Small congressional districts will establish political equality nationwide.

The House of Representatives is in egregious violation of the Constitution’s “One Person One Vote” requirement.

The House of Representatives is in egregious violation of the Constitution’s “One Person One Vote” requirement.

Substantially increasing the number of congressional districts will ensure that all the congressional districts are equally sized nationwide.

Establish Citizen Equality Nationwide

As established by the Supreme Court, the principle of One Person, One Vote requires that the electoral districts of every legislature in the United States be equally sized with respect to their populations. The purpose of this is to maximize political equality among the citizens by making a person’s vote in one electoral district approximately equivalent to another person’s in a different district. Otherwise, voters living in larger districts would be politically disadvantaged compared to those living in smaller ones.

Strangely, though the one-person-one-vote equality principle is considered the constitutional “law of the land”, there is one legislature that completely ignores this requirement: The House of Representatives. As a result, the population sizes of congressional districts vary wildly from state to state, with the largest disparity being over 80%. Why is that important? Because those living in the larger districts are, in effect, partially disenfranchised compared to those living in smaller districts. And the larger the disparity between districts, the greater the relative disenfranchisement of those living in the larger districts. Nearly 150 million Americans are politically disadvantaged as a result of living in congressional districts that are larger than the national average!

By contravening the one-person-one-vote equality requirement, Congress is putting itself above the Constitution. As explained throughout this web pamphlet, Congress ignores this requirement in order to maintain the political oligarchy that largely serves America’s ruling class rather than representating its citizenry. There is a simple remedy for this egregious inequity: Substantially enlarging the House of Representatives will result in equally-sized congressional districts nationwide, thereby establishing citizen equality and restoring the People’s House.

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  • 1
    Another way to view this political calculus is that a citizen living in the 400,000-person district has a 0.00025% share of their Representative, while the share of those in the 200,000-person district is twice as large at 0.0005%.
  • 2
    Dixon, R.G. (1968) Democratic Representation: Reapportionment in Law and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • 3
    Wesberry v. Sanders.
  • 4
  • 5
    This expression first appeared in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Gray v. Sanders: “The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing – one person, one vote.”
  • 6
    To create districts with equal populations, boundaries are based on the most recent decennial population census. However, until the next decennial census, it is possible for these intrastate districts to subsequently become unequally sized due to population migrations.
  • 7
  • 8
    The national average district size is equal to the total population of the 50 states (331,108,434) divided by 435.
  • 9
    Delaware versus Montana, Rhode Island, and Wyoming. Also Idaho versus Montana and Rhode Island.
  • 10
    Though this fraction is usually misconstrued as to its significance, it was used to calculate the apportionment to the states – of both Representatives and taxes – with respect to the census of those who were not “free Persons”. Relative to the apportionment of Representatives, this calculation was eliminated in 1868 by the 14th Amendment. And the apportionment of taxes based on census was overridden in 1909 by the 16th Amendment.
  • 11
    The coefficient of correlation between the states’ population sizes and congressional district sizes is 0.12 (or nearly zero).
  • 12
    This is calculated by dividing Delaware’s average district size (990,837) by Montana’s (542,704). That 82.5% political advantage goes to the citizens of Montana.
  • 13
    Reduction in Representation: 1 ÷ 27 = 3.7%. Reduction in population: 89 ÷ 20,201,249 = 0.00044%
  • 14
    See Section 1 for the story of “Article the first”.
  • 15
    New York’s population increase of 823,147 (from 2010 to 2020) divided by 50,000 = 16.5.
  • 16
    Grant Hayden: “Grant Hayden: “The False Promise of One Person, One Vote” Michigan Law Review.” Michigan Law Review.
  • 17
    Read about Clemons v. Department of Commerce at Apportionment.us.