Thirty-Thousand.org

I am of the opinion that a challenger to the Constitutional legitimacy of the current House of Representatives is the proper method to resolve the problem we face. A strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution in view of the rulings produced in the 1960's would insist that the current Congress expand the membership of the House to more than 1000 members. That is so because the Supremes have ruled that districts MUST be equally populous in order to provide a proper "republican form of government" in which any one man's vote counts just as much as much as another's. That is not possible while observing state boundaries unless there would be a DIRECT democracy. The Constitution sets forth the limitation of state boundaries and no more than one representative for every 30 thousand people. But that those are the _ONLY_ constraint that stands in the way of achieving "one man one vote". The Congress is constitutionally bound by the Supreme court rulings of the 60's to abide by "one man one vote" to the extent that it is Constitutionally possible to do so. That seems very clear to me and why hasn't a resident of Montana not sued? Why hasn't the ACLU found a wino in Missoula, Montana to use for this purpose?

TheTrucker wrote:But that those are the _ONLY_ constraint that stands in the way of achieving "one man one vote".

Currently the disparity in congressional district sizes nationwide ranges from 20% to 85%. Of course, they are supposed to be equally-sized (as required by one man one vote). That requirement is disregarded in order to maintain massive congressional fiefdoms.

If we increased the number of districts to 6,000, the maximum disparity would be reduced to less than 5%. However, based on everything I know about the ACLU, they would never take up this cause. If anyone wants to try to persuade them, then maybe I can be proven wrong.

JEQuidam wrote:Currently the disparity in congressional district sizes nationwide ranges from 20% to 85%. Of course, they are supposed to be equally-sized (as required by one man one vote). That requirement is disregarded in order to maintain massive congressional fiefdoms.

I need to know how you get this 85%. I thought that the max was Wyoming and Montana. Montana has almost twice the population of Wyoming and thus the person in Wyoming has 45% more legislative power than the person in Montana. Where's the 85%????

TheTrucker wrote: I need to know how you get this 85%. I thought that the max was Wyoming and Montana.

All this is relative to the "apportionment population" as determined by the 2000 Census and the current apportionment. The population of Montana's single congressional district is 905,316. Wyoming's single district is 495,304. So Montana's congressional district is 83% larger than Wyoming. Another way of looking at it: a Montanan has representation equal to 1/905,316, while a Wyomingite has 1/495,304. If you do the math on those two fractions, the Wyomingite has 83% more representation (in the national legislature) than does the Wyomingite.

And it's not just those two states of course. No two states have districts that are the same size (interstate). I'll be publishing detailed reports (along with lots of pretty charts) about this at this link:
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/QHA-05.htm