{"id":50726,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/campaign-finance-reform.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"campaign-finance-reform","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/campaign-finance-reform.html","title":{"rendered":"Campaign Finance Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: A MODEST PROPOSAL<\/h1><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

By ANDREW WENDER COHEN<\/h2><\/a><\/td>\n\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n \n\nresult, we debate how to limit contributions and expenditures but find\nourselves hamstrung by First Amendment limitations that define such spending\nas protected political speech. Such reforms would be valuable, but they\ndon’t address one major reason why money now decides Congressional\nelections: The population has grown but the legislature has not. \n\n

Races for Congressional seats are competitive, vicious, and, above all,\nexpensive because Congressional seats are relatively rare. Increasing the\nsize of the House could profoundly change the character of our political\nlife and accomplish many of the goals of campaign finance reform, but\nwithout raising any First Amendment issues at all. <\/p>\n\n

What The Framers Would Have Thought of Our Elite Legislature <\/b><\/p>\n\n

Many people believe the Constitution sets the exact number of\nrepresentatives in the House at 435. In fact, the Constitution only sets a\nceiling for the number of legislators that is based on population, stating\nthat the number of representatives may not exceed one for every thirty\nthousand inhabitants. <\/p>\n\n

Strikingly, the Founding Fathers debated whether to impose this fairly\ngenerous ceiling. Eighteenth-century critics of the Constitution – such as\nNew York’s Melancton Smith – argued that small legislatures were unresponsive\nand potentially dishonest. <\/p>\n\n

Smith’s argument for a large, responsive legislature lost the day. But\nanyone who’s sent a letter to a representative only to receive a reply\nwritten by a twenty-three year old intern and signed by a machine can attest\nthat Smith’s point still stands. Have you ever met your representative? I\nhaven’t. <\/p>\n\n

Given the scope of our districts, such personal relationships are nearly\ninconceivable. Yet when the Republic began, they were commonplace. The\nnation’s first legislature had 106 members representing three and a half\nmillion inhabitants, or one per thirty-three thousand Americans. Today, the\nmayor of Valdosta, Georgia has a bigger constituency. <\/p>\n\n

In the nineteenth century, the Congress grew along with the nation. In 1911,\nhowever, Progressive reformers finally capped the house at 435 seeking to\n“improve” the quality of representation by diluting the growing immigrant\nvote. Except for tiny fluctuations reflecting the admission of new States,\nthe number has stayed the same. That’s a ninety-year freeze, imposed by\nstatute not by the Constitution. <\/p>\n\n

Thus, as the population has grown, the number of representatives per capita\nhas only shrunk. Our 435 representatives represent over 250 million\ninhabitants, making the ratio one per 570 thousand. If applied to the\noriginal Congress of 1788, such a ratio would have produced a house with six\nmembers rather than one hundred and six. Ours, then, is an elite legislature\nof the kind many founders rejected as undemocratic and corrupt. <\/p>\n\n

How Expanding The House’s Size Would Change Campaigns <\/b><\/p>\n\nconstituencies mandated by the freeze at 435. With over half a million\nvoters to reach, a candidate who refuses to use television can kiss every\nbaby, attend every funeral, and dedicate every mini-mall and still lose by a\nlandslide. \n\n

\n\nThis dependence on money gives corporations and wealthy donors a\ndisproportionate role in campaigns and in legislative affairs. Attempts to\ngive ordinary citizens a louder voice by limiting spending have run afoul of\nthe First Amendment. In Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court voided mandatory\nspending limits as unconstitutional, placing a high hurdle before any\npotential reforms. Increasing the House’s size would effectively reduce\nspending without violating the First Amendment. <\/p>\n\n

Similarly, increasing the House’s size would improve minority representation\nwhile avoiding the thicket of racial redistricting. If districts were\nsmaller, future legislators would find it far easier to construct “natural”\nseats around ethnic and racial communities.<\/p>\n\n

Answers To Some Possible Objections<\/b><\/p>\n\n

Can this proposal work? I can already hear Jay Leno’s monologue, mocking the\nlogic of adding more sharks to the tank. But this reform would put the\nsharks on a leash – one held by the citizenry. Increasing the number of\nrepresentatives would make each vote more significant within each\ncongressional race, thus necessarily deepening politicians’ accountability\nto the People. <\/p>\n\n

Other critics might complain that new legislators means new salaries and\nincreased burden on the taxpayer. But our ninety-year freeze on the number\nof congresspersons has hardly contained the cost of representation. As\ndistricts have grown, members of congress have merely hired larger staffs to\nhandle the load. (Between 1930 and 1999, the number of House employees grew\nfrom only 870 to a whopping 7,216). Adding representatives could be coupled\nby a freeze or even a cut on staff. After all, would you rather pay for more\nunresponsive twenty-three year old staffers, or for a representative who\nmight actually take your call?<\/p> \n\n

Some may say this proposal will never pass. After all, why would\nrepresentatives act to diminish their own power? However, the passage of\nthis proposal is no less plausible than the passage of campaign-finance\nreform legislation – which may cut even more profoundly against legislators’\ninterests. And many Americans want such reform badly enough to base their\nvotes on it. <\/p> \n\n

Finally, some may say the logistics of a larger Congress are unworkable. But\nwhy? Americans routinely plan operations requiring the coordination of\nthousands, from space missions to corporate takeovers to James Cameron’s\nmovies. Moreover, other national parliaments manage fine with broad\nmemberships. The House of Commons has 651 members, even though England has\nonly fifty-nine million inhabitants. And the England’s inhabitants\nundoubtedly appreciate having boroughs of 90,000 citizens, one-sixth the\nsize of U.S. Congressional seats. Plus, anyone who thinks Congressional\nissues are decided through Congressional debates must still be wearing a\npowdered wig and knickers. <\/p>\n\n

So how big should Congress be? Let’s leave that up for debate. Given the\ncurrent population, the Constitutional maximum is around nine thousand.\nThat’s probably too big, but I believe one thousand is perfectly workable.\nAt the very minimum, we should return to the original system of\napportionment, which allowed the number of legislators to grow with the\npopulation. This way, at least we won’t continue our ninety-year trend of\nwidening the distance between politicians and the public. <\/p>\n\n<\/span>\n\n

\n\n\nAndrew Wender Cohen is an assistant professor of history at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.\n

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