Date Thesis Awarded

4-2024

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelors of Arts (BA)

Department

Government

Advisor

C. Lawrence Evans

Committee Members

John B. Gilmour

Salvatore Saporito

Abstract

This is the first study of countermajoritarianism in the House of Representatives. Although the House is considered a majoritarian institution, intrastate malapportionment remained rampant prior to the 1964 Wesberry decision; the three-fifths clause drove systematic antebellum differences in the number of free people in northern and southern House districts; and widespread voter discrimination in the South led to systematically different levels of turnout. Combined, these factors potentialized roll calls in which the chamber’s majority did not actually represent more free individuals, voters, or electoral supporters than the minority. Using three separate measures, I characterize such outcomes as countermajoritarian. I find that before Wesberry, the principle of district population equality went mostly unenforced. Countermajoritarian outcomes were common in the antebellum era, and the turnout and support measures peaked in the twentieth century and fell after the Voting Rights Act. I also examine the prevalence of such outcomes across time, legislative issues, motion types, and motion significance. I also include a case study on the countermajoritarian legislative history of slavery in the antebellum era, demonstrating the importance of the three-fifths clause on the protection of the institution. I conclude with some thoughts about the contemporary House as a contingent, path-dependent institution. Importantly, this study qualifies modern scholarship on the House: despite valid concerns about gerrymandering, the urban-rural divide, interstate malapportionment, and apportionment equations, the contemporary House is a dramatically more majoritarian institution than at any other point in its history.

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