In elementary civics class, we were taught about the Bill of Rights. I can list the first five off the top of my head — 1)freedom of speech / religion / assembly, 2)guns, 3)no quartering soldiers, 4)no unreasonable searches, and 5)no self-incrimination — but I only vaguely recall the rest. But did you know this wasn't the original list? Number 1 was actually supposed to be Number 3. The actual first amendment was this:

After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

When I read this the other day, my eyes fucking popped out because this would've completely changed everything. At the moment we have about 313 million people in the US and 435 representatives in the House, meaning each member represents about 700,000 people. Because we put a cap on the amount of representatives, your vote will be diluted as the population grows. Soon each politician will have a million constituents. Apparently at the Constitutional Convention they anticipated this and heavily debated the population ratio per representative. George Washington himself declared 40,000 was too many, What would he say if he saw the 700,000 today!

For over a century even without the amendment the US tried to maintain a reasonable proportion. It was only in 1929 when this was changed with the Permanent Apportion Act. At that time the Republicans were in control of both houses plus the presidency, and could see the writing on the wall: People were moving to cities and cities tended to be Democrat. So to prevent this they refused to do the traditional reapportions and put the cap at 435 people, which was the amount of representatives at the time.

Either way though I think we're screwed. With the way things are, your individual voice is gradually becoming less and less powerful in congress. However if we changed it to the original intentions, say 60,000 people, that means we'd have about 5,000 representatives. Imagine the gridlock now in Washington, and now imagine it with so many more people demanding time to speak on the House floor, never mind all these new voices yelling at each other. There's also not physical space for all these people. So yeah, have fun this Independence Day, knowing the House is going to hell!