Should the Constitution be amended to regulate the proportion of Research Paper

Should the Constitution be amended to regulate the proportion of representatives so that each would represent no more than 50,00 - Research Paper Example The Equal Protection clause in the U.S constitution requires that the House of Representatives apportionment scheme be based on population to ensure that the right of every citizen to equal representation and to have their votes weighed equally with those of all other citizens is enforced. (Anzalone, 2002) Limiting the maximum number of citizens a representative can represent can highly increase the effectiveness if equal and active representation. The individual citizen’s ability to exercise an effective voice is the only instrument of state government that exemplifies direct representation (Anzalone, 2002) The founding fathers of the United States of America intended that the population of each congressional district should not exceed 50,000 to uphold the spirit of equal representation. Today, the average population of a congressional district in USA is 700,000 people which is a very big number compared to the initial intended figure. The increase of congressional representa tion with the increase in population would ensure that the congressional districts would be equal across the nation as opposed to the situation today where some congressional districts have almost double the population of others to uphold the spirit of equality in representation. Smaller districts would enhance representation of the constituents in law making and voting of bills. It would also enhance monitoring and management of the constituents by their representatives. The legislators end up being less active on conditions that lead to individuals to rely on cognitive shortcuts of the complexity of the congressional district. Thus the amendment to expand the number of representatives should be passed to reduce the size of each congressional (Miler, 2010). The enactment of this amendment would also make campaigning more easy and less expensive since campaigning in a 50,000 people district is easier than campaigning in a 700,000 people district. The enormous districts are also enab ling re-election of representatives even if they are under performers and disadvantaging the minority groups in the current system. The enactment of this limit would ensure that the diversity of the American people is well represented in the House of Representatives. This would also have a positive implication in the reflection offered by the college vote that elects the president and the vice president. Most of the legislators and their staff are committed to representing their constituents but representing several thousand people is not easy. Due to the large number of population they are representing, they may fail to perfectly represent their constituents not because they are corrupt or privilege some constituents but because of the workload that they have (Miler, 2010). Increasing the number of representatives would thus allow full representation without favour’s in the constituents. On the other hand, if the law is amended so that each representative can represent not m ore than 50,000 constituents, the number of representatives would increase enormously. This would increase estimate to a staggering 6000 representatives. There was of course valid reasons why congress limited the number of representatives to 435 in an amendment in 1911. There were fears that with the growth of the