Welcome to the Apportionment.US website! We invite you to become familiar with our nation's representation and apportionment process...why it's unfair, unequal and unconstitutional...and what is being done to change it.
Our mission is three-fold:
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Achieve equal and appropriate representation in the U.S. House of Representatives for current and future generations,
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Educate American citizens about the Constitution in general, and House apportionment in particular, and
- Promote the benefits of smaller congressional districts resulting from an increase in House membership
Video - Introduction to Apportionment.US
This You Tube video is the first in a series of videos that describe Apportionment.US, the lawsuit Clemons v. Department of Commerce, and representation in our federal government. Our You Tube channel is apportionmentus.
Why does America need more representatives and smaller congressional districts? It will produce smaller government and more individual freedom.
Previous attempts at reforming the United States Congress have aimed at symptoms and not their root cause – enormous district sizes and the related difficulty of faithfully representing the American people with a limited number of representatives.
The advantages of a larger U.S. House of Representatives are:
- INCREASED accountability – as district sizes become smaller, each voter’s influence on their representative increases.
- DECREASED government spending – this seems counter-intuitive, but the data strongly support significant reductions in aggregate spending as the House grows in membership (see the Chen/Malhotra paper from the November 2007 issue of the American Political Science Review).
- INCREASED competition – the principles of free markets tell us that when competition is present, we get increased quality at a lower cost. With more House seats, races will be more competitive. The best illustrative example is comparing small New Hampshire (400 state house members with a high turnover rate of over 30%), to California, with its embarrassing lack of competition (state house of only 80 members with NO turnover - a 100% incumbent success rate for the past 4 election cycles).
- INCREASED voter turnout – data support that the smaller the district sizes, the greater percentage of voters turn out for the election (see the Quidam Voter Turnout paper from October 2009).
- DECREASED cost of running for office – the average winning campaign for a U.S. House seat in 2008 was approximately $1.5 million. This enormous financial barrier to entry prevents ‘average’ citizens from entering national politics, and gives incumbents a great advantage. If the average district size were reduced, more everyday Americans could run for public office.
- DECREASED scope of individual representatives – the problem with the current model is that power is too concentrated, making individual representatives much too influential in the legislative process. Diminishing their individual scope and influence should reduce the need for continual media appearances and campaigning, and re-focus their efforts on serving constituents as citizen-legislators.
- INCREASED freedom – a strong relationship exists between district size and freedom. At the state level, the smaller the average district size, the higher that state scores on various freedom indices (see the Quidam Freedom Indices article from October 2009).
- DECREASED propensity for gerrymandering – With a lot more districts, the concept of creating an oddball-shaped gerrymandered district makes much less sense and yields less value as compared to today’s model.
- INCREASED cost of lobbying – it’s much cheaper and easier to lobby 435 people than a significantly larger number. More representatives may equate to less influence of lobbyists and more protection for the American people.
For a more in-depth analysis on this topic, please read The Root Cause of Ills in the U.S. House by Scott Scharpen.