The Connecticut Compromise

I like teachers. While it’s true that I’m no fan of Teacher’s Unions, and I think school choice should be considered seriously, teachers, as individuals, are a special breed. We entrust teachers with our most treasured assets, but as public employees, we also ask them to work with limited resources. Our teachers always rise to the challenge and should be appreciated accordingly. I certainly do.

With that in mind, I have a humble request for the education community. Can we land a bit harder on the Connecticut Compromise?

Here’s why I ask. Too often, I speak with people, young and old, who struggle to understand how Congress is structured and have little understanding of the thought process behind it. I also encounter readings that characterize rural states as being over-represented in the Senate, and by extension, in the Electoral College.

An awareness of the Connecticut Compromise, also known as the “Great” Compromise, unlocks the door to understanding the structure of Congress, but more importantly the rationale behind it. We don’t often think of it today, but our founding fathers had to work very hard to devise a structure that pulled 13 newly minted states with disparate economies, religions, and populations into a single system to benefit the common good.

The good news is that it doesn’t take a constitutional scholar to understand the Connecticut Compromise. Recognizing that the Articles of Confederation weren’t working, a congress was called in the summer of 1778 to rewrite and repair the ailing articles, but a small contingent led by James Madison had other ideas. Madison went to the assembly with a proposal for the formation of an entirely new government.

The Constitutional Congress tackled a wide variety of contentious issues, but the question of representation in the legislative branch was fairly straightforward. First, the Virginia Plan outlined a single-bodied legislature that tied the number of representatives from each state to that state’s population. Proportional representation was seen as favoring the “larger” states (Virginia was larger then) over “smaller” states (with populations fewer in number) and was challenged by many members of the delegation.

Then, New Jersey introduced the second plan that would give equal representation to each state but would have two houses. Having an equal number of votes for each state sounded fair to the less populated states, but did not allow the proportional representation desired by states with larger populations.

The Connecticut delegation, representing a mid-sized state, was looking for an equitable solution that would buffer the disparity between states with larger populations and the less populated states. It was a seldom-mentioned founding father named Roger Sherman of Connecticut who proposed what came to be known as the “Great Compromise.” Under the Connecticut plan, an upper house, roughly equivalent to the English House of Lords, would have equal representation from each of the states. That became our United States Senate. A lower house, much like the English House of Commons, would have proportional representation. That, of course, is our current house of representatives.

It’s as simple as that. Yes, there were other details to be considered such as election cycles, who gets to vote, and of course, two other branches of government. The sad-but-true Three-Fifths Compromise was also a product of the Continental Congress and if the classes I took are any indication, the discussion of slavery consumes classroom conversations much as it did in the Continental Congress. That said, it’s my hope that controversy doesn’t eclipse the gift given to us by Madison and Sherman.

With the anticipated overturn of Roe V. Wade and the resulting return of the contentious topic of abortion to the states, I think we’re all going to get a refresher course on the Tenth Amendment before the end of the summer. While a study of the Connecticut Compromise does not directly apply to the Tenth Amendment, the vast differences between the states that led us to the Connecticut plan remind us of the founders' desire to limit the powers of the Federal Government, which is the driving force behind the Tenth Amendment.

The real test of our understanding of the Connecticut Compromise will take place two years from now when the perennial criticisms of the Electoral College reemerge. We will recall that the number of electors for each state reflects our representation in Congress. In Nebraska, we have three seats in the House and two in the Senate, so we have a total of five votes in the Electoral College. California has 53 seats in the House and like all states, two in the Senate, so California has 55 electoral votes.

I can appreciate the frustrations of conservatives in solidly blue states and liberals in predominantly red states like ours, who feel somewhat disenfranchised under the current system. I also can’t blame an uneducated Californian or New Yorker who falls for the seductive simplicity of “one person, one vote.” It appeals to our sense of fairness, and without an understanding of the makeup of the legislative body that it mirrors, a popular vote can seem sensible.

I find it somewhat more difficult to hear a Nebraskan advocate for a popular presidential vote. It leaves me speechless. As it stands, our voices in presidential elections are limited to the previously mentioned five votes (out of 538). A move toward a popular vote would further diminish Nebraska’s modest influence in national elections, as well as that of other sparsely populated states.

Although it doesn’t happen frequently, I sometimes find myself having to defend the Electoral College. On such an occasion, my go-to illustration is Los Angeles County in California. As of the last census, the population of LA County clocked in at 10.4 million. That number exceeds the populations in 40 of our 50 states and runs a close tie with three more. That fact alone should end the argument, but an understanding of the Connecticut Compromise as a logical framework for balancing equal representation with proportional representation would preempt the conversation altogether. I don’t have any answers for nose rings and neck tattoos, but sharing the wisdom of the Connecticut compromise with our youth can only result in better citizenship and relatively fair elections.