HA-02 | Representation and Modernization of the House

Section 1. Voting Membership of the House

The voting membership of the House of Representatives shall consist of voting Local Representatives chosen by the People of lawful population-based constituencies within the several States.

Each voting Local Representative shall possess one equal legislative vote.

Each State shall be entitled to at least one voting Local Representative.

Section 2. Population Standard and Automatic Expansion

Following each decennial enumeration, the number of voting Local Representatives shall equal the smallest whole number sufficient to ensure that the national apportionment population divided by the total number of voting Local Representatives does not exceed two hundred fifty thousand persons.

For purposes of this Article, the national apportionment population shall consist of the persons counted for apportionment of Representatives among the several States under this Constitution and laws consistent with it.

Congress shall provide by law for a transparent, reproducible, and judicially reviewable method of apportionment among the several States.

Section 3. Constituencies

Voting Local Representatives shall be elected from lawful constituencies established under uniform national standards.

Constituencies may be single-member, multimember, or mixed as provided by law, but shall preserve substantially equal population, meaningful geographic or community accountability, direct popular election, and equal legislative voting authority.

No constituency shall be designed principally to favor or disadvantage a political party, candidate, incumbent, or class of voters.

Section 4. One National House and Distributed Presence

The House of Representatives shall remain one national legislative chamber.

A voting Local Representative may be constitutionally present for debate, quorum, and voting while participating from a certified public congressional facility through secure and independently auditable systems established by law and House rule.

Participation from a private residence, campaign office, or other uncertified location shall not constitute constitutional presence.

Section 5. Physical Assembly, Integrity, and Quorum

The House shall assemble physically at the seat of Government for its organization, selection of the Speaker and principal officers, and such other proceedings as this Constitution, law, or House rule requires.

The House shall reconvene physically when the integrity of distributed proceedings cannot be independently established.

Physical reconvening may be called by the Speaker of the House or by a majority vote of the Representatives.

No final vote taken during a material unresolved failure of identity, communication, record integrity, or equal member access shall have effect.

Section 6. Regional Congressional Delegate Regions

Congress shall establish Regional Congressional Delegate regions using whole voting Local Representative constituencies as the basic units. Each voting Local Representative constituency shall belong to exactly one region and shall not be divided between regions.

Each region shall be represented by one Regional Congressional Delegate.

Each region shall ordinarily contain approximately thirty voting Local Representatives. Congress and the lawful mapmaking authority may permit reasonable variation where necessary for geography, State boundaries, established communities, representation changes, or effective regional coordination. Population shall be an output of the Local-Representative structure rather than the primary measure of Regional Delegate workload.

Regions shall be geographically contiguous and shall follow State boundaries where practicable. For regional purposes, Alaska shall be treated as contiguous with Washington; Hawaii, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa shall be treated as contiguous with California; and Puerto Rico and the United States Caribbean territories shall be treated as contiguous with Florida.

Regional boundaries shall be established and reviewed under the same constitutional, statutory, and judicial principles governing congressional district lines, together with the requirements of this Article. They shall be publicly reviewable and shall not be designed principally to favor or disadvantage a political party, candidate, incumbent, or class of voters.

After congressional districts are reapportioned or redrawn, the responsible mapmaking authority shall adjust Regional Delegate regions as necessary before the next applicable Delegate selection cycle. A boundary change shall not shorten or terminate a Delegate term already underway.

The District constituting the seat of Government and each United States territory possessing an existing congressional Delegate or Resident Commissioner shall be assigned to a Regional Delegate region. That assignment is additive and shall not alter, diminish, replace, merge, or otherwise affect the existing Delegate or Resident Commissioner office. Such nonvoting offices shall not count toward the approximately thirty voting Local Representatives used to size the region.

Section 7. Regional Nominations and House Selection

Only a full voting Representative then serving a constituency within the region, residing within that region, satisfying the constitutional qualifications of a Representative, and possessing at least four full years of remaining eligibility under the Article governing Federal Elected Service and Constituent Confidence may be nominated or serve as a Regional Congressional Delegate.

Each region shall maintain its own independent nomination slate. Each voting Representative then serving a constituency within that region may nominate one eligible Representative, support an existing nomination, or abstain. A Representative may nominate that Representative's own candidacy if otherwise eligible.

Every nominee shall be verified for constitutional and service eligibility. An ineligible nominee shall be removed, and the slate shall continue with all remaining eligible nominees.

The regional slate shall be ordered from the greatest number of nominations received to the least. Nominees receiving the same number of nominations shall be listed in no particular order relative to one another. No minimum or maximum number of nominees is required, and a slate containing one eligible nominee is valid.

Existing nonvoting Delegates and the Resident Commissioner assigned to the region may nominate an eligible voting Representative but shall not cast a vote in the selection of the Regional Congressional Delegate.

The voting Representatives then serving constituencies within the region shall choose one nominee from that region's slate by simple majority. Detailed balloting, runoff, tie, and internal procedure shall be governed by House rule.

Only the single nominee selected by the voting Representatives of the region shall be transmitted to the Senate.

Section 8. Senate Confirmation and the One-Hundred-Eighty-Day Ceiling

The Senate shall confirm or reject the single House-selected nominee by simple majority. The Senate shall not choose among regional slate candidates, substitute another candidate, or acquire supervisory authority over the Delegate office.

The Senate may reject successive nominees during the ordinary selection period. A nominee rejected by the Senate shall be ineligible for that specific Regional Delegate seat during that selection cycle.

Following a rejection, the voting Representatives of the region may select another eligible nominee from the existing regional slate or, under House procedure, reopen nominations and establish a new regional slate.

The entire ordinary nomination, selection, and confirmation process shall be completed within one hundred eighty calendar days from the event that begins the selection process. No rejection, resubmission, renewed slate, recess, reconsideration, delay, or other procedural event shall restart, toll, suspend, or extend that period.

All nominations, regional selection votes, Senate confirmation or rejection votes, material delays, and formal procedural actions under this Section shall be public and recorded except for narrow information lawfully protected for personal privacy, active security, or another compelling constitutional purpose.

Section 9. Fallback Selection and Continuity

If no Regional Congressional Delegate has been chosen and confirmed when the one-hundred-eighty-calendar-day period expires, the ordinary confirmation process shall end and a thirty-calendar-day fallback period shall begin automatically.

During the fallback period, the voting Representatives then serving constituencies within the region shall select, by public and recorded vote, any otherwise eligible voting Representative from that region. Senate confirmation shall not be required.

If no person is selected before the thirty-calendar-day fallback period expires, one otherwise eligible voting Representative from that region shall be selected by lot through a public procedure prescribed by law in advance. That selection shall immediately complete the temporary appointment and shall require no further Senate action.

A Representative serving as a Delegate through the random fallback shall temporarily cease exercising the legislative vote of the Representative seat but shall not permanently vacate that seat. The seat shall remain open for the Representative's return and shall not be filled while the temporary Delegate service continues. When a nontemporary Delegate is validly selected, the temporary Delegate shall return to the original Representative seat for the remainder of that House term unless that term or the person's lawful eligibility has otherwise ended.

A temporary Delegate selected by lot shall serve until the voting Representatives of the region complete a valid replacement selection or until the maximum service period otherwise applicable to that temporary Delegate expires, whichever occurs first. All time actually served as temporary Delegate is covered federal elected service under the Article governing Federal Elected Service and Constituent Confidence.

Section 10. Confirmation, Assumption of Office, Terms, and Vacancies

Upon Senate confirmation in the ordinary process, the selected Representative's voting House seat shall become vacant. The resulting vacancy shall be filled under the ordinary constitutional and statutory procedures governing vacancies in the House. No separate transition delay is required before the person assumes the Regional Delegate office.

Each Regional Congressional Delegate shall receive an individual four-year term beginning upon lawful assumption of the Delegate office. Terms need not begin or end simultaneously, and no artificial staggering system is required.

A successor selected after resignation, removal, death, ineligibility, or another lawful vacancy-producing event shall begin a new full four-year Delegate term rather than complete the predecessor's remaining time.

A vacancy in a Regional Delegate office shall begin a new full nomination, House-selection, and Senate-confirmation process under this Article, including the same one-hundred-eighty-day ceiling and fallback rules. Previously nominated persons may be nominated again if eligible, but newly elected and sworn voting Representatives of the region shall have the same opportunity to participate in a nomination process that remains open.

If a nominee dies, withdraws, becomes disqualified, or otherwise can no longer serve while a slate is active, the slate shall continue with the remaining eligible nominees. A new slate is required only when no eligible nominee remains or when the voting Representatives of the region choose to reopen nominations under this Article.

A Delegate's four-year term shall continue across the end of one Congress and the beginning of another and shall not reset merely because a new Congress convenes.

Section 11. Service Eligibility and Government-Caused Delay

Service as a Regional Congressional Delegate, including temporary fallback service, is covered federal elected service under the Article governing Federal Elected Service and Constituent Confidence.

A nominee must possess at least four full years of remaining covered-service eligibility when formally nominated. A person who meets that requirement shall not become ineligible for the resulting four-year Delegate term solely because ordinary governmental processing materially consumes the person's remaining eligibility after nomination, unless the delay is materially attributable to the nominee's malfeasance.

A Delegate lawfully seated under that protection may complete the full four-year Delegate term. Any mandatory separation required by the Article governing Federal Elected Service and Constituent Confidence shall begin when that protected service ends.

Consecutive Delegate terms are permitted when, at each nomination, the person possesses at least four full years of remaining eligibility.

Section 12. Authority, Voting, Quorum, and Representative-Rule Incorporation

A Regional Congressional Delegate shall possess no legislative vote in the House and shall not be counted in determining a quorum of the House under Article I, Section 5.

Committee voting, Committee of the Whole participation, joint or conference committee participation, procedural voting, and subordinate procedural quorum treatment may be permitted to the same extent allowed by House rules for nonvoting congressional Delegates and the Resident Commissioner, but no such rule may confer a legislative vote in the House.

Except where this Article expressly provides otherwise or where a rule necessarily depends upon possession of a legislative vote, a Regional Congressional Delegate shall be subject to and protected by the same constitutional, statutory, ethical, procedural, administrative, compensation, office-resource, campaign-finance, disclosure, privilege, immunity, discipline, oath, credential, and institutional rules applicable to a sitting voting Representative or to existing nonvoting Delegates as the nature of the rule requires.

Regional Congressional Delegates shall not hold a voting Representative seat simultaneously except for the expressly temporary seat-preservation arrangement in Section 9. An ordinary Delegate may resign at any time and may seek or assume another office for which constitutionally eligible, but shall vacate the Delegate office before assuming an incompatible office.

Discipline, censure, and expulsion shall follow the House's existing constitutional authority and procedures. Temporary absence or incapacity does not create an acting or substitute Delegate and shall be treated under the same general rules applicable to a Representative.

The House shall judge disputed credentials, qualifications, and seating of Regional Congressional Delegates under its existing constitutional and procedural authority.

Section 13. Transparency, Security, and Public Accountability

Congress and the House shall provide by law and rule for public records of attendance, votes, technical interruptions, corrections, Delegate consultations, regional positions, nomination and confirmation actions, material security incidents, and use of fallback procedures, subject only to narrow and reviewable protections for ballot secrecy, personal privacy, active security vulnerabilities, and lawful investigations.

Distributed congressional systems shall include independent security testing, redundant communications, authenticated individual voting, auditable records, and physical and manual fallback procedures. The House shall reconvene physically at the seat of Government when the integrity of distributed proceedings cannot be independently established.

Physical reconvening may be called by the Speaker of the House or by a majority vote of the Representatives.

No final vote taken during a material unresolved failure of identity, communication, record integrity, or equal member access shall have effect.

Public procedure and attribution of responsibility are part of the constitutional safeguard. This Article does not attempt to prohibit every conceivable form of strategic delay or political manipulation where the conduct remains public and the constitutional mechanism continues to function.

Section 14. Independent Readiness Certification

The expanded and distributed House system and the Regional Congressional Delegate system shall not begin until an independent public authority established by law has certified that the apportionment, facilities, communications, security, accessibility, audit, continuity, and operating systems required for lawful implementation are ready.

A refusal or delay in certification shall identify each material deficiency, the evidence supporting that conclusion, and the corrective action required. Certification shall not be withheld because of disagreement with the constitutional policy established by this Article.

Actions and failures to act under this Section shall be subject to expedited judicial review. Failure to complete reasonably available preparation shall not suspend, extend, toll, or reset a constitutional implementation deadline.

Section 15. Enforcement and Effective Date

Congress shall have power to enforce and implement this Article by appropriate legislation, and the House shall have power to adopt rules consistent with it.

The population standard and expanded apportionment shall first apply following the first decennial enumeration completed at least three years after ratification, unless Congress by law provides an earlier transition using the most recent official apportionment population.

Regional boundaries shall be established after the voting Local Representative constituencies to which they apply are known. Regional Delegate selection shall begin only after the voting Representatives of those constituencies have taken office.

Nothing in this Article shall alter the election, term, or equal vote of any Senator.