Section 2 - The House
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
(Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.) This sentence in parentheses was modified by the 14th Amendment, section 2.
The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five and Georgia three.
When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights. Ratified 7/9/1868.
2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Okay, one question I had was on the amendment, but upon reflecting on it and its date (post civil war) it was answered. Now I would change the term limit to one 4yr. term without being able to return to office before a 4 yr. term from office, slowing lobbist efforts and making the repersentative free of re-election efforts . I would also change the number of repersentatives to one for every 15,000 citizens to bog down the wheels of government. At this point in time, they are just to willing to cram things down our throat and by doubling their amount, I think it would be much harder to get agreements between them. Foolish maybe, but I am always open for wiser ideas.
THANK YOU for your input to the last post and wait to hear from you. Remember this is open to all and there is no wrong ideas or opinions.
8 comments:
The problem I have with term limits is that there is no fear in the last term of the limit. The politician knows they can't run anyway, so they aren't at the mercy of the people.
We've seen what a little reelection anxiety can do for a politician.'v
I don't agree with term limits. Would you want to see the management of IBM turn over every 4-6 years if you're a shareholder?
I'm going to say you could apply any amendment to terms of service for representatives or Senators and the evil will always find a way around. The final answer is the truthfully informed, reasonably intelligent, and focused Voter. Without sufficient numbers of those, stick a fork in it.
this clause and the amendment clarifies to a great extent the meaning behind the War of Independence, no taxation without representation. this same principle is found in the Articles of Confederation.
as for your concerns, numbers will do nothing to bog down the wheels of government. what we need is for those elected to abide by the principles of the purpose of the creation of the federal government as it was intended.
The entire electoral process is corrupted by the influence of big money lobbyists and a gerrymandered electoral map that ensures reelection of I would guess 75% of Congress. While I could absolutely join Sharky in calling for term limits, the system is rigged to keep whichever party districts are gerrymandered for in office.
We end up asking those that benefit from a broken system to fix it.
I agree that we haven't kept our appointed offical's feet to the fire.
Look we are a nation of what 300+ mil.? If true repersentation held factual, the number of officals would lie where?
You know, you don’t want to get the country into the habit of changing the Constitution, we haven’t changed it in quite a while, not since the late 1960s. But since the subject is on our repersentation and the next section (3) will be on the senate, let me throw this at you. Repeal the 17th amendment.Because the 17th Amendment turned over the selection of senators from the state legislatures to the voters. And it was a progressive movement responding to, you know, corruption by big corporations and statehouses in the late 19th Century and a lot of other trends.
And so it sounds like an odd thing for a movement that is trying to get more people power back into politics to say take away the people’s right to vote for a senator and turn it back over to those often corrupt state legislatures. I know that the Senate, as it was conceived by our founders, was supposed to be that piece of the federal government in which the states were represented.
And if a state legislature, reflecting state values, state sovereignty concerns, had their representatives in the Senate, that would sort of offset federalist centralizing instincts of politicians in Washington. And we lost that in 1913 when we turned the power over to the electorate. And it seems to me that, corrupt or not corrupt – and of course every political system is somewhat corrupt, and you want to keep it to a minimum, but there’s always going to be some corruption in all human affairs.
That corrupt or uncorrupt, if they’re being corrupted by state interests as opposed to federal interests, then you’re vindicating the strength of the states. And to me, the founders set up two circuits of balance. In the federal government they set up the House, the Congress, the judiciary and the President to offset each other’s powers. And then they set up the federal powers versus the state sovereignty. The states technically created the federal government through the Constitution.
I can tell you there’s a very famous letter that was written after the Federal Convention had concluded in 1787. James Madison was woefully writing about – because he was defeated. He was resoundingly defeated, and he was whining to Jefferson that they had lost the negative over the state laws, and that in his words that the Congress would represent the people in their concerns, and the Senate would represent the states in their political concerns. They have it exactly right, and that is exactly how it’s supposed to be. And with the Seventeenth Amendment now you don’t even have a facsimile of that. continued
You have two houses of Congress, basically, one that is allegedly wiser than the other one; but they’re both running, I mean, they’re both deriving their power from people power and not representing the federal interests. And that’s what’s got to be corrected.
And the thing that is sometimes hard to explain, or at least believe you’re explaining, in a country that, we of course know we’re a representative republic. We’re not a democracy. But more generally we call ourselves a democracy.
We say, the people govern. And yet sometimes the best interests of the people, individually and collectively, is to have all these bits and pieces of deferred impact. That’s why we elect representatives. We don’t have plebiscites like some places do.
And so we can actually strengthen our rights as individual citizens of the state of Texas or the state of Montana or wherever we’re from, if we turn over the responsibility to a corporate body, the state legislature, to pick the senator, rather than each of us, because we might be voting for the senator the same reason we vote for a congressman or a governor, because we happen to think he’s the right guy. But we won’t be collectively having the impact of the state’s interests.
And that’s the tricky part and the brilliant part of our founders. They really understood how power was really used and how best to protect us from excessive governmental power.
And that’s what the Constitution’s all about.
"You have two houses of Congress, basically, one that is allegedly wiser than the other one;"
i wouldn't use the word wise as the differentiation of the two houses. they both contain politicians and one politician is no different than the other. a man does not become wiser by moving from one house to the other by the use of the election system. nor does he become less wise in a move in the other direction.
power is the differentiation. the states (as represented by the Senate) have greater power than the individuals (as represented by the House of Representatives) of the states for they have the power to rule while the people are the ruled. and we honor that power.
"We’re not a democracy."
that is true. in fact there can be no government that is truly a democracy. there has to always be some sort of representative form of government.
the word democracy, as used, is a misleading term. what it actually depicts is a process that is used for collective decision making where only a majority, except in special cases, is needed to depict the decision of the whole group.
and a specific number can be stipulated as to make a determination of the decision. we see that in regards to legislation that has been vetoed. we also see it in regards to the number of states needed to pass an amendment to the Constitution.
Griper -- ya caught that, didn't you. Yep wiser was a stretch.
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