The Fly’s elegantly simple, wonderfully fair (and potentially unconstitutional) plan for full U.S. House representation for the District of Columbia

I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve never lived in D.C. and haven’t been there since I was seven, when, while gazing at a marching band during a parade, I walked smack into a telephone pole and cried until my uncle bought me a snow cone. Ahhh, unearthed repressed memories.

It's been on the back-burner since last year, but full House representation for 600,000 Americans without it should be a no-brainer. But since there are a number of competing factions, let's take this step by step.

When it comes to House representation for the District, there are really four major parties, all with a stake in fairness, and they can be sorted into two pairs: States v. the District, and Democrats v. Republicans. (Really, we shouldn’t even consider the wants of the parties, but that would be a pipe-dream, so we’ll conveniently forget about not considering them.)

Now, according to the plan that was voted down in Congress last year, they wanted to give the District one representative (presumably Democrat) and balance that out politically with another seat in Utah (presumably Republican), which currently has three but would get a fourth. I think this is blatantly unconstitutional, seeing as Utah would be treated differently from all other states, basically receiving a seat due to politically bargaining and not apportionment. This would set a horrible precedent. Any other state want a new seat? Just find another place that could use one, get some backing from other Congressionals, and presto, new seat for your state. It’s a small step to imagine one party having a large majority in the both houses, and adding seats where their party is stronger.

Also, I don’t think Utah, already with three seats in the house, should get tantamount to a bonus seat when seven other states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming) only have one.

Since we need to throw a bone to the states, and should maybe help out a few states, how about we declare a minimum of two representatives per state? I’m not sure if this has ever been proposed, but I’d be surprised if it hasn’t. This would have minimal effect on 43 states but give additional and perhaps needed representation to some pretty poor states. Also, the five states with two representatives (including my home state of Rhode Island, plus Hawaii, Maine, Vermont and Idaho) might in the future be pretty close to the cut-line between having one representative and two representatives, so that would allay fears of losing a seat in those states as well.

Since, in the House, the District would be treated as a state, they would also get two seats.

This would also conveniently appease the parties. Five of these states (AK, MT, ND, SD, WY) are staunch Republican states, and the other two (DE, VT) are decidedly Democratic. All would receive a second representative. That would be five new seats in Republican states, which would almost be balanced out by the two new seats in the Democrat states and the two new seats for the District, which normally votes Democratic. Nine new seats: five Republican and four Democrat. This would raise the number of voting seats in the House from 435 to 444.

It also guarantees that every state has more Electoral College votes (4) than D.C. (3), at least until the D.C. population necessitates an additional seat. Currently these seven states have the same number of electoral votes as D.C.

I’m not sure if a two-representative guarantee would need a constitutional amendment or just the passage of a bill into law. Since both parties would likely get something (Reps.: extra seat, Dems.: votes that count in DC), neither would probably bring it to the Supreme Court.

States might have an issue, but I don’t think any state would bring it up to the Supreme Court since we are just raising the floor and not reducing the size any state’s delegation. Each state involved gets a new seat and Electoral vote. This plan would modestly reduce each representative’s voting percentage in the House from 1/435 to 1/444, less than a 2% reduction per representative.

(Personally, I also think it’d be nice for the District to get a Senate seat too, just to get the Senate to an odd number of seats and avoid ties, but that’ll never happen as long as there is a vice-president.)