The argument can be made that we do not have enough representation according to James Madison, George Washington, and most of our founding fathers.

Apparently, when writing the original bill of rights (the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, and eventually the 27th), James Madison had included an amendment that would have given the nation a formula to describe the subsequent and necessary expansion for the House of Representatives.

The Congressional Apportionment Amendment

The CAA is the last amendment of James Madisons’s proposed Bill of Rights that has yet to be ratified. It was only one state shy of ratification. Even though the state legislature of Connecticut did ultimately ratify the CAA, they never sent the paperwork to Congress, so the amendment never became a part of our Constitution.

George Washington thought that each Representative should initially represent 30,000 people, which is roughly how many the original Representatives served. It’s literally the only Constitutional issue Washington ever had an opinion about.

The formula is roughly as follows: There will be one representative for each 30k people, until there are 100 reps. Then each rep should serve 40k people, until there are 200 reps. Then each rep should serve 50k until there are 300 reps. This is where the formula stops, but if we continue the pattern....

Then we should have between 1700-1800 representatives serving 200k people each.

Currently, our representatives serve about 750k people, on average. That’s almost 4 times the amount of people they should theoretically be serving! No wonder they’re unpopular; they’re trying to represent 3-4 constituencies!

James Madison lays out his reasoning for keeping Apportionment relatively small and local in Federalist Paper #55.

Paraphrasing, he basically says that an oligarchy could capture the political system and that the people would no longer be represented. Which fits perfectly with Bernie’s message.

This would have changed everything! If I could go back in time and pick a time and date, I would go back to that Connecticut assembly house and mail that paperwork. I would courier it myself (but hopefully, with some rascally doubting, yet charming colonial sidekick, because I wouldn’t know what the hell I was doing, plus how did I get a time machine?)

Here’s the bad news... We are terribly underrepresented.

Here’s the good news! Unlike other amendments, these amendments didn’t have an expiration date, so it’s still available for ratification!

How do I know this would work? Because this is how James Madison’s 11th proposed amendment eventually became our most recent addition to the Constitution in 1992 (The 27th Amendment) almost 200 years after it was originally proposed!

We can do it again!

Since it already passed Congress, all that needs to happen is to have 27 more states ratify the CAA and it will become a part of our Constitution!

Do your part! Spread the word!

RatifytheCAA!