Representation

As ingenious as the American government was when it was organized by the US Constitution in 1787, there is one glaring defect that has caused a huge lack of representation, and misrepresentation of a large percentage of the nation.

When the nation was organized, it was organized to protect the opposing views of individual states and communities. Each state was given equal representation in the senate, and each community was given equal representation, relative to its population, in the House. But the founders failed to foresee the eventual melting pot of political opinions in all parts of the nation. In the early days of the nation, citizens would live where they chose to live, choosing to settle in communities that held their own values. They each had a trade that they contributed to their community, and often would learn new trades as needed. They were very self-reliant, so moving to a new locale wasn’t a significant issue.

Today, however, citizens of the nation relocate almost solely due to business. They move to where their job takes them, not where the communities have policies they like. Only a very select few are able to pick up their belongings and move to another community of their choosing without serious financial repercussions. As a result, each community is comprised of citizens of very opposing views.

Yet the system of representation is such that each community has a single national representative to bring forward the concerns and values of that community. As a result, the minority of each community is completely unrepresented. In most communities, a 60-40 vote split is a landslide. But that’s a whole 40% of its citizens being unrepresented!

We have a huge underrepresentation issue now, where the nation is virtually split down the middle politically, yet one party has control of all branches of government. This is hugely unfair to half the people of the nation. And if the party in power becomes over-zealous in making the changes they want, the unrepresented will not likely sit idle, and political warfare will intensify and become dangerous. We see this happening today.

To solve the issue, we must fix the representation problem. I would propose, first of all, increasing the number of representatives, giving more comprehensive coverage of all constituents. Secondly, and more importantly, I think we need to go to some system that represents the ratios of political opinions within communities. For example, instead of having 1 representative per every 10,000 citizens, where he/she would represent only ~55% of those people, we should instead have 10 representatives to cover 100,000. The top 10 voted candidates would get the positions. Thus 6 would represent the majority views, and 4 would represent the minority. Or it may be 5 and 5 if the vote is close. Independent voters could finally get representation. The overall coverage would represent the true comprehensive views of all the people, not just the views of the majority.

Finally, I think that we need to be careful what we allow to pass into law by just a simple majority. This is too akin to mob rule, where the majority forces its will on the minority. We must take care that policies passed by the majority do not discriminate against the minority, regardless of what kind of minority it is (racial, political, financial, etc).