Bob Fanning and Chuck Baldwin are taking the wrong approach to increasing Montana’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. They’ve joined an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the State of Louisiana’s challenge to the U.S. Census Bureau’s method of counting the population for apportioning the U.S. House.
Their chief argument? That the Census Bureau is counting illegal aliens in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, and as part of a conspiracy by the Obama administration to increase the number of Democrats in the House. If the lawsuit is successful, they argue, Montana will gain a second seat in the House.
There’s a better way to get a second House seat for Montana: add more members to the House.
It’s constitutional (Article 1, Section 2), and it hasn’t happened in almost 100 years. After the 1910 Census, Congress authorized 433 members (before Arizona and New Mexico became states), with each member representing approximately 200,000.
Then the House stopped growing. Writing in the 24 January 2011 New York Times, Dalton Conley and Jacqueline Stevens explained why:
…the 1920 census indicated that the majority of Americans were concentrating in cities, and nativists, worried about of the power of “foreigners,” blocked efforts to give them more representatives.
By the time the next decade rolled around, members found themselves reluctant to dilute their votes, and the issue was never seriously considered again.
The result is that Americans today are numerically the worst-represented group of citizens in the country’s history. The average House member speaks for about 700,000 Americans…
Sound familiar? It should. Nativism is behind Louisiana v Bryson. Arguing that the Census Bureau is violating the Constitution, that Montana (and other states) would pick up a seat in the House, is nothing more than an attempt to perfume a skunk.
Increasing the House’s membership to 620–650 requires but a simple act of Congress. It's the quickest, surest, and best way to provide another House seat for Montana.