Ahem

House Democrats attempt to bolster their own numbers by changing the Articles of Confederation. Similar to the Kansas-Nebraska Act (or the Missouri Compromise? I can never remember) they are offering to give Utah another seat (assumed but not guaranteed Republican) to balance the growth.

Now obviously I am a fan of taxation WITH representation, and the residents of D.C. have long argued they have no congressional sway. However, I am interested to know exactly what effect the Representative from D.C. expects to have; he or she would be only 1 in 437.

People from large states do not understand the pointlessness of the House of Representatives. Kansas, though more than 1/3rd the size of California only gets 4 seats, while California gets 53. This is because the weighting of the House is based on population, not landmass (or economic power). One could argue that larger states should have higher levels of representation, because they needs to more effectively represent their populations...4 Representatives could not possibly accurately represent the massive Californian population.
But if that is true, what is the point of the Senate?

You see, there is the trap. One the one hand we have the House, so that every state gets a proportionally equal say, but then we turn it around and make each state get an equal say in the Senate. You just can't argue the logic of one side of Congress without sounding like you are arguing against the other side.

"But the two balance each other out, like magic!" someone said to me this morning.

If that is the case, then where will the D.C. Senate balance be? And where was the D.C. Tea Party followed by revolution to force this issue? Why revolt when you can just get a massive Democratic majority instead?

And if D.C. gets a seat in the House, are we saying that D.C. (population ~590k) has the voting power of South Dakota (population ~804k), Vermont (~620k), Alaska (~686k), Delaware (~873), or Montana (~850k)?

But wait, it gets more troubling. A simple math algorithm shows that if California, population 36 million, gets 53 Representatives, then that is basically 1 Rep per 680K people. D.C., with a mere 590K people, shouldn't have enough people to get a vote! Further, the population of D.C. is declining, so they are losing their argument that they are a population requiring representation.

Here's my conspiracy theory of the day: Washington will add D.C. as a full voting member of the House, then use that as leverage to lower the population requirement for a single vote in the House. If every state got one rep for every 590,000 people, then populous states would get more votes! California (conveniently Democratic) would surge to 61 votes, New York (also conveniently Democratic leaning) would increase to 33 votes. Illinois would gain to House seats.
Conversely, the Red Stripe (North Dakota down to Oklahoma) would gain zero net seats.
Of course, this is great news to the Senators from New York (who replaced Hillary? I lost track), where 2 seats were lost after the 2000 census.
And how can you argue against this? If someone says "I have devised a way to make the people more effectively represented in Congress" then you must, as a lover of freedom and representation, agree they have a good plan. However, if their plan is instead stated as "I have devised a way to make people in Democratic leaning states be more heavily represented" then you'll definitely raise some ire. Unfortunately these two statements are summarizing the exact same plan.


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