WI: Article the First adopted?

As I'm sure everyone knows, of the first 12 amendments proposed to the US Constitution, ten of them became the Bill of Rights, another one got ratified 203 years after its proposal and became the 27th amendment, but the last one of these, "Article the First", never got off the ground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_the_First

In one sense it's easy to see why it got rejected, given the quickly ballooning population numbers even in the early days of the republic, fears about mob rule, and it being despised by small states such as Delaware. But how would the federal government and nation look overall if it passed? Presuming history otherwise goes as parallel and what language is used, it could mean anywhere from 1625 to 6175 congressman in the House.

Any POD(s) may be used to bring this into action at anytime, although it's obviously safe to say the earlier it is in US history the more likely it's adopted.
 

Philip

Donor
until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

Once the House hits 200 members, Congress would be able to set the size within limits. They could easily cap it at 200 or 435 or whatever they choose. It would not force the the size to be any larger than OTL
 
My understanding is that that was probably a drafting error: it should have read "nor less than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons."

The original House version said "nor less than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons" and the original Senate version added exactly one Representative to the House for every additional sixty thousand people in the national population as counted by the Census.

"Less" from the House version was changed to "more" in the conference report, and I don't know of any contemporary accounts of the rationale for the change even though it reversed the effect of both the House and Senate versions.

Perhaps the POD could be that the conference report doesn't make the change, leaving it as either a minimum ratio of representatives per population (as per the House version) or an exact ratio (as per the Senate version).
 
I read somewhere that this meant that the House would have 30,000 members. A few too many.

I personally think they should raise the number of congresscritters to 565 or so. The way things are now is skewing house representation badly. ANd we are nearing a million per rep. When you get to that level of homogenization, you might as well go to PR.
 
In one sense it's easy to see why it got rejected, given the quickly ballooning population numbers even in the early days of the republic, fears about mob rule, and it being despised by small states such as Delaware. But how would the federal government and nation look overall if it passed? Presuming history otherwise goes as parallel and what language is used, it could mean anywhere from 1625 to 6175 congressman in the House.

Any POD(s) may be used to bring this into action at anytime, although it's obviously safe to say the earlier it is in US history the more likely it's adopted.

This could go both way in terms of mob rule. On one hand Congress might become too powerful and the speaker of the house, or similar leadership position in Congress would essentially become the most powerful man in the country.

However at the same time it could make Congress increadibly clumsy and allow for the senate and the executive branch to grow in influence as Congress stagnates over bureaucratic control of 6175 members.
 

Philip

Donor
However at the same time it could make Congress increadibly clumsy and allow for the senate and the executive branch to grow in influence as Congress stagnates over bureaucratic control of 6175 members.
This seems more likely. I think that when the House reaches a certain size that becomes unmanageable, there would be another amendment that stops the growth.
I personally think they should raise the number of congresscritters to 565 or so. The way things are now is skewing house representation badly. ANd we are nearing a million per rep. When you get to that level of homogenization, you might as well go to PR.
I've wondered how bumping the number of districts up 500 and then adding another 100 or so elected by PR would work.
 
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