Not later than 120 days after completion of a decennial census of the population under subsection (a), the Secretary shall make publicly available the number of persons per State, disaggregated by each of the 4 categories described in subparagraphs (A) through (D) of paragraph (1), as tabulated in accordance with this section.

Exclusion of noncitizens from number of persons used to determine apportionment of representatives and number of electoral votes

Section 22(a) of the Act entitled An Act to provide for the fifteenth and subsequent decennial censuses and to provide for an apportionment of Representatives in Congress , approved June 18, 1929 ( 2 U.S.C. 2a(a) ), is amended by inserting after not taxed the following: and individuals who are not citizens of the United States .

Effective date

The amendment made by subsection (a) shall apply with respect to the apportionment of Representatives carried out pursuant to the decennial census conducted during 2030 and any succeeding decennial census.

Severability clause

If any provision of this Act or amendment made by this Act, or the application thereof to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the provisions of this Act and amendments made by this Act, and the application of the provision or amendment to any other person or circumstance, shall not be affected.

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What is Equal Representation? – Glossary of Good

By Ben Matthews

In Blog , Empower Life , Glossary of Good , Moments

Reading Time: 3 minutes

As part of emp o wer’s Glossary of Good  series, Amanda Reeder finds out what ‘Equal Representation’ is about in the context of women in leadership positions.

In this article:

What is Equal Representation?

Why does equal representation matter, what are some examples of equal representation in action, passionate about equality here are some great organisations making a splash:.

Equal Representation  can actually mean a few different things, depending on the context. Sometimes, the term is used in reference to political movements that seek proportional representation in their government in terms of the population of a particular region versus another.

However, it is also commonly used to describe the movement to champion women and gender diversity in government and in executive business roles, which is what we’ll cover in this blog post.

Advocates of Equal Representation want to encourage the normalisation of formal ‘quotas’ of women in global leadership roles, with the help of male allies. Many proponents of Equal Representation see quotas as a necessary temporary measure to help advance equal representation.

The  United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW  said in a  2005 report about Equal Representation  that “as allies, men can support women’s initiatives and movements in their efforts towards equality. As major ‘gatekeepers’ of policy-making institutions, men can leverage women into positions of power either through direct selection and appointment”.

The UN report also said that “equal participation of women and men in decision-making institutions was a key element in the democratization of governance. By effectively increasing the descriptive and substantive representation of women in political life at all levels, the potential for change in political practices—and therefore in outcomes–towards the empowerment of women can be better realized; thereby promoting a more democratic and just society.”

Additionally, a study of  women’s policy impact in government  shows that women consistently co-sponsor more bills related to women’s health than their male counterparts, regardless of political ideology.

Unfortunately, we are nowhere near equal participation of women and men in decision-making. For example, in the UK in 2017,  women only make up 29% of our MPs , and there are  more men named David on the list of FTSE 100 CEOs than there are women .

In the United States under the current administration,  they are ranked 104th when ranked for in women’s representation in government , with a congress that is made up of 80% men.

Globally,  only 22.8 per cent of all national parliamentarians were women as of June 2016 , a slow increase from 11.3 per cent in 1995.

These statistics show a dire need for women to be purposefully encouraged, promoted and appointed to leadership roles all all levels to help them get to the top tier of governance in parliament and in business, especially when research shows women’s representation in global politics has actually stagnated in the last two years.

Though we have a very long way to go, the movement of Equal Representation is buoyed by by several major actors on the world stage who are championing equal representation in government and business.

For example, in 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his cabinet would be the first in Canadian history to purposefully include 50% women. Here is an interview with the Canadian Minister of the Status of Women:

This graph  also shows the handful of other countries where women hold at least 50% of ministerial positions:

In the business world, inclusion of women isn’t just good for society, it’s good for the bottom line, with  research showing showing  firms with more women in the boardroom are actually more profitable.   Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is a great example of an ally , with his insistence on equal pay and that all important meetings include at least 30 percent women .

This report from the European Parliament in 2012  outlines the efforts (of varying degrees of success) made by several EU countries to encourage gender parity on corporate management boards.

• The Women’s Equality Party (UK)
• The nonprofit Catalyst has some great resources for learning about women in government and business
• UN Women publishes reports on equal representation

Explore more of emp o wer’s Glossary of Good:

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How Congress has focused on social justice in its 2024 poll manifesto

The Congress has released its 84-page-long manifesto, also known as ‘Nyay Patra’. Among its many poll promises, the party has vowed to carry out a nationwide caste census and also pass a Constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations

We are two weeks away from the Lok Sabha polls beginning and ahead of the seven-phase elections, the Congress on Friday (5 March) released its poll manifesto, or ‘Nyay Patra’.

The manifesto was released in Delhi in the presence of the media by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, who was flanked by senior leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram — who led the committee that drafted the document — was also present.

Speaking at the event, Kharge said: “This manifesto will be ‘nyay ka dastavez’ (a document for justice) in the political history of the country. From the five pillars of the ‘Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra’ — yuva (youth), kisan (farmers), naari (women), shramik (workers), and hissedari (equity), 25 guarantees will emerge.”

Noticeably, the Congress manifesto has focused largely on social justice and love — a recurring theme even during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Social justice

In the Congress manifesto, the party has promised that if it comes to power in the 2024 elections, it will carry out a nation-wide socio-economic and caste census to enumerate the castes and sub-castes and their socio-economic conditions.

This has been a hot topic for a while now, ever since the Bihar government released the results of its own survey last November.

The Congress has vociferously pushed for a caste-survey on a national level, asserting that it is the only way to ensure equal opportunity for all in the country. Last week, the party’s general secretary Jairam Ramesh had said caste has been a socio-economic reality of Indian society for centuries. “We cannot deny caste-based discrimination in India and the disadvantages imposed by caste at birth,” he said in a post on X.

“To make the distribution of economic growth more equitable, we need a survey of the ownership of assets and the representation of people in the institutions of our democracy,” Ramesh said. Therefore, what is needed is a caste census combined with a survey of national assets and governance systems, which is updated from time to time, he asserted in the post on X.

Former Congress chief and senior leader Rahul Gandhi has also batted for the caste survey and reiterated at rally after rally that his party would carry out such an exercise if voted to power.

Besides the caste survey, the Congress has also promised to pass a Constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBCs). Many poll pundits note that this move is an attempt by the Congress to try to slide into OBC votebank.

Many other regional parties have been debating the 50 per cent cap, but the Supreme Court has struck down these appeals and stuck to the 50 per cent cap ruling in the Mandal commission case.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi had said on the same: “If INDIA bloc comes to power, it will throw away the 50 per cent cap on reservation, ensure Dalits, tribals, OBCs get their rights.” He added: “There will be no reduction in reservation of Dalits and Adivasis. I am giving you a guarantee that the backward sections of society will get their rights. This is the biggest issue — social and economic injustice.”

And in an attempt to attain social justice, the Congress has vowed that the reservation of 10 per cent in jobs and educational institutions for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) will be implemented for all castes and communities without discrimination.

Moreover, the Congress has vowed to end the evil of manual scavenging . As per the manifesto, every manual scavenger will be rehabilitated, re-skilled, provided a job and assured a life of dignity and safety. The Prohibition of Manual Scavenging Act, 2013, will be strictly implemented and any person employing anyone for manual scavenging shall be punished.

Love for all

One of the other key focus areas of the Congress manifesto is religious tolerance and equality for LGBTQ+ citizens.

In its manifesto, the Congress wrote that if it came to power, the party would respect and uphold the fundamental right to practice one’s faith and the rights guaranteed to religious minorities under Articles 15, 16, 25, 26, 28, 29 and 30 of the Constitution.

The Grand Old Party also vowed that that it would ensure the freedom of choice of dress, food, language and personal laws. This point, according to experts, is a counter to the BJP.

Moreover, the party has stated that it would encourage reform of personal laws. Such reform must be undertaken with the participation and consent of the communities concerned, it wrote. Many poll experts believe that it is a nod to the Uniform Civil Code and the party’s stance on it.

Notably, the Congress has also spoken about the rights of LGBTQ+ citizens in its manifesto. It wrote in its manifesto that the party, after wide consultation, would bring a law to recognise civil unions between couples belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community.

This comes after the Supreme Court refused to legalise same-sex marriages in October last year. While the apex court while striking down the pleas had said that marriage is not a fundamental right in the Constitution.However, Justices SK Kaul, who was one of the five judges hearing the case, did strongly rule in favour of recognising queer couples’ “right to civil union ”.

Other salient features of Congress manifesto

Apart from the focus on social justice, the Congress has laid emphasis on job creation in its manifesto. It wrote in its 48-page manifesto, “The youth of India face joblessness as well as hopelessness. The root cause is massive unemployment that has got worse every year under the BJP/NDA government. Congress will tackle this issue on a war footing with a clear Yuva Nyay programme.”

For this, the Congress has guaranteed a new Right to Apprenticeship Act to provide a one-year apprenticeship with a private or a public sector company to every diploma holder or college graduate below the age of 25. Apprentices will get Rs 1 lakh a year. The apprenticeship will impart skills, enhance employability and provide full-time job opportunities for millions of youth.

The Congress also vows to fill the nearly 30 lakh vacancies in sanctioned posts at various levels in the central government.

And in an aim to empower women, the Congress will launch a Mahalakshmi scheme to provide 1 lakh per year to every poor Indian family as an unconditional cash transfer. The poor will be identified among the families in the bottom of the income pyramid. The amount will be directly transferred to the bank account of the oldest woman of the household.

Additionally, the party will reserve one-half (50 per cent) of central government jobs for women starting in 2025.

To ensure farmers’ rights, the Congress has also promised to give a legal guarantee to the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) announced by the government every year, as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission.

Shortly after the Congress released its ‘Nyay Patra’, the BJP slammed it, calling it a “bundle of lies”. BJP further said the opposition party “did not fulfil any of its promises made in its earlier manifestos for assembly and Lok Sabha elections”.

BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said that the Congress has come with such a poll manifesto to create confusion among the voters.

With inputs from agencies

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