Summary--Representation in Congress
Each state can decide how it wants to select its
delegates, but it must do so once a year, prior to
the annual meeting of Congress on the first
Monday of November.
States can send between two and seven delegates to
Congress. A delegate cannot serve for more than
three years in every six-year period. A delegate
cannot hold another position in the United States
government for which he receives any kind of
payment or benefit, either directly or indirectly.
Each state has one vote in Congress, irrespective
of how many delegates are sent.
Delegates' freedom of speech is protected while
they are serving in Congress. Delegates may not be
arrested or put in prison while they are in
Congress, or traveling to and from, unless they
have committed treason, a felony, or have been
guilty of breach of the peace.
Commentary
Article 5 strongly supports the sovereignty of
states clause of Article 2. Instead of outlining a
national system of elections to Congress, which
would be more reflective of the overall population
of the United States, the Articles of
Confederation require that each state provide
at least two delegates, regardless of the amount of
land, population size, or wealth of that state.
Although John Dickinson's original draft of the
Articles of Confederation included equal
representation in Congress regardless of state
size, other conservatives were deeply troubled
by the implications of this form of representation.
This issue became another debate between the
radicals on one side and the conservatives on
the other. The radicals argued that since the
government of the United States was a loose
confederation of equal and sovereign states,
they must be equally represented in that
confederation. Furthermore, radicals insisted that
Congress did not have the authority to determine
how elections were to be carried out in the
individual states, each of which had its own
constitution and means for holding elections.
Conservatives, on the other hand, hoped for a
strong centralized government and felt that only a
system of "national" representation would
effectively represent the people. In this form of
representation, elections would be administered by
Congress and would be the same in each state: the
people would be represented by a number of
delegates proportionate to the population in their
state. This method of representation places
sovereignty more firmly in the nation than the
state, and was deeply opposed by radicals.
The evolution of Benjamin Franklin's thinking
on the topic of representation is interesting
because it reflects the transition between a
colonial mindset and a young national mindset. When
Franklin drafted the Albany Plan of Union in
1754, he called for equal representation from each
colony to that congress (two per colony). However,
when he drafted the Articles of Confederation
and Perpetual Union in early 1776, he called
for a system of representation in which delegates
were chosen annually in proportion to their
population of males between the age of sixteen and
sixty (one delegate to every five thousand).
Franklin clearly distinguished between the union
created during the colonial period, which didn't
have much overall authority to begin with and could
be a loose confederation, and the necessity for the
young nation to place more authority in the hands
of a central government.
Article 5 also established some precedents for our
current national government. The years a delegate
could serve were restricted (term limits), they had
limited immunity from legal proceedings while
Congress was in session, and their freedom of
speech was guaranteed while in Congress.
