Dear Mr. President-Elect:

Congratulations on your victory for all citizens.  Almost everyone seems excited to experience real change.  Too long has the will of America’s majority has been diluted by the power of the few.

For many Americans your election represents the beginning of the end for the manipulation of democracy; I am one such citizen.  And while I wouldn’t expect you to accept policy and direction from Joe the Admin, I am driven to reduce to writing my unschooled views on such matters and hope you forgive the indulgence.

If I were content to reduce my communication to an easily digestible bumper sticker phrase, it would be simply, “Change cannot be the same.” In more exhaustive fashion, here’s what that means to me… Representation is critical in a Democracy.

If the new promise of democracy is to be realized, an important priority for the nation must be the restoration of citizens’ representation.  The U.S. Constitution provides that the the size of the House of Representatives cannot exceed one member for every 30,000 citizens.  This Constitutional limitation was last approached in the late 1700’s.

The last increase in the number of representatives in the House of Representatives occurred in 1910 and many, many things have changed since then, including our population.  During the life of the U.S. Constitution, the number of citizens per congressional representative has risen from an average of one Representative for every 30,000 citizens in 1789, to one Representative for nearly 700,000 citizens in 2008.

For today’s citizen to have representation equal to that of the citizens in 1789, the House of Representatives would need to add more than 9,700 Representatives. This lack of adequate representation discourages participation in government and represents an unnecessary limitation on citizen input.  It has created a bottleneck in democracy that facilitates lobbyists in the easy combination of Representatives for improper purposes.  When this happens there is a further dilution of citizen input that manifests itself in laws that would not otherwise pass.

There can be no question that were Americans represented in adequate number, they would not today be watching the focus and resources of their government expended on bailing out “sophisticated” investors who purchased unregulated Credit Default Swaps - nor would they be funding the corporations that operated such Ponzi schemes.

The Internet provides new opportunity for citizens to have greater input and representation.  The advanced state of telecommunications software and equipment today makes accommodating a large number of Representatives easier than ever. Physical space limitations in Washington should no longer serve as an excuse to abridge democracy.