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Abstract Laffiteau, Charles A. “Political Climate Change: US Political Party Polarization and the

Founding Fathers’ Ideals.” During the 5 year period of 2009 through 2013, countless public opinion

polls have shown that a substantial majority of Americans do not approve of the job being done by

the United States (US) Congress. Some Americans complain that legislators represent wealthy special

interests instead of their constituents. Others cite the steep drop off in the number of laws enacted by

Congress every year. Most political observers contend that Congress’s inability to pass legislation is

primarily due to the split party control of the institution, with Republicans holding a majority in the

House of Representatives and Democrats controlling a majority in the Senate as well as the US

Presidency. But another reason often cited for the US Congress’s low approval ratings is the

increasingly partisan atmosphere in Congress which stifles attempts by more moderate and centrist

members of both political parties to negotiate and win approval for legislative compromises. This

paper discusses the correlations that appear to exist between an increase in divided political party

control of government, the enactment of a fewer federal laws by a more partisan Congress and several

years of record low voter approval ratings for the US Congress. It then explores some of the

underlying causes of the changing political climate in Congress such as increases in the use of

political tactics like filibusters in the US Senate and politically partisan redistricting of US House of

Representative seats. Finally, it examines the published concerns of Founding Fathers like James

Madison and Alexander Hamilton about the “mischief’s of faction”. I conclude that political tactics

like Senate filibusters and the partisan political redistricting of House seats vividly illustrate the

“mischief’s of faction” the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid. I also argue that the current size of US

Congressional districts runs counter to the representative democracy ideals of the Founding Fathers.

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Political Climate Change: US Political Party Polarization and the Founding Fathers’ Ideals

By Charles Laffiteau

Introduction

During the past decade there have been two types of legislative activity involving both the

federal and state levels of government that have led to and also reflect an increase in political party

polarization and a corresponding reduction in the number of laws enacted by the United States

Congress. Both of these legislative activities appear to run counter to the ideals of America’s

Founding Fathers because they accentuate the “mischiefs of faction” that the Framers of the United

States Constitution sought to minimize when they designed our federal republican government.

During the past five years countless public opinion polls have shown that the vast majority of

Americans do not approve of the job being done by the United States Congress. According to

Gallup’s polling, since they first began measuring voter approval of Congress forty years ago, 2013

will also mark the fourth straight year that Congress’s approval rating is less than 20%. Furthermore,

as Chart 1 (Newport 2013) shows, these consistently low approval numbers for the Congress also

stand in marked contrast to Gallup’s job approval ratings for the past 4 decades when Congress’s

approval ratings only dipped below 20% twice, in 1979 and 1992.

Chart 1

2

One reason cited by Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones that explains this string of low job approval ratings

“is the split party control of the institution, with Republicans holding a majority in the House of

Representatives and Democrats having a majority in the Senate. If one party controlled both houses

of Congress, that party's rank-and-file supporters would likely look more favorably on Congress, and

push its overall ratings higher as was the case in 2008.” (Jones 2012)

Whenever control of Congress is divided and neither party can pass its legislation without the

support of opposition lawmakers in the other chamber, in order for the federal government to function

effectively legislative compromises are required. Moreover, when control of the Presidency as well as

both Houses of Congress is divided, as Chart 2 shows has been the case for all but six of the past

twenty years, that is when legislative compromises become a necessity for effective governance.

Chart 2

Years President Senate House

1993–1995 Dem D D

1995-1997 Dem R R

1997-1999 Dem R R

1999-2001 Dem R R

2001-2003 Rep D R

2003–2005 Rep R R

2005–2007 Rep R R

2007-2009 Rep D D

2009–2011 Dem D D

2011-2013 Dem D R

2013-2015 Dem D R

Another reason often cited for Congress’s low approval ratings is the increasingly partisan

atmosphere in Congress which stifles attempts by more moderate or centrist members of both

political parties to negotiate and win approval for legislative compromises. An inability to forge

legislative compromises due to partisan ideological differences has certainly been a characteristic of

the current 113th

Congress where the Republican controlled House of Representatives has passed a

measure to repeal President Obama’s healthcare law more than 40 times even though the Republican

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leaders knew the legislation had no chance of passing or even being voted on in the US Senate. The

House of Representatives repeated refusal to agree on compromise budget legislation that would be

approved by both the Democratic controlled US Senate and President Obama subsequently resulted in

a near default on the American government’s debt obligations and a three week shutdown of the

federal government. Thanks largely to its partisan ideological divisions the 113th

Congress was on a

pace to pass and enact just 57 laws in 2013, a record low that as Chart 3 shows would eclipse the

previous post-World War II record low of 88 bills enacted into law by 1995’s 104th

Congress.

Chart 3

Taken together, Charts 1, 2 and 3 also illustrate the correlation that exists between; an

increase in divided political party control of government, the enactment of a fewer federal laws by a

more partisan Congress and several years of record low voter approval ratings for the US Congress.

While one may argue about the exact nature of the cause and effect relationships here, it appears that

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divided government that is also more partisan leads to fewer laws being enacted which in turn results

in lower voter approval ratings for the US Congress.

Politics is defined in the dictionary as “The art or science of government or governing,

especially the governing of a political entity, such as a nation, and the administration and control of

its internal and external affairs.” In his essay “Politics as a Vocation” Max Weber discusses why

politics is also the art of compromise and his belief that political action cannot be solely based on a

politician’s convictions because one man’s conviction can be an abomination for another man. Weber

claims that “three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of

responsibility, and a sense of proportion…passion as devotion to a 'cause' makes responsibility to this

cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive

psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner

concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men.” (Weber 1919) Weber proposes

that to be effective politicians cannot be saints because they must strike a balance between the “ethic

of ultimate ends” and the “ethic of responsibility” by taking into account the convictions and needs of

others. Weber concludes that “The final result of political action often, no, even regularly, stands in

completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning.” (Weber 1919)

John Boehner, the Republican leader and Speaker of the House of Representatives, justified

his party’s opposition to political compromises by noting that even though American voters had re-

elected Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012 and Republicans had lost 8 of their seats in the

House, the Republican Party still maintained control of the House of Representatives. Speaker of the

House Boehner suggested that Republicans’ continued control of one chamber of Congress meant

that American voters had given Republicans a mandate to oppose the President on budget, tax and

healthcare issues. What Speaker Boehner failed to note was that the 2012 election was also the first

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one in more than half a century where the party that received the fewest total votes for the House of

Representatives (approximately 1.4 million fewer votes) still won a 54% majority of the House seats.

Even though Republicans also lost 2 seats in the Senate, they continued to use long standing

Senate filibuster rules that required 60 votes instead of a simple majority to block President Obama’s

federal executive agency and judicial appointments. Since they serve 6 year terms instead of 2 years

terms like their House counterparts, the Senate filibuster or cloture rules had originally been designed

to foster a less partisan and more cooperative and statesmen like atmosphere in the US Senate. While

Democrats had used these same “supermajority” cloture rules to block some Republican Presidential

appointments when they were a minority faction, Senate Republicans invoked these rules on an

unprecedented scale. Politifact reports that during President Obama’s tenure from February 2009

through November 2013, the Republican minority faction in the Senate had blocked 79 of President

Obama’s nominees while the combined total of all Presidential appointments blocked by Democratic

and Republican minorities in the 60 years between 1949 and 2009 totaled just 67. (Politifact 2013)

The Republican Party’s Tea Party aligned conservatives justify their obstructive tactics and

refusal to compromise by claiming they are protecting Americans’ Constitution rights. In contrast to

Weber’s belief that political action cannot be solely based on a politician’s convictions, many House

conservatives claim they cannot take any political actions that run contrary to their convictions.

However, given their oft stated concerns about the “mischief’s of faction”, would Founding Fathers

like Madison and Hamilton have been supportive of a political party minority faction that “clog the

administration” of the federal government and the federal legal system by preventing the President’s

government agency and judicial appointees from taking office? Furthermore, would the Framers of

our nation’s Constitution look favorably on legislative districts that were consciously drawn to reduce

their ethnic and economic diversity so as to ensure that a majority faction would control it?

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Filibustering and the Problem of Minority Faction

In an attempt to answer these questions this paper will first explore the problem of minority

factions blocking the will of the majority that is illustrated by Senate voting rules that were originally

designed to foster a broader political consensus on administrative and judicial appointments and

important legislative issues. Since he first took office in January 2009, President Obama and the

Democratic majority faction in the US Senate have complained that the Republican minority faction

has been abusing Senate rules requiring a supermajority of 60 votes to block many of President

Obama’s executive and judicial appointments. Republicans have argued that they are merely

exercising the same minority faction rights that Democrats have used when they were the minority

faction in the US Senate. While the Democrats acknowledged using the same 60 vote filibuster or

‘cloture’ rules to block some Republican Presidential appointments, they claimed that they did so

sparingly and not on anything approaching the scale of Republicans since 2009.

As regards the veracity of each political party’s claims and counter claims, based on data

compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service it would appear that Senate Democrats

were correct; that Senate Republicans had been using cloture rules to block an unprecedented number

of President Obama’s executive and judicial appointments. More specifically the Congressional

Research Service concluded that “In brief, out of the 168 cloture motions ever filed (or reconsidered)

on Presidential nominations in the 65 years from 1949 to 2013, 82 (49 percent) were cloture motions

on Presidential nominations made since 2009.” (Beth and Rybicki 2013)

In Federalist No. 10 James Madison elaborated on his concerns about the violence and

mischief’s of factions and discussed why America’s new hybrid republican government would

succeed in controlling the problem of factions. Madison began his letter by stating that “Among the

numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately

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developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.” As far as Madison was

concerned, the development of minority and majority factions of citizens that were united and

motivated by “some common impulse of passion, or of interest”, was a natural outgrowth of living in

a free society. But Madison also believed the factions would inevitably come into conflict with one

another because “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it,

different opinions will be formed.” These factions would only be a problem when they tried to enact

laws which adversely affected the rights of other citizens or the overall interests of the larger

community they lived in.

While Madison was a strong advocate of democracy, he also believed that with a direct

democracy “our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of

rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the

rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Because Madison believed that the development of minority and majority political factions was an

essential element of democratic governance in Federalist No. 10 he proposes that the only way to deal

with the mischief’s of faction are to put in place processes and procedures that minimize the harmful

effects of faction. So in order to minimize the violence and mischiefs of faction and create a more

stable form of democratic governance Madison proposes a republic with an indirect representative

form of democratic rule as a solution to the problem of factions.

Madison then goes on to claim that the proposed republican form of governance has two

distinct advantages over a pure democracy. First and foremost Madison contends that a republic is

able to avoid the problem of an impulsive majority faction that runs roughshod over the rights of

some minority factions because it can “refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through

the medium of a chosen body of citizens, (i.e. the US Senate) whose wisdom may best discern the

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true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it

to temporary or partial considerations.” (Madison 1787) Madison also believed that small republics

were more susceptible to developing homogenous majority factions than larger republics because

they contained a smaller number of minority interest groups. But since the United States would be a

very large republic, the second advantage of a republican form of government was that majority

factions would have difficulty forming in the United States because there would be a larger number

of issues that would fracture any majority factions. So from Madison’s perspective a republican form

of government would actually encourage the development of minority factions that would in turn

frustrate the development of majority factions.

Based on the published papers and letters they wrote to their friends and constituents,

Madison, Hamilton and the other founding fathers were concerned about factions impeding the

government’s ability to act with the energy needed to prevent the kind of political instability that if

left unchecked could lead to anarchy. That is why they divided and structured America’s government

the US Constitution in a way that promoted political stability by requiring a certain level of political

consensus. But despite their affinity for political consensus, the founding fathers were also opposed to

a supermajority approval process. In Federalist No. 22 Alexander Hamilton argues that “To give a

minority a negative upon the majority is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to

that of the lesser. Hamilton claims that while requiring a supermajority may look good on paper as a

way to defend citizen’s freedom paper “its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to

destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an

insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable

majority.” Hamilton also contends that this kind of requirement would also impose “tedious delays;

continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.” Hamilton

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concludes by warning that the government is then, “by the impracticability of obtaining the

concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction, a situation that must always

savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.” (Hamilton 1787)

In Federalist No. 37 Madison also expresses his concern about dangers of relying too heavily

on development of a political consensus as a means of fostering political stability. Like Hamilton

Madison argues that it is important to balance the needs for political stability with the need for an

energetic government that can act quickly and decisively when the need arise. Madison mirrors

Hamilton’s reasoning about the importance of energy writing that: “Energy in government is essential

to that security against external and internal danger, and to that prompt and salutary execution of the

laws which enter into the very definition of good government.” (Madison, 1788)

While Madison acknowledges that the interests of some minority factions will sometimes run

counter to the general public good, it appears that neither he nor Hamilton envision minority factions

becoming a problem in a representative democracy because they both believe these factions can be

defeated by the votes of political majorities or coalitions of other minority factions. Therefore, on the

basis of the concerns about minority factions clogging the administration of government expressed by

James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, I would argue that the Founding

Fathers never envisioned that a minority faction of Republicans in the US Senate would be able to use

rules designed to foster a political consensus to abuse the Senate’s Advise and Consent role with

respect to Presidential appointments. I would also argue that based on the views that they expressed

in their published letters, the founding fathers would not approve or be supportive of political party

“minority factions” using Congressional rules or legislative gimmicks to prevent a President elected

by a majority of American voters from making government agency and judicial appointments.

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By taking actions that impact the management of government agencies and the smooth

functioning of the federal court system, the Republican minority in the US Senate was acting in a way

that illustrates Hamilton’s concern about the consequences of requirements (in this case Senate rules)

for a supermajority. In Hamilton’s words, “its (a supermajority) real operation is to embarrass the

administration, to destroy the energy of the government (by preventing the President’s government

agency and judicial appointees from taking office) and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices

(currying favor with) of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, (a partisan conservative minority

faction) to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.” (Hamilton 1787)

Redistricting and the Problem of Majority Faction

Because of America’s large size and many divisions of interests, Madison and Hamilton

argued that one of the advantages of representative democracy for the United States was that it would

the new nation avoid the problems associated with majority factions. The Framers believed that in a

democracy, majority factions were more likely to abuse their governance power and prone ignore the

rights of minority factions. Madison argued America’s representative form of democracy would avoid

this problem because the constituencies of America’s elected representatives would be so diverse that

legislators could not simply represent the interest of a majority faction.

In Federalist No. 55 Madison said a democratically elected and proportionately representative

legislature was necessary otherwise “so small a number of representatives will be an unsafe

depositary of the public interests; secondly, that they will not possess a proper knowledge of the local

circumstances of their numerous constituents; thirdly, that they will be taken from that class of

citizens which will sympathize least with the feelings of the mass of the people.” (Madison 1788)

Madison also contended that the House of Representatives must be large enough to balance the need

to pass laws with the interests of numerous different constituents because the diversity of interests

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would dilute the power of legislators. Madison said the problem of majority faction would be avoided

because most legislators would be forced to compromise in order to accommodate their House

district’s numerous minority factions and a multiplicity of interests that would often be contradictory.

So regardless of the actual size of House districts, Madison and Hamilton believed the

lawmakers elected to represent those districts would be unlikely to serve the interests of majority

factions because so many of their constituents would belong to minority factions. In Federalist No. 10

Madison and Hamilton acknowledged that their only real concern about minority factions was that

they “may clog the administration and may convulse the society.” (Madison 1787) The Founding

Fathers’ primary concern in dividing governing authority between the states and federal government

and then dividing it again between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government was

designing ways to minimize the ill effects of majority factions. As such having House districts that

were proportional in terms of population as well as diverse was the Framers primary means of

avoiding the negative effects of majority factions in the federal government’s legislature.

But many House of Representatives districts do not appear to have been designed with the

diversity that the Founding Fathers envisioned. Based on the 2010 census, the current demography of

the United States is 63.7% white, 16.4% Hispanic, 12.2% African-American, 4.7% Asian, 1% Native

American and 2% mixed race. However, the average Democratic House district is 57% white, 22.5%

Hispanic, 16% African American and 4.5% Asian, Native and mixed race Americans while the

average Republican district is 75% white, 11.1% Hispanic, 8.5% African American and 5.4% Asian,

Native and mixed race Americans. (US Census 2010, 2011) The low percentage of ethnic minorities

in Republican House districts also serves to accentuate the power and influence of the predominately

white Republican Tea Party faction because the members of this minority faction are much more

conservative and politically active than members of ethnic minority groups and other Republicans.

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The Tea Party faction is a minority faction in the Republican Party that thanks to the political

activism of its member’s, functions as a majority faction by gaining control of the Republican Party

in some states as well as House districts that have been drawn to favor Republican constituencies by

diluting or concentrating the number of minority voters in those districts. According to a recent study,

“Tea Party supporters made up only 45 percent of all Republican respondents but they made up 63

percent of Republicans who reported contacting an elected official to express an opinion, 65 percent

of Republicans who reported giving money to a party or candidate, and 73 percent of Republicans

who reported attending a political rally or meeting. Tea Party supporters were also overwhelmingly

white, disproportionately male, somewhat older and much more conservative than the overall public

and other Republicans on a wide range of social and economic issues. Furthermore, Tea Party

members also displayed high levels of racial resentment and held very negative opinions about

President Obama compared with the rest of the public and other Republicans.” (Abramowitz, 2010)

While the Republican Party’s Tea Party faction represents a majority faction at the legislative

and executive levels of state government in some southern and western states, as a minority faction in

Congress its members have not succeeded in exercising the power of a majority faction even though

the Republicans Party controls the House of Representatives. Members of the Tea Party faction

eschew political compromises and the record low number of laws enacted by the current 113th

Congress is a reflection of how Tea Party conservatives in Congress have garnered support from less

doctrinaire Republicans by using the threat of Republican Party primary challenges to their bids for

re-election in order to exercise control over the Republican legislative agenda in the House.

Most members of the Republican Party as well as the Tea Party faction represent districts that

have been designed to ensure that majority faction Republicans will win these districts in national

elections. Their districts lack of ethnic and economic diversity means that legislators who want to win

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re-election must reflect the views of their majority faction constituencies. While many voters express

the desire for less partisan and more cooperative behavior by Congressional representatives it appears

that the only Republican or Democratic members of Congress who advocate publicly for political

compromise are the ones who are not running for re-election. The fact that legislators running for re-

election are afraid of angering their constituents is not surprising since several studies have found

“members do, indeed, pay attention to what their constituencies want when they are subject to re-

election but give less attention to such desires when they are not.”(Rothernberg and Sanders, 2000)

A 2012 post-election analysis conducted by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report showed

that Democrats actually garnered more than 1.4 million more votes for seats in the House of

Representatives than Republicans. According to Cook’s analysis, House Democrats won 50.59

percent of the votes cast for the House of Representative but won only 201 or 46.21 percent, of the

seats while Republicans won 234 or 53.79 percent of seats with just 47.6 percent of the votes cast.

The report’s editor, David Wasserman, claims that Cook’s analysis showed that the disparity

between the number of votes won and the number of House seats won was due to two factors; the

large number of Democratic voters concentrated in urban areas and partisan redistricting by

Republican controlled legislatures. Wasserman acknowledges that using the popular vote for the

House of Representatives as a proxy for voter preferences about which party should control Congress

is problematic because of the influence other factors like the power of incumbency have. But

regardless of the effect incumbency has on maintaining the incumbent party’s control of the House,

Wasserman contends that between now and 2021 when House districts will next be redrawn,

Democrats must win at least 55 percent of the national popular if they want to win a majority of seats

in the House of Representatives.(Cook, 2012) By way of comparison, in the 2012 Senate races (state

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wide contests that are not affected by redistricting), Democrats received 53.7 percent of the popular

vote and now control 53 seats while Republicans got 42.1 percent of the vote and control of 45 seats.

Madison addressed concerns about the House of Representative’s power by discussing how

the combination of running for election every two years and the state legislature’s appointment of

Senators would act as a check on the power of Congress. However, one of Madison’s checks was

removed when the 17th

amendment changed the Senate from an appointed to an elected legislative

body. In and of itself, changing the Senate to a chamber composed of democratically elected rather

than legislatively appointed representatives does not appear to have had an effect on Congressional

legislation. A study of critical elections held 20 years before and after passage of the 17th

amendment

showed that it was changes of political control of House districts that lead to major legislative policy

changes. This study found that it was “districts that switched from Democratic to Republican during

the 1892-96 period and from Republican to Democratic during the 1926-32 period that built the 'new'

congressional parties which supported the respective clusters of policy changes.” (Brady, 1978)

While the aforementioned changes of political party control were shown to lead to major

legislative policy changes, other studies have shown that divided government inhibits the passage of

important legislation. A number of studies have shown that “much more seriously considered,

important legislation fails to pass under divided government than under unified government and the

odds of such legislation failing to pass are considerably greater under divided government.” (Edwards

Barrett and Peake, 1997) But while the Founding Fathers were supportive of the idea of a divided US

government, would they have been supportive of a divided government that was due at least in part to

the partisan gerrymandering of Congressional House districts by state legislature political parties?

In 1964 the US Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Reynolds v. Sims, that forced state

legislatures to stop designing House districts with unequal populations because this gave an unfair

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advantage to rural districts. The Republican Party subsequently tried to pass a Constitutional

amendment that would allow state legislatures to continue to design districts with unequal

populations. While Republicans failed to pass this amendment they were victorious in a more recent

2004 US Supreme Court decision that dealt with legislative gerrymandering. By a vote of 5-4 the

Supreme Court upheld a District Court ruling in Vieth v. Jubelirer that the issue of partisan political

gerrymandering was not unconstitutional. There was no majority opinion, but in his minority opinion

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that, “Today’s plurality opinion would exempt governing officials

from that duty in the context of legislative redistricting and would give license, for the first time, to

partisan gerrymanders that are devoid of any rational justification.” (US Supreme Court, 2004)

The subsequent partisan political actions of Republican and Democratic controlled state

legislatures in redrawing house districts that suppress the diversity of Congressional districts appear

to be at odds with the Founding Fathers views about the need for diversity in House districts in order

to minimize the effects of majority factions. As such, redrawing House districts like North Carolina’s

4th

Congressional district shown in Map 1 from 2010’s pink district into 2012’s green district appears

to run counter to the Founding Fathers representative government ideals because it reduced the

district’s diversity by packing minority voters into a new district that stretched across eight counties.

Map 1

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In assessing the legislative performance of the 113th

Congress, One of the co-authors of the

Brookings Institution’s Vital Statistics on Congress Thomas Mann concluded that “The most striking

feature of the contemporary Congress is extreme partisan polarization, which has reached a level not

seen in well over a century,” (Ornstein, Mann, Malbin and Rugg, 2013) Among other factors that

appear to be related to this increase in partisanship, the authors of this report noted that there has been

a noticeable decline in ticket splitting where voters vote for a candidate from one party for President

but from the opposing party for Congress. Based on their report; Chart 4 shows that the number of

voters splitting their tickets between their vote for President and their vote for the opposing party’s

nominee for Congress in the 2012 Presidential and Congressional elections declined to the lowest

level in more than a century in the wake of the most recent round of Congressional redistricting.

Chart 4

Year 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Split % 44% 33% 23% 25% 20% 15% 19% 6%

It stands to reason that members of Congress will consider how their constituents vote in the

Presidential election when the time comes for them to decide whether or not to support or oppose the

President’s legislative agenda. But drawing less diverse districts that ensure one party’s control over

that district reduces the likelihood that voters will split their ticket and thus give their representatives

a reason to consider crossing party lines when they are voting on important legislation. Thus the low

percentage of split tickets in the 2012 election can be viewed both as an effect caused by partisan

redistricting and as a cause of the more partisan voting patterns that have resulted in Congress

enacting fewer laws. Since the vast majority of Congressional Republicans and Democrats run for

reelection in districts where their political party’s supporters control the ballot box it is not surprising

they have no interest in compromising with their political opponents. In fact doing so may encourage

internal political party primary challenges that may ultimately deny them re-election to the House.

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The Size of US Congressional Districts and the Ideals of Representative Democracy

However, partisan redistricting is also not entirely to blame for the fact that Democrats

garnered over 1.4 million more votes than their Republican counterparts but still only won 46% of the

seats in the House of Representatives. While a number of researchers have found that partisan

“gerrymandering has increased the Republican seat share in the House”, they also found that other

non-partisan methods of redistricting would still not eliminate the partisan Republican bias built into

many House districts. (McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, 2009)

But another factor cited by the Cook report as well as other political researchers that explains

why the proportion of House seats won by Democrats does not match their proportion of votes is the

concentration of Democratic voters in urban areas. Because Balinsky and Young have already proven

that it is mathematically impossible to have method of apportionment involving 3 or more states that

will be fair to all states (Balinsky and Young, 1982), developing a method of apportionment that does

not unduly disadvantage voters in urban areas would represent a significant challenge. Some

researchers have suggested that reducing the size of Congressional districts and increasing the

number of representatives would be one way to give urban areas a more proportionate share of House

seats and this change would also be in keeping with the Founding Father’s ideals about the number of

constituents House districts should contain.

The Framers of the Constitution originally proposed House of Representative districts made

up of 40,000 constituent but subsequently reduced that to 30,000 after George Washington voiced

concerns that the districts were too large to allow for adequate representation. (Golderg 2001) But in

Federalist 55, Madison responded to critics of the small number of members in a democracy with a

representative government by arguing that “the number of representatives will be augmented from

time to time in the manner provided by the Constitution.” Madison also answered critics of the

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relatively small size of 1789’s 65 member House of Representatives by explaining how the total

number of members would increase in line with the population arguing “that the first census will, at

the rate of one for every thirty thousand, raise the number of representatives to at least one hundred”.

(Madison 1788) Indeed following the first census in 1790 the number of representatives in the US

Congress increased from 65 in 1789 to 105 in 1793, 142 in 1803, and 182 by 1813 based on

Congressional districts with approximately 30,000 to 37,000 constituents.

While Madison believed the legislature should expand with the population and the addition of

states, he was also not in favor of an open ended expansion writing that “Sixty or seventy men may

be more properly trusted with a given degree of power than six or seven. But it does not follow that

six or seven hundred would be proportionally a better depositary.” (Madison 1788) Although the

number of constituents per district rose from 42,000 in 1823 to 210,000 in 1923, Congress also

continued to expand by roughly 20-30 members every decade until 1929 when the Republican

majority that controlled the White House and Congress passed a law that capped the number of

House members at its present total of 435. However in the past 80 years the average size of House

districts has increased from 210,000 to just over 710,000 constituents and the United States has

become one of the world’s least representative democracies. Canada and the United Kingdom have

House of Common districts with an average of 100,000 constituents, while districts in Germany’s

Bundestag have approximately 125,000 constituents and Japan’s Shugi-in has districts with about

250,000 constituents in each.

While it would not be practical to reduce the size of US House districts to the size of those in

other democracies, if House districts were apportioned based on the population of the smallest district

(currently Wyoming with a total population of 570,000) then the size of the House could be expanded

to a manageable 569 members. In the process, urban areas would see an increase in the proportion of

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their seats and the House of Representatives would become a much more representative legislature.

Regardless, given Madison and Washington’s concerns about adequate representation it is doubtful

that our Founding Fathers would have supported a law to cap the number of representatives at 435.

Conclusions

As regards the issue of Senate filibuster rules, based on my review of the published works of

Founding Fathers like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who often opposed each other on

Constitutional issues, it would appear that neither one of them ever envisioned or would have ever

been supportive of a political party minority faction that attempted to “clog the administration” of the

federal government and the federal legal system by routinely preventing the President’s government

agency and judicial appointees from taking office on the scale that was seen from 2009 through 2013.

As such, Senate Republicans use of cloture rules to block federal appointments appears to circumvent

the Founding Fathers ideals about the role the Senate should play in the federal government.

As regards the issue of House redistricting by political parties that control state legislatures in

34 of the 50 states, based on my review of the published views of Founding Fathers like George

Washington and James Madison, it would appear that the redrawing of House districts in ways that

reduce their ethnic and economic diversity also circumvents the Founding Fathers ideals about the

diversity of minority factions in House districts helping lawmakers avoid becoming captive servants

of majority factions.

Furthermore, while the Framers of the Constitution knew that House districts would

eventually have to grow much larger than their initial size, it does not appear that they ever

envisioned capping the number of House districts or having House districts vary in size from as small

as 570,000 (Wyoming) to as large as one million (Montana). As such I would argue that capping the

House of Representatives at 435 seats circumvents the Founding Fathers’ ideals about proportionate

20

representation in the House of Representatives balancing the needs of more populous states with the

needs of less populous states that are addressed by equal representation in the US Senate. Therefore, I

contend that the Founding Fathers would probably favor both an increase in the number of House

districts and redistricting methods that would increase the districts’ ethnic and economic diversity.

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