On November 13, Donald Trump was interviewed on “60 Minutes”. See this story. Interviewer Lesley Stahl asked him about how presidents should be elected. As he had said in the past, he still supports the idea of using the national popular vote. He said, “I’m not going to change my mind just because I won.”
Then he said, “I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, if you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes, you win.” Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
Is he then going to push his GOP colleagues in the state legislatures to pass the necessary state laws to bring the compact into effect?
Of the 10 states that have ratified NPV, all of them voted for Clinton. Not a single Republican leaning state has ever passed it. Several swing states have considered, but none have passed it.
I think Trump made a safe statement he won’t ever have to see come true.
Well, saying he’s for electing Presidents by a national popular vote isn’t *exactly* the same thing as saying he’s for using the NPV compact. He might support actually amending the Constitution. Or he could even approve of applying the Mal-Apportionment Penalty in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, and the caselaw on dilution of votes being a form of denial of the right to vote, to require apportioning electoral votes on a proportional basis.
Trump’s statement, taken literary, advocates making the winner out of who gets a plurality of votes cast. He was making similar statements during the Republican primaries. The statement doesn’t indicate much understanding of the difference between a plurality and a majority.
Since he said he believes that the candidate with the most votes should win. Then in this country whether it’s a plurality or majority it doesn’t matter.
I will repeat myself ad infinitum. I contend that the problem is not the Electoral College but rather the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. This should be considered along with other ideas such as Ranked Choice or Instant Runoff voting; repeal of the 17th amendment, etc. Repeal of this Act and increasing greatly (bigly ;-)) the size of the House will help alleviate the Popular Vote Electoral College mismatch. At the same time greatly increasing the number of Representatives makes it easier and less expensive to run for the House, mitigates the effects of gerrymandering, dilutes power and more.
Because of the US Supreme Court decision of July 31, 2015, Arizona State Legislature v Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, 13-1314, the supporters of the national popular vote plan are free to get initiatives on the ballot and if they pass, states can join the compact that way. So there is now a way around state legislatures, to advance the National Popular Vote Plan.
The National Popular Vote Plan would be an agreement between states (who have the Constitutional power to select the electors). It would in no way be binding or enforceable. Despite its adherence to the plan a state would still have the power to select or apportion its electors in any way it so chose. A state could withdraw (or join or rejoin or re-withdraw)from the plan as its legislature desired.
I agree with Stuart. I think the size of the US House needs to be increased. This will help with problems in the Electoral College, and will help get members of Congress closer to their constituents.
Here’s a hypothetical question — Assume Congress were 30 seats larger. Does anyone know which states would get those additional representatives? I’d be interested in seeing what impact that would have had on the final electoral vote.
If it wasn’t for the Electoral College, in 2000 we would have had to recount every vote in every county,in every state, instead of in just four counties in Florida.
It would only take a dozen or so states passing referenda to trigger the NPVIC. Given the historical polling– the Electoral College rarely does better than 2:1 opposed– it could quite easily be passed in enough states. I think the only place it maybe doesn’t pass, is the reddest of red states, somewhere like Mississippi.
But that would require somebody— the Democratic Party or somebody affiliated with it– to plunk one or two hundred million dollars into petitions and advertising. It would be doable by 2020, but they’d have to start immediately.
@Stuart Simms: Are you talking about going back to the original First Amendment — the only one of the twelve in the Bill of Rights passed by Congress which is not yet adopted?
@Michael: . . . based on each state’s different rules for who could and couldn’t vote, etc. — and presuming that we could have done so under each state’s different rules for recounting.
Trump could use this as a path to getting term limits by proposing two amendments together as tit-for-tat.
Sorry – NPV is an interState compact requiring the approval of the gerrymander Congress.
Sorry – NPV blatantly violates 14th Amdt,Sec. 1 — voters OUTSIDE of a State determining results INSIDE a State.
Const Amdt REMEDY — which the MORON reporters did NOT ask/tell the MORON Trump —
1. ABOLISH the Electoral College.
2. Uniform definition of Elector-Voter in ALL of the USA
3. P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — latter for ALL elected executive officers and ALL judges — including the SCOTUS folks.
i.e. get the Prez and Senate HACKS out of the business of picking SCOTUS folks.
All of this is difficult ONLY for MORONS stuck in 1787 — a late DARK AGE year.
*Modern* times did not start until 1815 — defeat of the tyrant Napoleon at Waterloo.
Imagine if our Supreme Court had retention elections. Y’all gon make me lose my mind!
No national recount would have been needed in 2000 if we had had a national popular vote. The margin was 560,000 votes, one-half of 1%. Political science research has shown that recounts never change the outcome unless the margin was one-tenth of 1% or less.
I seem to recall there were stories of incomplete counts in other states besides Florida in 2000. How much of that might have been due to legitimate problems or to top-down “majority fraud” is kind of hard to tell by this point. Then, too, we might have to consider how different campaigning would have gone if there had not been an Electoral College in 2000 — see, e.g.,
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com//2011/09/20/would-al-gore-have-won-in-2000-without-the-electoral-college/
TomP,
The calculation is more involved than people initially think when Congressional Seats are reapportioned. A formula is used that prioritizes smaller population states for adding a seat over the larger population states. A simple way to get an idea what adding 30 seats to the House would be is to take the 2010 population and divide by 465 to get an average constituency per seat. Rough calculations lead me to 665,000/seat. CA would go from 55 EV to 58; TX from 38 to 39 or 40; FL from 29 to 30; NY from 29 to 31.
I advocate increasing the House to at least 1000 members. Apportionment would be easy to calculate with 1000 members as you would simply take the percentage of population of each state multiply by 10 then add 0.5% and truncate to the whole number. This last step helps smaller states in general collectively more than larger population states, keeping with current philosophy. EC would grow to 1100 and I submit, result in an EV count more in line with the popular vote.
1,000 may be too many. I would advocate for 500, as long as DC and each territory gets one. Only states should get senators, but each territory should be allowed a representative, as well as presidential voting if the National Popular Vote passes.
John Anthony,
Yes something like the original first amendment would be quite doable. It’s already out there and the original second amendment passed 24 years ago so there is precedent for passing an amendment long since passed to the states.
“After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.”
I’m not sure if I did my calculation correctly but I come up with 309,000,000 from 2010 census 1626 representatives with constituencies of ~190,000 per seat.
When the Bill of Rights was being debated in Congress, the proposal that passed allowed for the House to eventually have one member for every 50,000 citizens or more . . . which would put us into the thousands.
As for having the EV count be more in line with the popular vote, I again direct everyone’s attention to the Mal-Apportionment Penalty based on language already explicitly in the Constitution (Amendment XIV, Section 2) and on recognition that denying by diluting the right to an effective vote for non-plurality voters for President implies that all states should allocate their EVs proportionally.
Hey guys, just saying. A lawyer was asked this question you can hear and see it here. http://www.faithwire.com/2016/11/14/why-did-americas-founding-fathers-create-the-electoral-college-expert-responds-to-critics/
Stuart Simms,
Is not factual that the apportionment formula favors small states. Take the population of say the 10 smallest states, and compare their total number of representatives divided by 435, to their total population divided by the USA population (excluding DC).
Also, the Congress screwed up the 1st Amendment. As written, it would sets a cap on the number of representatives (the Constitution allows up to about 11,000 representative; the 1st Amendment would cut this back to 6600). The 1st Amendment would set a floor of 200, but we are already past that.
Sorry “LAW”… that post is a complete load of bullshit. They created the electoral college because they thought the people to incompetent to elect a president… and also a senate. They wanted the Senate and the Presidential Electors to be appointed because they wanted those individuals to be the elite intellectuals of the day. They thought that this individuals would have a higher intellect than the general populace, and as such place a check on the incompetence of the commoners.
All the founders were ridiculously elitist. It in no way whatsoever had anything to do with “protecting the minority” as the historically ignorant modern-day Republicans love to say. In fact all you have to do is read the federalist papers, the anti-federalist papers, and the correspondences between the founders to see this blatantly put forth.
The founders were elitists, get used to it… George Washington had the positioning of the capital district moved closer to his personally-owned property for the sake of raising his property’s value, for example. Our politicians have NEVER been “statesmen” they’ve ALWAYS been self-absorbed elitist douche bags. Now those are the actual facts.
Jim Riley… were is there a cap on the amount of Representatives in the constitution? Other than a “cap” that grows with the populace (which isn’t really a cap), I see nothing.
The actual 1st amendment, that wasn’t ratified, would have placed a cap on the amount of people a representative could represent; thus requiring all representatives to represent no less than 30,000 and no more than 60,000, thus if the populace grow to the point were there would be a representative with more than 90,000 constituents(89,999 would have been over 60,000 but still under the required 30,000 for another representative), another representative would have been REQUIRED to be added to the total in the House. The House, if they wanted to, by law could have lowered the requirement to say no rep could represent more or less than 30,000. But the amendment would OBLIGATE them to add another representative at a soft threshold of 60,000 additional citizens and a hard threshold of 90,000 additional citizens.
So right now we’d be REQUIRED to have a MINIMUM of 6,600 representatives, if the amendment passed, but if congress desired, that number could be taken UP TO roughly 11,000 (or any number in between).
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment if ratified today would have exactly zero effect. The relevant portion would be “until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.”
Right now there are
1) not less than two hundred Representatives
2) nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons
Jim Riley
Using 2010 census figures, I took the 12 states with 1 or 2 reps, totaled them and divided by the 17 reps in these 12 states for an average of almost exactly 700,000 per rep, slightly lower than the overall mean. If you throw in the three states with three reps the average per rep falls to 678,390 per rep, significantly below the mean.
The Huntington Hill method of Priority Values is used to determine which state gets the next representative after 50 (every state must get 1). This method, by default, gives an advantage to adding a representative to a smaller state over adding the next representative to a larger state because the denominator increases every time a seat is added to a state. This does not mean that a smaller state WILL get a representative before a larger state.
The 2010 census gave us an average population per house seat of ~708,500, 16 of the 20 lowest population per rep are in states with 4 or fewer reps. At the other end of the spectrum only 7 of the 20 highest population per rep states have 4 or fewer reps. There are 23 states within 20,000 either way of 708,500 totaling 317 reps. In general the greater the population of the state the closer to the mean and a small population state is more likely to be over represented as opposed to under represented.
Andy Craig
With respect, I think the intent of the “nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons” is a cap on the size of a Congressional District. Clearly we are way past 50,000/rep. The original 1st Amendment attempted to set a method for growing the House with a trigger (every time the House reaches a multiple of 100), a regulation for increasing the size of districts of each Rep which also recognized that the population was growing and a floor for the number of reps.
In my initial response to John Anthony’s question I stated “Yes, something like the original 1st Amendment…” I should have been more precise as I would advocate extrapolating the methodology used in the original 1st. The method is a simple arithmetic formula of 100(300 + X) where X is the trigger level attained. Using 2010 census figures the trigger/size cap that fit were 1600 and 190,000. 1626 reps at 1/190k.
It is the various elitists — i.e KILLER monarchs and oligarchs — who have done nonstop evil and terror against the masses since history got recorded — and obviously during pre-recorded history.
i.e. nonstop domestic oppressions and international WARs.
It was the elitists in the southern States who maintained slavery (i.e. daily terror and often death) until it was blown away by the Union Army and Navy in 1861-1865 — about 750,000 DEAD on both sides — the REAL cost to get the 13th – 14th – 15th Amdts.
How many folks in a legislative body before there is a MOB scene ???
I.E. IMHO — the USA House of Reps became a mob scene by 1873 — major increase in Reps due to the ex-southern States getting a higher percentage of the total Reps due to end of the 3/5 evil math in Art. I, Sec. 2.
i.e. the current 435 (since 1913 after the 1910 Census) is a nonstop Mob Scene — with nonstop cutoffs of debates on any stuff deemed important by the top robot party hack oligarchs.
Long/Short Term — DIVIDE the USA — the communist east/west coasts and the fascist middle — see which areas can economically survive — see the economic death of the ex-USSR in 1917-1991.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
@AMcCarrick . . . actually, in his book _Negro President_ noted historian Garry Wills makes a convincing argument that Washington (and Jefferson) helped move the Capitol to DC — and even farther south than the original target — to protect the slaveholding interest. In Philadelphia, any slave who remained there for six months was automatically free — which slaveowners considered a real inconvenience.
I could see Republicans supporting NPV if we ever see a reverse of 2000 and 2016, with the Republican winning the popular vote and losing the electoral instead of the other way around. Remember, John Kerry came within about 150,000 votes in Ohio of winning in 2004 in spite of losing the popular vote by over three million. If Kerry had managed to pull out a narrow win in Ohio and take the election that year, I think that would have given NPV the bi-partisan support it needed. Democrats would still have been bitter about Gore in 2000, and then Republicans would have felt Bush should have won that year. It could still happen in 2020 or beyond, and at that point, I think Republican states would join as well. I don’t see swing states joining because it would dilute their influence, but solid Republican states might join if we see an outcome that adversely affects them.
It will most likely take armies of young folks going to Devil City and blocking streets for months/years before there is ANY REAL *CHANGE* to get Democracy into the DEAD USA Const.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
—-
How many times has the New Age DOOFUSS Prez-elect already changed his so-called mind since Election night —
showing him to be one more HACK idiot with NO principles ???
Just for perspective when the UK had the recent In/Out referendum there was no provision made for a national recount.
There was however provision for one in each local authority counting area but the decision to hold a recount would depend on how close the local result was and once declared could not be revisited.
Something similar could be implemented in the US. Where a recount could be held in State A because the result was with X % but not in State Y.
There would however have to be identical electoral rules in each state and that ALL voted needed to be counted including provisional and absentee. I understand in some states that they are not counted of the results of the votes in hand can’t be affected.
Stuart Simms,
The smallest 12 states would be entitled to 16.83 representatives. But this is not because of Huntington Hill, but rather the Constitutional requirement that each State have one representative. If you remove the three states with fewer than 1/435 of the population, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming, then remaining 9 small states would be entitled to 14.19 representative, or more than they actually received.
Your inclusion of West Virginia, Nebraska, and New Mexico has a distributional bias, in that all three states have a raw entitlement of less than 3 representatives. In general, if you take the average entitlement of states with a raw entitlement: N-1/2 < raw 5% (5 of 9 are small states)
(population/representative)/quota – 1 < -5% (7 of 9 are small states).
If we look at states that receive 0.25 or more extra representation (3 of 10 are small states)
If we look at states that receive 0.25 or less extra representation (3 of 12 are small states)
While Huntington Hill may have a tiny small state bias, it is quite minimal. If Webster's method were used, one representative would be transferred from Rhode Island to North Carolina, a net gain of 1 electoral vote for Trump. If the harmonic mean was used for the divisors, a representative would be switched from California to Montana, again a net gain of one for Trump.
If the House of Representatives were expanded from 435 to 1000, Clinton's share of the electoral college would increase from 43.31% to 43.48%, but this reflects the diminished effect of the senatorial component as the house component is increased (Clinton carried 41.11% of states).
But Clinton's share of the House component would decline from .4381 to .4371, but this may simply represent apportionment jitter.
ps You should use the apportionment populations, rather than the resident populations.
How much attention from Trump and Clinton in the about 40 States/DC OUTSIDE of the about 10 so-called marginal *battleground States* ??? About ZERO.
i.e. ZERO Trump in CA, MA, HI, DC etc.
i.e. ZERO Clinton in TX, WY, etc.
Stuart Simms,
You wrote:
“I think the intent of the ‘nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons’ is a cap on the size of a Congressional District.”
The bolded part is where you are going off track. You want the House of Representative to increase in size, and you believe that the 1st Congress wanted to be sure that the House would expand. But what they actually proposed was something different. They appear to have wanted to extrapolate as you suggested, but could not come up with the words. It would also be out of their conception that there would ever be 300,000,000+ persons in the United States.
James Madison, when he introduced his proposed amendments, would have required one representative per 30,000 until the number reached _____. This would make 30,000 per representative a floor, rather than the cap as it is under the Constitution. After the number was reached, it would be regulated to be between _____ and _____. It was fairly common at one time to leave blanks which would be filled in later. Madison would also require each State to have at least two representatives.
A House select committee reported, that their would be one representative per 30,000 until the number reached 100, after which it would be kept between 100 and 175. The minimum was kept at one.
The House of representative passed this version:
One per 30,000 until 100 representatives;
At least 100 AND at least one per 40,000 until 200 was reached;
At least 200 AND at least one per 50,000.
3M: 100
8M: 200
10M: 200+
20M: 400+
50M: 1000+
100M: 2000+
200M: 4000+
300M: 6000+
The Senate version was
One per 30,000 until 100 representatives;
One per each additional 40,000 until 200 representative;
One per each additional 60,000.
3M: 100
7M: 200
10M: 250
20M: 417
50M: 917
100M: 1750
200M: 3417
300M: 5083
As proposed to the States:
One per 30,000 until 100 representatives;
At least 100 AND at least one per 40,000 until 200 was reached;
At least 200 AND no more than one per 50,000.
3M: 100
8M: 100-200
10M: 200
20M: 200-400
50M: 200-1000
100M: 200-2000
200M: 200-4000
300M: 200-6000
“Nor less than one representative for every forty thousand persons”
Can not have the same meaning as:
“Nor more than one representative for every fifty thousand persons”
Unless “less” and “more” are interpreted as having identical meanings.
@Jim Riley:
First, on the variations in the last “threshold number” — to the best of my knowledge, that was agreed to at 50,000 before the change from “less” to “more”, which was the last change made. See, e.g.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment#Legislative_and_ratification_history
This source also suggests the basis for the idea of Stuart Simms and others that the original intent of the proposed amendment was to limit the size of the constituency a US Representative would have to represent.
Now, as to the “less is more” question . . .
it’s not necessary to have the words match in meaning if what they refer to is different. If you’ll pardon me for using capitals and asterisks to emphasize what I mean, let’s consider the two phrasings
“nor *LESS THAN ONE REPRESENTATIVE* for every 50,000 persons”
and
“nor *MORE THAN* one representative for every *50,000 PERSONS*”
The first can be re-stated as saying that 50,000 people shall have at least one representative. The second can be re-stated as saying that the number of people one representative is to represent shall be at most 50,000. In more mathematical terms, setting a minimum for the numerator of a fraction is equivalent to setting a maximum for the denominator.
Granted, switching the word is confusing given the fairly consistent (AFAIK) history of intent. But it’s at least a plausible explanation/interpretation. (Though it would rule out both our current arrangement and Mr. Simms’s intriguing extrapolation of the earlier stepwise formula.)
Of course, a lot of the more present-day-focused parts of the above discussion may now be moot:
http://ballot-access.org/2016/11/15/donald-trump-reverses-himself-on-how-u-s-should-elect-president/
(At least until and unless himself changes his mind again, or the powers-that-have-been in Washington decide what his real opinion is and whether they want to agree or disagree with him on it.)
Jim Riley
Re: 11/15 9:50pm post.
My contention is merely that Huntington Hill prioritizes adding the next seat available to smaller population over larger population states. One can cherry pick statistics that support our respective positions but in the end the intent of using Huntington Hill is as I stated. I’m certainly open to other methodologies as I’m not arguing the merits of Huntington Hill.
“…but this reflects the diminished effect of the senatorial component as the house component is increased…” Exactly my point, increasing the House component helps negate the Senate component of the Electoral College thereby making the EC vote closer to the Popular Vote. However, not much can overcome the effect of one candidate winning several states by a small margin while losing a few states by a large margin.
Those that argue for NPV seem to overlook the fact that campaigns would be run differently therefor changing the overall vote total.
@John Anthony La Pietra,
As originally proposed by Madison, the amendment would have set a hard cap once a certain number was reached. The House select committee reported a version which have increased at one per 30,000 until 100 were reached, and then keep it in the range 100 to 175.
The other versions would have ensured growth in the number (after all the current Constitution only requires 50 representatives), but was it really to keep the number of persons per representative below some number, or to ensure that the number should grow.
Why would 50,000 per representative be OK for the future, when 30,000 was the cap for the present? The only logical reason for the difference is that they might have thought the size of the House would become unwieldy. It is quite unlikely that they were arguing about whether 6000 or 10,000 would be the better number for the 21st Century.
The version passed by the House includes the phrases:
“nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons”
AND
“nor less than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons”
I think we agree that the first phrase would set a floor of Population/40000 when Population was between 4 million and 8 million; and that the second would set a floor of Population/50000 when Population was greater than 10 million.
It would not set a cap. If there were one representative for every 10 persons, there would be about about 30,000,000 representative which is not less than 200; and there would be 5,000 representatives per 50,000 which is not less than one per 50,000.
Now let’s look at the final version sent to the States:
“nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons”
AND
“nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons”
You appear to be claiming that these have identical meaning, even though you apparently agreed that they had the same meaning when they both read “less”.
No look at the practical effect if the meaning is reversed. The House that approved the Bill of Rights had 59 representatives. The proposed 1st article provided for a tripling of the size of the House by the time the population reached 10 million, which would allay concerns about the House not expanding.
But then they might have had second thoughts. Do we really want 400 members at 20 million; and 1000 members at 50 million? New York City only had about 30,000 persons at the time.
Your reading is contrary to the text, and would have negative consequences that could have been foreseen in 1789.
@Jim Riley again:
It’s not necessarily my reading, and it’s certainly not contrary to the text. It’s an attempt to understand how the text, with that one word changed, could still be read (and could have been intended) to be consistent with the apparent primary intent of the Founders — as discussed in the “Background” section of the Wikipedia article.
I hope we can agree at least that the evidence suggests both Federalists and Non-Federalists were more worried about US Representative districts being too large than about their being too small. (It seems to me that too-large districts were a greater concern even than a too-large representative body, though I can understand how YMMV and I’d be open to evidence otherwise.) When I take that interest as the primary one, the question to me becomes why they made the change they did. You evidently find it most plausible that they would deliberately reverse direction at that point, and set a limit on how small a US Representative’s constituency could be. I have a hard time believing that, especially given the other proposals active in that time. I think it’s more likely they were trying to avoid having to spell out a stepwise formula ad infinitum, and wanted to set a limit on how high the limit on the population of a US Representative’s constituency could rise.
Both of us are speculating, of course. It’s a bit too late to ask the principals involved what they intended — or whether they anticipated the United States would eventually have ten or even 100 times as many people as it did at the time (all of them at least potential voters, once old enough) — or if they would change their preferences now that it *does* have roughly 100 times as many people (or would have expected us to change the formula ourselves). So I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the most likely explanation for the change in one word. And why not? After all, John Adams disagreed with one point in the Declaration of Independence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YizxVlKG8CQ
(It’s too late to ask this too — but there is some evidence that Adams may indeed have spoken to the printer about it, as the scene in the play and movie goes on to have him say, and had the word changed.)
@John Anthony La Pietra,
The current Constitution sets a minimum ratio of 30,000 per representative. And while we might suppose that they would be elected from single-member districts, in fact 30 of the 59 representative who were elected from 11 States prior to submission of the Bill of Rights were elected at large.
Can we really suppose that the 8 representatives elected at large from Pennsylvania envisioned a day when 300 to 400 representatives were elected at large from Pennsylvania?
Both the Virginia and New York constitution ratifying conventions had proposed amendments that would require the House to be based on a ratio of 30,000 per representative until their were 200 representatives after which the number would be regulated by Congress, so as to not diminish their number below 200.
While the Wikipedia article claims that George Washington proposed reducing 40,000 to 30,000; when he was President at the time of the first apportionment after the 1790 Census, he vetoed the first apportionment bill (the first legislation ever vetoed by a president). In so doing, he accepted the advice of Thomas Jefferson, his Secretary of State, that apportionment would violate the Constitution because some States would have more than one representative per 30,000. Delaware for example with a population of 55,000 was thus limited to one representative, when it was entitled to 1.8 representatives on a ratio of 30,000. Thomas Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention, but he corresponded with delegates, and would generally be considered a founder.
Congress was unwilling to challenge Washington directly, because of their general respect for him, they played around with different ratios so as to get a fairer apportionment. For example a ratio of 35,000 would not reduce Delaware’s one representative, but would knock off a representative or two off that of the larger States.
So the current version sets an upper limit, but has a lower limit of 50 (one per state). The concern was that the number would not increase, not that it would expand to close to the constitutional limit.
The version proposed by James Madison simply would have required expansion until a certain number was reached, and then would have fixed it between two values. It was ordinary at the time to propose legislation with blanks to be filled in during debate. A select committee reported Madison’s version with the limits set at 100 and 175. The number of representatives would expand from 100 on a ratio of 30,000; but then would be fixed at between 100 and 175.
When he introduced his proposed amendments, he noted the concern that Congress could reduce the House of Representative to 11 members but also, “and they may, as the population of the country increases, increase the House of Representatives to a very unwieldy degree”
So there was definitely a concern that the House might be decreased in size or limited in size. But the use of 30,000 appears to be more a mechanism to force an increase. You may wish to read the debate over the proposed amendments. Start here.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html
The Annals of Congress have a considerable amount of the debate – but they were compiled from newspaper accounts 50 years later. One part notes that a half dozen or so formulas had been advance, but that none were adopted after “desultory debate”. Some representatives favored no general increase in the size of the House, and that they thought that smaller districts would diminish the quality of representatives, that a greatly increased House would diminish its prestige relative to the Senate, and that there was not a need for localized representation since Congress would only be concerned with issues regarding the United States (plural), whereas a state legislature might legislate on matters of local interest.
There was a conference committee report, after which the House insisted on some changes in what we now call the 1st and 6th Amendments AND that the second “less” be changed to “more”. It was definitely a deliberate change. The Senate agreed with the change.
I suppose you know that the main reason the 1st two articles were not ratified was because Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Georgia did not ratify any of the proposed amendments until much later (IIRC, 1939 for the 150th Anniversary of their proposal). Only two of the ten states that ratified any, did not ratify the apportionment amendment (Pennsylvania and Delaware). Four of the ten did not ratify what has become the 27th Amendment.
So while 8 of 10 (80%) of the states that ratified most of the amendments, ratified the apportionment amendment, only 8 of 13 (61%) of potential ratifiers did.
Madison would have expanded the preamble to the Constitution “… that the people have indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their Government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution.”
Madison graduated from Princeton.
@Jim Riley:
I didn’t deny that there was some concern about potentially having an unwieldy number of members in the House — or that the change from “less” to “more” was deliberate and agreed to by both houses. I said the concern about the size of a House member’s constituency being too large seemed, from what evidence I’d seen, to be greater than that about having too many members — and proceeded on that basis to try to figure out why the word change would have been made. I will look through the sources at your link, and thank you for it.
My usual primary source for Bill of Rights debate information is _The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, & Origins_ by Neil H. Cogan:
http://www.powells.com/book/the-complete-bill-of-rights-9780199324200/62-0
Unfortunately, even the new edition from last year apparently doesn’t cover the Congressional Apportionment Amendment other than to say it hasn’t passed.