This is The Headline

Thomas Jefferson observed that “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Recent history demonstrates the threats posed to our liberties when our government, and in particular our elected representatives, no longer fear the people. In fact, most of them don’t even respect us.

As explained in this web pamphlet, increasing the number of federal representatives – by replacing 435 imperial-sized congressional districts with several thousand community-sized ones – will restore political power to the people by ending incumbent domination of reelections, diminishing lobbyists’ influence, overcoming political-party control of our government, maximizing individual liberty, and reducing the size of government.

This is not a new idea: Historical documents reveal that our nation’s founders intended that the number of Representatives in the U.S. House be increased every ten years to keep pace with the total population.  For example, Federalist 58 states that one of the “unequivocal objects” of the population census is “to augment the number of representatives … under the sole limitation that the whole number [of Representatives] shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants.”

Most significantly, the intended purpose of “Article the first” – the very first amendment proposed in the original Bill of Rights – was to limit the number of people represented by each Representative to 50,000.  This would ensure that the number of Representatives forever increases along with the population, thereby maintaining the viability of our representative democracy as the nation grew. Unfortunately, and as explained in this website, a defective version of this proposal, rather than the intended version, was submitted to the states. As a result, it was never ratified, and the solution intended by the founders subsequently disappeared into America’s memory hole.