Reclaiming the People’s House

Apportionment is the term used in the United States Constitution to define the size and composition of the United States House of Representatives.

The Framers of the Constitution envisioned ordinary citizens in a “people’s house” that would gradually grow in size as the population of the country grew. The reader will learn how the Framers nearly placed language in the Constitution that would have guaranteed over 10,000 Representatives today and how apportionment in the 19th Century was hotly debated. Apportionment once favored slave-holding states, and the 1801 and 1876 presidential elections were decided by apportionment.

In 1912 the number of seats was set at 435, the same number of Representatives as today. Since then the number of persons in a typical congressional district has grown from an average of 710,000 persons to 760,000 persons. This has had disastrous results such as extreme gerrymandering, apathetic voter turnout, and a House that fails to properly exercise its war powers. Francis shows that apportionment is the key reason average citizens have virtually no chance at being elected while incumbents retain their seats 95 percent of the time. He powerfully makes the case that apportionment should once again be the subject of a rigorous national dialogue.