We the People: Constitution has a reason for House terms being only 2 years

In the We the People series, The Spokesman-Review examines a question from the Naturalization Test immigrants must pass to become United States citizens.

Today’s question: How long is a term for a member of the House of Representatives.

Members of the House are elected every two years, although it sometimes may seem like they are running for re-election as soon as the votes are counted from the last election.

The framers of the Constitution intended for the House to be the most democratic element of the federal government, said Lawrence Hatter, a Washington State University professor of history who specializes in colonial and early American history.

They were familiar with the English system, which had a Parliament with a House of Commons and a House of Lords, and a monarch with his court. Many had also served in their colonial governments.

“They feared too much democracy would lead to anarchy and too much power (in the executive) would lead to other things,” Hatter said.

They gave House members the shortest terms – two years compared with six for the Senate and four for the president – and direct elections. Senators were chosen by the states, often by their legislatures, and the president was chosen by the Electoral College.

In the Federalist Papers, which framers such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote to urge the states to adopt the Constitution, the House is described as the part of federal government that “should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people.”

“Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence can be effectually secured,” either Madison or Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper No. 52 under the pen name Publius.

How frequent was a question discussed at the Constitutional Convention, that paper suggests. They looked to the British system, where parliamentary elections were held from three to seven years, depending on the king, and to the current state legislatures, where some elections were held every six months and others every one or two years, while some colonial legislatures had terms as long as seven years.

The framers also were suspicious of the corrupting power of government, Hatter said. They set up a system where each branch, with different powers, was a check on the others.

Because they would have to answer more frequently to the people, Paper No. 52 concluded members of the House would be less tempted to “seducing.”

Because they were suspicious of the corrupting aspects of power, many people were suspicious of those who actively sought political office.

“The framers were averse to the idea of political parties,” Hatter said. “Anyone who is seeking power is someone you should be suspicious of.”

Initially there was little active campaigning. Early members of the House were those who had been powerful in their states before the revolution.

“Anyone who was too vigorously campaigning was accused of being in it for their own interests,” Hatter said.

In some respects, Hatter said, today’s elections are more democratic than in the framers’ time, because all adult citizens – not just white, male property owners – are eligible to vote and people vote by secret ballot, not in public gatherings. They’d be concerned about campaign financing, he added.

But differences between the states and regions within the new nation led to divisions that helped create the Federalists, who like John Adams and Hamilton advocated for a stronger federal government, and the Democratic Republicans, like Thomas Jefferson, who supported states’ rights.

Adams won, and so did the Federalists, in 1796, and they increased their margin slightly in 1798. But in the election of 1800 two Democratic Republicans, Jefferson and Aaron Burr, tied in the Electoral College and the election for president was sent to the House. Although the Democratic Republicans had captured the most House seats in that election, they hadn’t yet been sworn in when the chamber had to decide who would be president. Federalists, led by Hamilton, eventually decided the election in favor of Jefferson.

Sometimes, when a president is elected, his party gains a majority or increases it in the House. When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, members of the relatively new Republican Party gained the majority. The same thing happened for Republican William McKinley in 1896, Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 2012, Warren Harding in 1920 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

Other times the presidential elections don’t change the House majority. Democrats controlled the House for much of the late 1800s while most of the presidents were Republicans. Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan won elections without the GOP gaining control of the House.

The off-year election for the House can signal a change in public sentiment for a president. Democrats increased their majority in the House by 50 seats in the 1958 election, suggesting unhappiness with some aspects of Republican Dwight Eisenhower’s administration. Two years later, Democrat John Kennedy beat Nixon, who was Eisenhower’s vice president.

More recently, Democrats had an 82-seat majority in the House after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992; after the 1994 election, Republicans had a 26-seat majority. Democrat Barack Obama had a 79-seat House majority when he started his first term; two years later Republicans had a 49-seat majority. Donald Trump started his first term with a 47-seat Republican majority, two years later, Democrats had a 36-seat majority. Joe Biden had 10-seat Democratic majority after his 2020 election; two years later the Republicans had a nine-seat majority. The Republican majority after Trump’s second election was five seats, the narrowest in history, suggesting a hotly contested midterm next year.

The framers were determined to keep control of the budget with Congress and made sure all spending bills started in the House. Hatter said.

The most democratic part of the government was to have the power of the purse.

Since his inauguration, the Trump administration has closed or reduced many federal agencies and refused to spend money appropriated by Congress.

“They would say that’s unconstitutional, I think,” Hatter said.