The People’s House and the Founders’ Design
Across the episodes, the House of Representatives is identified as the only body in the federal government elected directly by the people. Harlow Giles Unger states that the founders wanted the House and that it was the only body elected directly by the people, a point Bob Zadek echoes by calling it the People’s House. How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013)
Randall Holcombe makes the same structural point in his shorthand that the founders designed the government to be one-sixth democratic. He reasons that the three branches were meant to check and balance each other and thus to be roughly equal in power; within the legislative branch, the House of Representatives is the democratic part because representatives were elected by the people. [[episodes/john_marini_on__unmasking_the_administrative_state|John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State (2019)]]
Holcombe repeats the one-sixth formulation in a later episode, again locating the democratic element in the House: representatives were elected by the people, while senators were chosen by state legislatures, justices were appointed, and the President was chosen by an Electoral College and ultimately by the House. Randall G. Holcombe on Liberty in Peril (2019)
Bob Zadek draws out the implication in the earlier episode: at the founding, the President was not elected by the people but indirectly through the Electoral College, senators were elected by the state houses, and the courts were not elected by the people. The only direct election that existed at the time, he says, was the House of Representatives, so one-half of one-third of the federal government was governed by pure democracy. He reads this as evidence of the founders’ distrust of and discomfort with direct election. How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013)
Powers and Structure
Unger describes the House as having more powers than any other branch of government. He states that the President’s signature on a law can be vetoed, but the signature of no law can become law without the signature of the Speaker of the House, so the Speaker has the ultimate say. The Speaker determines which bills come up for a vote and which are tabled and left to die. How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013)
Unger also calls the House the grand jury of the nation, noting that only the House can impeach or indict other federal officials, including the President. He describes the Speaker as the elect of the elect: members of the House are elected, and they in turn elect the Speaker. Unlike the Senate president, the Speaker is a member of the House and can vote and debate. The Vice President, who presides over the Senate, is not a member of the Senate and cannot debate or vote except in the event of a tie. How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013)
The House and the Electoral College
Holcombe explains that if nobody gets an electoral majority, the House of Representatives chooses the President. The Constitution originally said the House chooses among the top five vote-getters; that was changed by the 12th Amendment to the top three electoral vote-getters. [[episodes/john_marini_on__unmasking_the_administrative_state|John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State (2019)]]
He describes the founders’ expectation that most electors would vote for a favorite son candidate from their state, which meant that in most cases nobody would get an electoral majority, so it would be up to the House to choose from the top electoral vote-getters. In that vision, the Electoral College would be like a search committee of experts forwarding a list of names to the House. [[episodes/john_marini_on__unmasking_the_administrative_state|John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State (2019)]]
Holcombe notes that the Constitution never specified how states choose their electors, and that by the 1820s most states had gone to popular voting for electors; the last state to do so was South Carolina, after the Civil War. He concludes that only members of the House of Representatives would have been accountable to the voters under the original design. Randall G. Holcombe on Liberty in Peril (2019)
Gerrymandering and the Case for Self-Districting
Ned Foley calls the House of Representatives the part of the system most like a parliamentary system and says the first structural thing to do is address gerrymandering, which he describes as self-interested politicians manipulating boundaries to protect themselves from voters. He argues that gerrymandering creates a cultural environment in which politicians think they can manipulate any rule to hold on to power, and he connects it to election denialism and the refusal to count electoral votes, not as gerrymandering per se but as a product of it. Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022)
Foley proposes self-districting: giving voters themselves the power to identify what district they want to be on, rather than letting politicians choose districts and manipulate boundaries. He argues that the danger of gerrymandering is how uncompetitive it makes congressional races, and that the House, which was supposed to be most responsive to changing views of the voters, has become the least responsive because of the loss of competitive districts. Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022)
Bob Zadek says he had presented a gerrymandering cure almost identical to Foley’s, and that no one has adopted it. He calls gerrymandering as serious a problem as can get because it breaks the link between voter and representative, and says the link is manufactured. He states that 96% of the seats are uncompetitive through gerrymandering, calling it fake democracy, and notes that the House was at the founding the only part of government directly elected. Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022)
Foley adds that the requirement to have districts is not in the Constitution but an act of Congress first adopted, he thinks, in 1842. He notes that in the old days some states chose at-large elections for their House seats, citing New Jersey in the 1830s, when all of the representatives were elected statewide rather than by district, so there was no gerrymandering problem. He observes that California has 55 seats and Wyoming only one, and that seats are allocated to each state based on population. Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022)
Foley raises a question about what kind of legislature is preferable: one with a demographic diversity of voices — farmers, workers, people from different regions and ages — or one in which every representative mirrors the majority of the electorate as a whole. He suggests legislative debate is better with a diversity of voices. Enhancing Trust in Democracy (2022)
A National Referendum Proposal
In a parting thought on healthcare, Bob Zadek proposes that whatever healthcare legislation is passed in the House, in the Senate, and signed by President Obama carry one caveat: it cannot be effective unless ratified by the very next Congress. He frames this as giving Americans a chance to vote collectively, a national referendum on healthcare, and asks why Americans cannot vote directly on something that will affect everybody profoundly for generations. He calls for a national referendum on healthcare, saying the country is a democracy and the issue is too important to leave to the legislature. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
Across episodes: the House as the democratic part
The same question — how democratic the House is, and whether that democracy has been lost — is argued in more than one episode. In the 2013 episode, Harlow Giles Unger and Bob Zadek treat the House as the founders’ deliberate experiment in direct election, the People’s House with the grand jury power of impeachment and a Speaker who controls the agenda. In the 2019 episodes, Randall Holcombe restates the founding design as one-sixth democratic, with the House as the only accountable part, and traces the Electoral College’s intended role in choosing the President and falling back to the House. In the 2022 episode, Ned Foley shifts the frame from founding design to present dysfunction, arguing that gerrymandering has made the House the least responsive branch and proposing self-districting; Bob Zadek says he had advanced an almost identical cure. What changes between the earlier and later treatment is the emphasis: the earlier episodes describe the House’s democratic character as a founding achievement, while the later episode describes that character as undermined by districting. The 2010 episode adds a separate proposal, Bob Zadek’s call for a national referendum on healthcare, which treats the House as the body whose legislation should be subject to direct ratification.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the state in which any city mentioned is located, the name of any healthcare bill, or what any case held or which amendment it turned on beyond the 12th Amendment’s change to the top three electoral vote-getters. They do not give the founding date of the House, the full text of any constitutional provision, or the ending of sentences that break off mid-thought. No excerpt states the outcome of the healthcare legislation Bob Zadek discusses, nor the results of any election or redistricting round. The sources also do not describe the House’s committee structure, its size, or its relationship to the Senate beyond the points quoted.