September 25, 2013: US Bill of Rights. Or more accurately, the first 12 Amendments to the US Constitution….

were formally proposed by a joint resolution of Congress on this day in 1789 and sent to the various states for ratification.

113 thoughts on “September 25, 2013: US Bill of Rights. Or more accurately, the first 12 Amendments to the US Constitution….”

        1. A friend of mine suggested dramatically increasing the representation in the House (to one seat per 50,000 citizens) as way of reducing the influence of big corporate donors in politics, increasing the diversity of representation and opinion by giving local concerns more voice, and making representatives more accountable to their constituents. There's also the side benefit of making the Electoral College more representative. At first I thought it was a bit crackpot, but I've come around to thinking it might be the only way to break the cycle.

          1. No, it is crackpot. Think about the within-congress logistics of having 6,000+ representatives, and what that would mean for electoral dynamics.

            there is no friggin' way that being one of over 6,000 representatives is individually meaningful in the legislature beyond a bit of pork-barreling. You would have vast tracts of backbencher members with little or no influence over party caucuses. A select few would serve on meaningful committees -- i.e., even more hierarchy than exists now in a 435-member House. Not workable. We would end up with sean's joke above. Or something like the Chinese National People's Congress (2,978 members and observationally irrelevant).

            1. How about making it a true democracy, giving everyone a smart phone, installing a YAY/NAY app, and have people get alerts whenever it's time to vote on something?

            2. That assumes the current system prevails. I doubt it would. It might go very poorly, as you've observed, or it might go otherwise.

              Either way, I'm closer to in favor of Beau's suggestion (joke or not) than any other change.

              1. I was overly harsh in my initial response.

                There is a serious optimization question at stake: how do you maximize "functional" representation through a representative assembly? The function you are trying to maximize assuredly has multiple arguments and, almost certainly, lacks an unique maximum. That said, even if 435 is "too small," I'm really, really certain that 6,000+ is way, way too big. And I really don't think there is any compelling evidence to support the argument that 435 is too small.

                1. And I really don’t think there is any compelling evidence to support the argument that 435 is too small.

                  Congressional stagnation and gerrymandering? Seems like more localized seats with lower barriers for challengers might ease those problems somewhat.

                  1. Lower barrier to entry, but lower benefit.
                    Any successful challenger would only be one of 6,000.

                    Plus minute districts are more likely to be more homogenous in political opinion and thus less likely to shift with general opinion.
                    Consider what partisan city-council elections would look like in cities where voting is more than 80% to one party.
                    (I know they have partisan city races in NYC: I have no idea how that works, nonpartisan in Minnesota.)

                  2. I for one think that the House should at least be doubled in size. 6000 members? No. 1000 members? I think so.

                2. Given technology, I'd say the upward efficient bound has grown tremendously.

                  And I think the compelling argument outlined above against 435 was "influence of corporate donors." We're probably wading into forbidden zone a bit more with that, but... I find it compelling.

          2. I am also a fan of decreasing the number of citizens each representative represents. I think it would be awesome to see a ten thousand seat auditorium for debate.

        2. BTW, let's look at the end of that article again:

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

          I think your reading is incorrect, doc. Not less than 200 nor more than one for every fifty thousand.

          1. ?? "more than one for every fifty thousand" is an upper bound. There are ~313.9 million American residents, currently. 313.9 million divided by 50,000 gets you 6,278. So, yea, the implication of the proposed Article was to bound the size of the House between 200 and (one per 50,000, which currently implies approximately 6,278).

            You might protest that the current Constitution is relatively silent on the size of the House (it states that apportionment shall not exceed one per 30,000, with the caveat of at least one per state). We have been at 435 (with a couple of brief exceptions) for 100 years. Congress has the power to increase apportionment through statute up to the limit of one representative per 30,000. That upper limit currently would be a House with over 10,000 members. The lower bound is 50 (apportionment by population but the caveat of at least one per state; you just set the threshold larger than that of any current state's population).

            I would be happy to expound at any desired length on my perception of how changing the size of the legislature is a pretty weak remedy for the cited failures of representation, most importantly, the influence of money. I might start by pointing at elections to state legislatures, where effective control of campaign funds very often is centralized into the hands of the party caucus leaders (Illinois being a good example). The districts may be smaller than what we have now, but the effective "independence" of legislators from the constraints of belonging to a caucus in order to affect policy outcomes are not wiped away.

            Of course, if one prefers the style of elections observed in Great Britain, Mexico and, to a substantial extent, Canada (to cite three examples of relatively weak "personal vote" national parliaments), to those in the U.S., Japan, and Brazil (to cite three examples of relatively strong "personal vote" national parliaments), those are alternatives.

            Mexico's Chamber of Deputies has 500 members, 300 of whom are elected from single-member districts with no more than 200,000 residents, the rest elected through a PR mechanism. Party coalitions predominate over local interests in most matters even though this is a bicameral, presidential system very similar in structure to the U.S.'s constitutional structure. A significant contributing factor there is strict term limits.

            Great Britain's House of Commons has 650 members elected from single-member districts. It is pretty common knowledge that authority is highly centralized into the hands of the Cabinet, which basically boils down to the party leaders in the majority party. There is evidence of a "personal vote" in British elections, but it is pretty weak. Much weaker than in the U.S. case.

            Canada's House of Commons has 308 members (expanding to 338 in the next election) elected in single-member districts -- one for every 113,000 or so residents with a minimum of one per province/territory (so that Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut each get one). This, like the British case, is a parliamentary system, in which the premier is beholden to the majority in the House. My recollection from the literature is that the personal vote component of elections is a bit stronger in Canada than in Britain, but still nowhere near that of the U.S.

            Brazil has a funky PR system with relatively large electoral districts in which voters can vote for a list or for a named candidate. Ginormous pork-barrelling incentives, weak party structures, lots of delegation to the president. The Chamber of Deputies has 513 members

            Japan's House of Representatives has 480 members, 300 of whom are elected from single-member districts, the rest by list PR. This is still relatively new in Japan. Until 1994, all House members were elected via single non-transferable vote elections from multi-member districts, which tended to accentuate personal vote tendencies, and made Japan's parliamentary elections probably the most expensive in the world on a per-constituent basis.

            For me, the bottom line is that in choosing an electoral system and system of representation, you have to choose between "personal vote"-enhancing effects and "collective-responsibility"-enhancing effects. These tend to be opposing desiderata.

                1. I'll be purchasing one for mine. I think I've seen it randomly about 3 dozen times in the past 10-15 years and always aspire to commit the thing to memory.* Now, whenever I see it, I always pause to read it through with as much contemplation of each line as possible.

                  *same goes for this one.

            1. "Not more than one per 50,000" does not mean at least 1 per 50,000, it means not more than one. It can be less than one. This doesn't work between 8,000,000 (at which time there would be 200 members) and 10,000,000 (which is 200*50,000).

              If you read the article I linked to, the original intention might have been to add a representative every 50,000 people. That would be a disaster. As that is written, though, it does not mean that.

              1. I did read it. As I noted, the proposed article would have established a lower bound of 200 members and an upper bound of one per 50,000 residents.

                1. From said article:

                  The version recorded by congress and sent to the states for ratification would have resulted in this:

                  population,number of representatives,district size
                  < 3000000, < 100, 30000 3000000 to 8000000, 100 to 200, ≤ 40000 8000000 to 10000000, impossible to satisfy conflicting conditions, ≥ 50000 ≥ 10000000, ≥ 200, ≥ 50000[/sr]

                    1. The equals part of that sign means that the population could be eleventy billion and the House could still be 200 seats since the size of the districts can be greater than 50,000.

                    2. 50,000 is a lower bound, too, referring to the size of the district. 😉 For this language to require 6200 House seats, 50,000 would have had to be an upper bound on the size of the district. It's not.

                      From the article:

                      The final clause's conditions would have been satisfied only by a population size of 10 million or above. The clause stipulates a minimum district size of 50,000, and at that minimum size, a population of 10 million would have yielded the minimum of 200 representatives. As the final clause only stipulates a minimum district size, it would thereafter have allowed for any number of representatives between 200 and the current population divided by 50,000. At the approximate current U.S. population of 310,000,000, this would yield a House of Representatives with 200 to 6,200 members, depending on the district size.

                    3. Sorry, bS, but I'm gonna have to side with SBG here.

                      Not more than one per 50K means
                      1 per 75K (2/3 per 50K)
                      1 per 100K (1/2 per 50K)
                      1 per 1 million (1/20 per 50K)

                      it does not mean
                      1 per 40K (1.25 per 50K)
                      1 per 25K (2 per 50K)
                      1 per 20K (2.5 per 50K)

                      etc...

                      Good thing this didn't make the Constitution.
                      Looks like one of those things where the intent was A, but the plain language is B.

                    4. You guys are killing me.

                      Perhaps someone could 'splain in simple english to me where my math is wrong or my reading is wrong.

                      there shall be not less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

                      The un-ratified Article, as applied to the modern U.S.'s scope of population of well over 10 million, clearly stated that the House would be bound between a minimum of 200 members and a maximum of [(current population)/50,000] members. Which is what I've said several times now. The current U.S. population is approximately 313.9 million. 313,900,000/50,000 = 6,278.

                      It did not require the House to approach the upper bound. My original comment on this thread merely pointed out that IF the pattern of one-per-50,000 were followed, we would currently have a House with over 6,000 members.

                      Can we close this one out, or does someone have a bone to pick with my arithmetic still?

                    5. I see now that we are in violent agreement. I don't understand why this got you so worked up because the current Constitution allows for one member for every 30000 people. So this amendment would have lowered the upper limit from where it is now(about 10,000 members) to about 6200. I thought you understood the amendment to require 6200 members, which was the original intent. Knowing the current state of affairs, how do you feel about the amendment now?

                    6. I see now that we are in violent agreement.

                      Heh.

                      I'm fairly indifferent about the proposed amendment, frankly. I suppose it is better than the threat of one House member per 30,000!

                    7. Just to assure myself that I'm not crazy, let's circle back to your original comment:

                      if the first Article were ratified, the U.S. House would now have approximately 6,278 members.

                      Your first comment, the one I replied to, all but asserted that having that amendment would have required that there be this many house members, not simply that 6200 would have been an upper limit. My whole point was that it did not require that many.

            2. Thanks for the comparative analysis, Doc. I wish I had taken more comparative poli-sci as an undergrad. Is there reason to think the two major parties could effectively keep an effective duopoly if the number of legislative districts were increased significantly? Presumably any major change would also entail reconsidering FPTP as an electoral system.

              I know this conversation has verged on the forbidden zone from the beginning, but it's been really informative and I appreciate the points made by everyone who's participated in the discussion.

              1. I think this is more about mechanics of government rather than policy (other than the optimum size of the House, which again is more about mechanics) and as such not so close to the Forbidden Zone.

                I also like the poorly drafted amendment, which was non-functional in a given range of population. It also shows that the framers never contemplated things like a population of 300,000,000. They actually wanted to have an upper bound on the districts of 50,000. Had they had any sort of vision that we could have had 6,000 members of the House of Representatives, they would have never introduced such an amendment (even though what was actually provided to the states didn't have an upper bound on the size of the districts).

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              2. FPTP as an electoral system.
                Ohhh, not a fan of FPTP. It might be the worst voting method possible. Excuse me while I pine for something better.

                1. It might be the worst voting method possible.

                  Except for all the others. 😉

                  There is a voluminous social choice literature on voting procedures and electoral systems. Let me regale you some time.

                  First-past-the-post has some key theoretical and practical points in its favor: (a) it is easy to administer and for voters to understand; (b) it has a well-known and well-supported empirical consequence of driving competition (at the district level, at least) toward two parties ("Duverger's Law"), and (c) when it is applied to two-candidate competition, it is majority rule, which is the only voting rule that satisfies the axioms of May's theorem.

                  Duverger's Law is, again, an empirical regularity. Its theoretical oomph lies in the nature of two-candidate competition. Two points define a line. Even if political competition is "multi-dimensional" (more than one issue over which candidates can offer competing proposals/solutions), preferences over all of those dimensions of competitions can be projected onto a single line (given some key, albeit strong assumptions about the structure of preferences). This leads to the standard "median voter" model, which says that candidate's A and B offering competing platforms have to capture "centrist" voters in order to win the election.

                  for the interested reader, I'd be happy to point to other readings/results in the social choice literature, progressing from Condorcet's Voter's Paradox to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem to other, even more obtuse formal results in the literature.

                  1. I came to some similar conclusions back when I was involved with a third-party, but without the theory.

                    Many of the folk in the party thought that proportional representation would be better (because it would help the third-parties have a seat at a table). I however liked having one representative that I could complain to and felt that proportional representation gave more power to the parties than to the representatives and thus would dilute the effect of any lone voters lobbying legislators about strongly-felt but minor issues.

                    If I don't like my rep's stand on an issue (and I'm thinking trivial local things here), I can vote for another candidate next time and maybe replace her. If there's a party slate, I'd have to vote for a different party and hope that she was far enough down on their list to be threatened. At least I think that's how proportional representation works, those third-party folks I hung with might not have explained it the best, and I haven't thought much further about it since because no one has since asked me to support proportional representation.

                    I can see IRV as something that's complicated to work with but it still keeps most of what I like about single-member districts intact.

                    1. Proportional representation is a different voting system. Remaining within a single-winner system, which is what I think you are saying you like, there are numerous methods to determine that winner.

                    2. there are many flavors of PR, ranging from open-list PR (where a voter votes for both a name and a party) to closed-list PR (where voters only vote for a party, and the party has an internal process for ordering names on the list). Thresholds and district size both are variables.

                      My main issue with PR is that many flavors tend to proliferate the numbers of parties represented in the legislature and accentuate more ideological extremity (what we call "centrifugal forces" in the literature), thus making it harder for a majority party to win control of the legislature. Which usually means coalition government, which makes it very hard for voters to hold ANYONE accountable for policy outcomes. So you can get a kind of descriptive representation, but not necessarily much policy representation.

                      the basic point is that you have to pick your poison with electoral systems and governance systems. There is no "perfect" set of rules.

                      re: single-winner systems. Really, there are only two alternatives. Either you have FPTP (plurality rule), or you have majority-rule, which typically requires having a runoff mechanism. there are variations to that theme (top two, instant runoff, etc.). But all have issues.

    1. Nor is it to suggest that all, or even close to all, of our commenters are shrill, boorish specimens of the lower internet phyla.

      Ms. LaBarre must be a Strib subscriber!

    2. I'm trying to come up with something to say that's more profound than "that's really interesting," but . . . that's really interesting. I wonder if the effect of comments on the main article holds true generally or if there's something in particular about scientific articles.

      1. Imagine if the Strib purported to be some sort of a serious Baseball magazine.
        Then all the Stribby commentors are getting their letters published in a serious Baseball magazine.
        (I leave it to the reader to decide how serious PS is. [I don't know.] It definitely thinks it's serious.)
        (The analogy falls apart because I don't think PS is feeding its commentors their worst opinions.)

      1. And here it is

        If I was Juan Centeno I'd have "First man to throw out Billy Hamilton in the Majors" on my tombstone. Perhaps even a loop of this running constantly. I assume the technology for that will be available by then, if it's not already.

  1. Today was my first research presentation at my new job to the entirety of the science departments (chemistry, biology, geology, forestry, etc.) Up till 1 last night preparing, followed by getting to work at 6:15 this morning.

    4 people showed up for a seminar series that usually gets 50+ attendants.

    *sad trombone*

    Apparently there are a couple classes during the scheduled seminar time, and a few other one-time conflicts this particular week. My talk is rescheduled for some indeterminate future time. Still quite the letdown.

  2. Any fans of The West Wing around these parts? The wife and I decided to watch it, and we're just a bit worried after two episodes about being completely confused. There seems to be about 20 primary characters talking a mile a minute and there's been virtually no exposition to help us figure out who's who or their motivations, not to mention several acronyms we don't know. Does this get easier soon? I feel like if your attention span wavers for a second you miss significant bits of conversation.

    1. Yes, it is engaging, and yes, you do have to pay attention. Still enjoyed it a lot, though.

      Don't remember any acronyms besides POTUS. No worse than NCIS with SECNAV, for example, though.

    2. Sheenie also started watching it just a couple of weeks ago. She's already watched about twenty episodes in just a couple of weeks.

      1. does she have good knowledge about the executive branch? We feel like we have no idea what the job responsibilities of any of these people are

        1. No, she does not. She asked me numerous questions about different agencies and I wasn't even watching! (I did study a lot of political stuff in DC at the same time the show as on the air, so I at least know most of the jargon.)

        2. We feel like we have no idea what the job responsibilities of any of these people are

          that's because most of the show is about the communications people, who don't really have anything to do with anything real. 😉

    3. I watched all of The West Wing and Battlestar Galactica concurrently. I don't recommend doing that. Just one more episode, and then I'll go to bed...

      It's a good show. It dragged after Sorkin left, but recovered a bit near the end. As far as understanding who the characters are, the Repository should help with that. Just look out for spoilers.

    4. There seems to be about 20 primary characters talking a mile a minute and there’s been virtually no exposition to help us figure out who’s who or their motivations, not to mention several acronyms we don’t know. Does this get easier soon? I feel like if your attention span wavers for a second you miss significant bits of conversation.

      You could say this about a lot of shows that ended up being my favorite shows. I remember being ready to quite The Wire and then everything started to click around episode 4.

  3. On another TV front, I watched the premier of "Agents of SHIELD" last night. Promising....

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    2. I watched it last night and ...well.. I'll give it a couple more episodes before making a decision

      my brother said "Hey, its like The Cape, but set in the Marvel universe". I laughed

  4. on teh twitters:

    aww, I miss Go-Go.

      1. Ok, not that Gomez is exactly in the right, but how does McCann not get tossed? I mean, there's no fight if he doesn't stand in the baseline. I'd suspend McCann for at least five games. It seems like a terrible precedent to set to just let catchers start fights with HR hitters just because they had their delicate feelings hurt. Seems like Johnson would get a long suspension too as the first one off the bench.

        1. Yeah no kidding. I don't understand this at all. The Braves have had pretty delicate feelings about having home runs hit on them. If you hate it so much don't allow them you bunch of babies.

        2. He was in the base path without the ball. Gomez should've ran full speed into him and then slid into home, Willie Mays Hayes style

        3. I really have trouble getting too upset that someone hurt someone else's feelings. Shouldn't we be more upset that Maholm has beaned Gomez 3 times in the last 3 years? Isn't that much worse?

          I hate unwritten rule crap. If you don't want him to pimp around the bases, strike him out! Everyone else does.

        4. From the replay it looks like there was a previous beef between Gomez and the Braves' pitcher. Freeman(the Braves 1st baseman) and Gomez ended up getting tossed. How it was Freeman and not McCann, I have no idea why. Without the Braves catcher standing in his way, that whole sequence really ends with nothing but yelling.

      2. Wow. McCann should have been tossed, not Gomez.
        If Gomez fought, it's because some Braves rushed in and threatened to pummel him.
        And I say this as someone who generally likes the Braves.

        1. When in doubt, assume the Marlins are out.
          Ump had a horrible angle, though (and not his fault on that: The 2B makes a better door than a window).

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