How Well Does Our "Representative" Government Represent Us?

In 2020, Republicans in Virginia’s 5th District nominated Bob Good to run for Congress. Because of COVID, they held a drive-through convention in a church parking lot rather than a statewide primary open to all voters. Good won with 1,517 votes over Congressman Denver Riggleman, who had been a strong supporter of President Trump in the gerrymandered district.  Good won the November election, receiving 211,000 votes (52.6 percent).  His 1,517 convention votes thus enabled victory in a district of some 800,000 residents.    

Democratic voters, nearly half of the electorate, understandably felt unrepresented by this very conservative Republican.  Good was re-elected in 2022, went on to chair the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus but lost the Republican primary this year to John McGuire, who campaigned as an even more faithful Trump conservative.  

This is all perfectly legal, the result of partisan gerrymandering. It occurs in Democratic districts too, where Republicans feel unrepresented by extreme progressives.  

The framers of the Constitution in 1787 did not foresee the formation of political parties or gerrymandering.  They did worry about “factions,” defined by James Madison as people “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”  The Constitution aimed to manage factions through a government of representatives who would, according to Madison, “refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.”

To help insulate what Madison hoped would be “enlightened statesmen” from public passions, members of the House and Senate would be paid by the federal not state treasuries.  States were then considered hot-beds of dangerous passions.  Only members of the House would be elected directly by the people. Senators and members of the Electoral College would be chosen by state legislatures, one-step removed from popular vote. Members of Congress would have two-year and Senators six-year terms, longer than common in most states, presumably further distancing them from having to appeal to factional interests. A proposal for allowing binding instructions from home for their representatives was voted down in the First Congress because it would prevent representatives from using their own judgment to resist "popular error."

Representatives would of course reflect the views of the majority who elected them but it was hoped they would also consider minority views in their districts.  As Thomas Jefferson put it in his 1801 First Inaugural Address after the first political party-contested election in America: “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”

Today, however, extreme partisanship facilitated by gerrymandering - and egged on by social media algorithms - weakens the likelihood of such balanced representation:

·       In 2020, the losing House candidate won forty percent or more of the vote in a third of Congressional districts. As winners in those districts usually vote in Congress with their more extremely partisan political party, a very significant portion of Americans could easily feel unrepresented. This is common in many elections for the Senate as well since Senate candidates are now subject to popular vote in mostly safe and highly partisan “red” and “blue” states.

·       In 2020 the party that got a significant share of the presidential vote in some states did not win a comparable share of Congressional seats.  In Connecticut, for example, Donald Trump won 39 percent of the vote but Republicans did not win a single seat in Congress.  In Louisiana, Joe Biden won 40 percent but Democrats won only 17 percent of House seats.

·       In a study of 29,400 “races” for elected offices nationwide, from federal to state and local offices, one-half (14.450) had only one candidate as the other political party saw no point in fielding a candidate.  Voters in the self-silenced party no doubt wondered how “representation” would work for them.

Public opinions polls regularly show a large majority of Americans agree on a more than we might think, such as health care coverage for all, keeping Social Security solvent, universal gun background checks and a path to citizenship for certain immigrants. Yet such views cannot make it into legislation when faced with elected officials who feel bound to represent only the extreme wings of their parties.  Congress thus becomes one of dueling extremes, leaving much of America unrepresented in practice and the public’s trust in government at a very low level.    

The Constitutional safeguards against extremism that were designed to ensure reasoned judgment for the general good are struggling to work. Some Americans will always feel that their views go unrepresented, but when that figure rises to nearly half of the electorate, it’s hard to conclude that representative government is working well. 

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