Congress

the structure of congress

• bicameral- House of Representatives, the Senate
• one of the compromises devised by the Founding Fathers at the Philadelphia convention
• some delegates to the convention wanted the states to be equally represented in the legislature
• others wanted representation to be proportional to population
• in the lower house the states would be represented proportionally to their population
• in the upper house the states would be represented equally
• kept both the states with large populations and those with small populations content

house of representatives

• lower house
• 435 members
• represent a congressional district
• serve 2 year terms
• must be at least 25 years old
• must be a US citizen for at least 7 years
• must be resident of state they represent

senate

• upper house
• 100 members
• represent entire state
• serve 6 year terms
• must be at least 30 years old
• msut be a US citizen for at least 9 years
• must be resident of state they represent

• some delegates wanted to see the legislature directly elected by the people
• others thought the legislators should be indirectly elected
• the founding fathers decided that the House would be directly elected and the Senate would be indirectly elected by state legislatures
• continued until 1914- 17th amendment introduced direct elections for the senate
• whole of the house is elected every 2 years
• senators serve 6 year terms with 1/3 being up for re-election every 2 years

• in the House, each state has a certain number of members proportional to its population
• the number of representatives for each state is reapportioned after each 10 yearly census
• except in states that have just one representative, each member represents a sub division of the state known as a congressional district

the composition of congress

gender

• women have been persistently under-represented in congress
• 1992- democrats tried to focus on this issue; declared it the year of the woman; doubled the number of women in congress in one election
• gains in the last decade have been rather more modest
• majority of women in both houses are democrats- tends to attract the female vote
• 2016- 83 women in the House, 21% of the senate
• 62/83 women representatives were democrats
• 21/83 women representatives were republicans
• senate- 21 women, 16 democrats, 5 republicans
• women are under-represented in the pool of recruitment from which members of congress are commonly drawn
• 2017- 24.8% of state legislators were women
• only 13 states have more than 30% women state legislators
• 16 states where women make up less than 20% of state legislators

race

• representation by race is much better in the House than in the Senate
• federal courts have allowed states to draw congressional district boundaries to create districts that are likely to return a representative from an ethnic minority group
• the redrawing of district boundaries following the 1990 census clearly boosted African-American representation in the House
• 2017- all the african-american representatives were democrats
• 2005-08- Barack Obama of Illinois was the only african-american senator
• january 2017- 3 african-american senators
• low levels of representation in state legislatures
• …