As part of my series of letters on reforming Washington, D.C., I would like to present these proposals which address congressional representation and the Electoral College. The previous two letters on this subject which focused on the Senate and the House of Representatives were printed in the Nov. 7 and Nov. 10 editions of the Times-Union's Letters to the Editor column.
In those letters I proposed an expansion of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives plus the addition of a third chamber to Congress to accommodate for the population growth of the United States since 1789 and further empower the voice of the states in the federal government. Right now the states are entitled to two senators and at least one representative or more depending on the size of their population. If the proposed expansion is adopted, each state would have three popularly elected senators and one appointed directly from the state legislatures. Each state would also receive more representatives under the adoption of the Wyoming rule of congressional representation (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming–Rule). Indiana would go from having nine to 12 representatives in Congress. A third veto chamber made up of U.S Tribunes from each state will be discussed further in a later letter to the editor. The expansion of the Electoral College is being addressed in a parallel set of the letters to the editor that have been gradually printed throughout the year.
Another important reform that I would like to add would be the following, which I will term the Wyoming and Rhode Island Rule for Admission of New States to the Union. Any new state being admitted to the Union should be at least equal or roughly equal to the lowest populated state of the Union and the smallest sized state of the Union, which are Wyoming and Rhode Island. This would ensure that new states will at least have a population roughly equal to a congressional district and land area that is more than that of a large U.S. city.
This naturally brings us to the subject of our five remaining U.S. territories and their prospects for statehood, voting rights in the general presidential election and representation in Congress, which I will address in a soon-to-follow letter to the editor.
So please contact your U.S. senator and representative, along with senior leaders of Congress to urge them to adopt these ideas in this letter and the previous ones on the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for the benefit of our state and nation. I would also urge that you contact other media outlets across the state and nation to get these ideas into national conversation.
