Congressional Apportionment Amendment

As Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is still pending before the states.

The 2020 United States Census recorded a population of 331.4 million; consequently, if the amendment were ratified today, it would result in a House of Representatives with at least 1,700 Representatives being required under the terms of the final version of the amendment adopted by Congress, assuming the contemporary square-root rule interpretation and not the purely textualist linear interpretation.

55, James Madison argued that the size of the House of Representatives has to balance the ability of the body to legislate with the need for legislators to have a relationship close enough to the people to understand their local circumstances, that such representatives' social class be low enough to sympathize with the feelings of the mass of the people, and that their power be diluted enough to limit their abuse of the public trust and interests.

...first, that so small a number of representatives will be an unsafe depositary of the public interests; secondly, that they will not possess a proper knowledge of the local circumstances of their numerous constituents; thirdly, that they will be taken from that class of citizens which will sympathize least with the feelings of the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at a permanent elevation of the few on the depression of the many;...[5]Anti-Federalists, who opposed the Constitution's ratification, noted that there was nothing in the document to guarantee that the number of seats in the House would continue to represent small constituencies as the general population of the states grew.

They feared that over time, if the size remained relatively small and the districts became more expansive, that only well-known individuals with reputations spanning wide geographic areas could secure election.

It was also feared that those in Congress would, as a result, have an insufficient sense of sympathy with and connectedness to ordinary people in their district.

[6] This concern was evident in the various state ratifying conventions, where several specifically requested an amendment to secure a minimum size for the House of Representatives.

[7]Anti-Federalist Melancton Smith declared at the New York ratifying convention that We certainly ought to fix, in the Constitution, those things which are essential to liberty.

On September 21, 1789, a conference committee convened to resolve the numerous differences between the two Bill of Rights proposals.

As a result of the last-minute "less" to "more" wording change made by the House, an inconsistency exists in the mathematical formula when the nation's population is between eight million and ten million, as the final version of the proposed amendment specifies a minimum number of House seats greater than the maximum.

[22] Historian David E. Kyvig had an alternative interpretation of the increase in the size of the U.S. House guaranteed by this proposed amendment.

He claimed that the examples in the amendment were intended to demonstrate a mathematical relation: for every additional 100 members of Congress, district sizes would increase by 10,000 people.