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House of Representatives, Electing
The framers of the U.S. Constitution intended the House of Representatives to be the branch of government closest to the people. The members would be popularly elected; the terms of office would be two years so that the representatives would not lose touch with their homes; and the House would be a numerous branch, with members having relatively small constituencies.
Today, more than two hundred years later, the House is still the people's branch, with members elected much as the framers intended. Unlike senate elections, which were fundamentally changed by the Seventeenth Amendment, House elections remain basically the same, except that the legislature itself has grown along with the population, bringing added expense and complexity to the electoral process.
The Senate, fixed at two senators for each state regardless of population, has grown from the original twenty-six members to 100. From sixty-five seats in the First Congress, the House has swelled to its current size of 435 seats, beginning in 2011. Some critics—in what appears a distinctly minority opinion at this juncture of American history—say that this number has become insufficient, noting the vast growth of the nation's population over the past century: whereas House members represented an average of 212,000 people following the 1910 census, their average constituency had more than tripled to over 700,000 people after the 2010 census.
The Constitution set few qualifications for House membership. To be eligible, one must be at least twenty-five years old, a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, and a resident of the state from which elected. From time to time the states, and even the House itself, have tried to add to those requirements, but the Supreme Court has invalidated such efforts as unconstitutional. (See house of representatives, qualifications.)
Term Length and Limits
The two-year term for House members was a compromise at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Many delegates wanted annual elections, believing they would make the House more responsive to the wishes of the people. James Madison, however, had argued for a three-year term, to allow representatives time to gain knowledge and experience in national and local affairs before they had to stand for reelection.
Proposals have been made to extend the term to four years; the last time was in 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson urged it in his State of the Union message. With House members making up the largest part of the House chamber audience, Johnson's proposal received loud applause. Afterward, however, critics argued that making the terms coincide with the president's four-year term would create a House of “coattail riders” and end the minority party's tendency to make gains in midterm elections. The proposed constitutional amendment never emerged from committee.
During the 1990s another concern arose—that House members serve too long, despite having to run for reelection every two years. incumbency, in the view of many observers, leads to stagnation of ideas, concentration of power among a few individuals, and a shift from party-centered campaigns to candidate-centered campaigns where the challenger is at a disadvantage. Turnover in the modern House elections in most years is low, unlike in the pre–Civil War era when about half the members were newcomers after each election.
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