Are the Senate and House of Representatives Equal

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Marriage, co-ordinate to their respective Numbers, which shall exist adamant past calculation to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians non taxed, iii fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be fabricated within 3 Years after the commencement Meeting of the Congress of the United states, and inside every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Fashion equally they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every xxx Thousand, only each Land shall have at Least ane Representative…"
— U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 2, clause iii

"Representatives shall exist apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each Land, excluding Indians not taxed. Simply when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a Land, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, beingness 20-one years of age, and citizens of the Us, or in whatsoever way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-ane years of age in such State."
— U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIV, section ii

The Constitution provides for proportional representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the seats in the House are apportioned based on state population according to the constitutionally mandated Census. Representation based on population in the House was 1 of the nearly important components of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Origins

The American Revolution was, in function, a competition virtually the very definition of representation. In England, the House of Commons represented every British subject regardless of whether the subject could actually vote for its membership. In this sense, almost people living in areas nether British rule—including North America—were only "nearly represented" in Parliament. American colonists, who were used to controlling their local affairs in the directly-elected colonial legislatures, lacked a voice in Parliament and resented the British policies imposed on them. Thus, they rallied backside the now familiar motto: "No taxation without representation!"

Later the war, the founders struggled to blueprint a system of government to better represent the inhabitants of the new country than did the British model which once governed them. The Articles of Confederation created the start national congress to represent the interests of the states: each state would appoint betwixt two and seven delegates to the congress, and each state delegation would have one vote.

Ramble Framing

/tiles/non-collection/i/i_origins_proport_repres_hres_127_14_th_nara.xml 14th Amendment, Center for Legislative Archives, National Athenaeum and Records Assistants The 14th Subpoena declared that all persons born or naturalized in the U.Due south. were citizens and that any state that denied or abridged the voting rights of males over the age of 21 would be discipline to proportional reductions in its representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Approved past the 39th Congress (1865–1867) every bit H.J. Res. 127; ratified by the states on July 9, 1868.

The Constitutional Convention addressed multiple concerns in the procedure of designing the new Congress. The get-go was the human relationship of the least populous states to the most populous. The battle betwixt large and pocket-size states colored most of the Convention and nearly ended hopes of creating a national authorities. Pennsylvania Consul Benjamin Franklin summed upwardly the disagreement: "If a proportional representation takes place, the small States contend that their liberties will exist in danger. If an equality of votes is to exist put in its identify, the large States say their coin will be in danger. When a broad tabular array is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit the artist takes a lilliputian from both, and makes a practiced articulation." The "practiced joint" that emerged from weeks of stalemate was chosen the "Dandy Compromise" and created a bicameral legislature with a House, where membership was adamant by state population, and a Senate, where each state had two seats regardless of population. The compromise enabled the Convention, teetering on the brink of dissolution, to continue.

The Convention determined that a Demography of the population conducted every x years would enable the House to conform the distribution of its Membership on a regular basis. The method, however, proved controversial. Southern delegates argued that their slaves counted in the population, yielding them more Representatives. Northern delegates countered that slaves were belongings and should non be counted at all. The outcome was the notorious "3-Fifths Compromise," where slaves were counted as three-fifths of a gratis person. Having originated in tax policy, this rule was defended during the Convention as a necessary compromise given the "peculiar" state of slaves as both property and "moral" individuals field of study to criminal law. Virginia'southward James Madison wrote in Federalist 54 that the reasoning appeared "to be a niggling strained in some points" simply "fully reconciles me to the calibration of representation, which the Convention have established."

Representation was likewise linked to tax. Earlier federal income taxes or tariffs, u.s. contributed to the national government with local taxes, oft apartment poll taxes on each citizen. Since constitutional framers had to provide for the funding of the new regime, they debated the proper relationship between representation and taxation. Several delegates argued that geographic size or useable farmland were better measures of state wealth than mere population. Delegates, however, settled on proportional contributions based on population and, by extension, the number of Members in the House of Representatives. Large states, with more than human being capital, should contribute more revenue to the national regime and as well have more seats in the legislature equally a consequence. This fulfilled the promise of the American Revolution: taxation with representation.

14th Subpoena

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified subsequently the Civil War, began to remedy the "original sin" of the Constitution, and ordered the Census to fully count every individual regardless of skin color. While it was a step in the right direction, it did petty to ease the country'southward racial tensions. Moreover, instead of directly providing for the enfranchisement of African Americans, the subpoena stipulated that only males over the age of 21 could non be discriminated against when voting unless they had participated in rebellion against the Marriage or "other offense." Women were not enfranchised until 1920, when the 19th Amendment stipulated that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of sex activity." In 1971, the 26th Subpoena enfranchised those 18 years of age and older. The latter amendments, nevertheless, did non modify congressional apportionment.

Current Practice

Congress has capped the number of Representatives at 435 since the Apportionment Human activity of 1911 except for a temporary increase to 437 during the access of Hawaii and Alaska as states in 1959. Every bit a result, over the last century, congressional districts take more than tripled in size—from an average of roughly 212,000 inhabitants afterward the 1910 Demography to about 710,000 inhabitants following the 2010 Census. Each land's congressional delegation changes as a event of population shifts, with states either gaining or losing seats based on population. While the number of House Members for each state is determined co-ordinate to a statistical formula in federal law, each state is and then responsible for designing the shape of its districts so long as it accords with various provisions of the Voting Rights Human action of 1965, which seeks to protect racial minorities' voting and representation rights.

For Further Reading

U.Southward. Census Bureau. U.S. Department of Commerce. "Almost Congressional Apportionment." http://www.census.gov/population/apportionment/about/.

Eagles, Charles W. Commonwealth Delayed: Congressional Reapportionment and Urban–Rural Conflict in the 1920s. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Printing, 2010.

Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. 4 vols. (New Haven and London: Yale Academy Printing, 1937).

Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay. The Federalist Papers. (New York: Penguin Books, 1987).

Reid, John Phillip. The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

Rossiter, Clinton. 1787: The Grand Convention. (New York: Macmillan, 1966)(.

Tate, Katherine. Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives in the U.Southward. Congress. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

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Source: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Proportional-Representation/

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