Michigan’s congressional districts would balloon from 13 to 201 under resolution
With the Michigan Legislature getting back into the swing of things after summer break, one proposal for its consideration seeks to change the manner in which citizens are represented in Congress.
State Rep. Andrew Fink (R-Adams Twp.) introduced a resolution on June 26 while the Legislature was finishing up next year’s budget in a marathon session that didn’t get much attention, and was quickly referred to the House Judiciary Committee. House Joint Resolution T would ratify a constitutional amendment to fix U.S. House districts at no more than 50,000 residents per district.
Fink is also a Republican candidate for Michigan Supreme Court this November, vying against Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, who was nominated by Democrats for an eight-year term on the state’s high court.
Currently, apportionment is set at more than 760,000 citizens for each of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The number of House seats has remained at that level since 1913, and was codified into law by the Reappointment Act of 1929, which established a permanent method, utilizing the results of the U.S. Census, for mathematically determining how many citizens would be represented by each district.
Based on 2020 U.S. Census results, the amendment, if ratified, would result in Michigan having 201 congressional districts (it currently has 13), while the House of Representatives would have a total of 6,628 seats instead of 435. The Michigan Legislature currently has a total of only 148 members — 110 in the House and 38 in the Senate.
Fink noted in a press release that the Congressional Apportionment Amendment, which would have fixed the maximum number of citizens per district at 50,000, was one of the 12 original proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The first 10 became the Bill of Rights, each winning ratification at the time by the requisite number of states. While the Congressional Apportionment Amendment won approval by two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate, it fell one state short of ratification.
Fink’s Joint Resolution T would have Michigan take the lead in ratifying the Constitutional Apportionment Amendment. Because no time limit was set upon its introduction in 1789, it remains pending before the states, although none has voted for ratification since 1792. Three-quarters of state legislatures would have to approve the amendment for it to go into effect.
There’s a high bar for joint resolutions in Michigan, which require a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and the Senate, before they go on the statewide ballot. The measure, which does not have any cosponsors, is currently in the House Judiciary Committee.
Fink says the purpose of the Congressional Apportionment Amendment was to “ensure that U.S. House members continue to represent small constituencies even as the population grew,” something he wants to make a reality.
“The nature of the people’s branch has been drastically diminished,” said Fink. “The House was designed to be the body of government closest to the people, but now members of Congress pay less attention to members of their districts and spend more time on cable news trying to fundraise nationally.”
He also made the case in an opinion piece he co-wrote with Derek Muller, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame.
“If enacted, cities like Saginaw, Kentwood and Roseville would each send a member to Congress,” said Fink and Muller. “The Upper Peninsula would have six members in the House, all to itself. Counties like Hillsdale, Cass and Barry would each elect their own representative.”
Fink said having so few congressional districts has resulted in lawmakers far more removed from the concerns of citizens than the Founders intended.
“A larger body of representatives would also ensure that only lobbying efforts broadly supported by the people could succeed,” Fink said. “Special interest groups inordinately influence policy in D.C. because there are only a handful of people in the House they need to persuade.”
What about the cost?
How the additional 6,193 representatives would be physically seated in the U.S. House is not addressed in Fink’s resolution, which would likely necessitate large additions to the U.S. Capitol building.
Any budget increase needed to staff and fund those additional districts also isn’t addressed. For example, there would have to be big changes in office space. Current offices could be remodeled and possibly be made smaller, which would require more funding. This amendment likely would require the construction of multiple new office buildings — and it’s unclear where they would be located. All of this would be an unknown cost.
Based on the current congressional annual salary of $174,000, the costs to pay the additional representatives alone would be more than $458 million. Additionally, each member of Congress also receives the Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA), “to support Representatives in their official and representational duties,” including paying for office staff, travel, mailing costs, office equipment, district office rental, stationery and other office supplies.
According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2023 the average MRA was $1.93 million. If that same amount was needed for the thousands of new representatives, another $11.9 billion would be needed to staff and operate those additional offices. Fink, however, argues that those costs would go down per member.
In an emailed statement to the Advance, Fink said any increase in staffing costs could be “dwarfed” by savings from “a more thorough budget process.”
“Congressional districts being reduced in size by more than 90% would obviously need far fewer staff, mail, and other budget items and budgets would be adjusted accordingly. If there was any increase in staffing costs, it would be miniscule [sic] relative to the size of the federal government as a whole and potentially dwarfed by the savings from a more thorough budget process,” he said.
“Only a fool (or a person pretending to be a fool in order to mislead others) would say they expect such an increase would follow the reduction in the size of house districts. Additionally, smaller districts would make the members of congress exponentially more responsive to their constituents and far less likely to waste taxpayer money, further reducing the size and influence of the bureaucracy,” Fink continued.
National group weighs in
That rationale is similar to one advanced by Thirty-Thousand.org, which describes itself as “a non-partisan and non-profit organization that conducts research on, and educates the public about, the benefits of establishing Congressional districts that are both smaller and equally-sized relative to their populations.”
According to the group’s website, increasing the number of federal representatives so that each represents between 30,000 and 50,000 residents would “restore political power to the people by ending incumbent domination of reelections, diminishing lobbyists’ influence, overcoming political-party control of our government, maximizing individual liberty, and reducing the size of government.”
As to the financial and physical limitations such an approach would entail, it states that the cost of the additional representatives, which it proposes to be phased in over the next twenty years, would be “more than offset by the reduction in federal spending that results from having a truly representative body.”
It also envisions a Congress not concentrated solely in Washington, D.C., but instead utilizing streaming technology to meet remotely while representatives remain in their respective districts, which it says would substantially lower the overall cost of the additional representatives.
The group provides no specific details how such a massive reorganization of the federal government would take place.
Thirty-Thousand.org does cite as justification for its plan Federalist No. 55, written by James Madison and published in 1788 to help bolster public support for ratification of the newly-created U.S. Constitution. The group’s website notes that Federalist No. 55 “contemplated the eventual possibility of six or seven thousand Representatives.”
It fails to mention the context of which Madison made that contemplation.
“Nothing can be more fallacious than to found our political calculations on arithmetical principles,” he wrote. “Sixty or seventy men may be more properly trusted with a given degree of power than six or seven. But it does not follow that six or seven hundred would be proportionably a better depositary. And if we carry on the supposition to six or seven thousand, the whole reasoning ought to be reversed.”