HeyJaredDaniel Franklin
I'm a retired professor of political science at Georgia State University. My specialties are presidential politics, film and politics and voting.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
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- Sep 16, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
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Suppose We Doubled the Size of the House of Representatives (opens the original)
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The United States House of Representatives has 435 voting members. Most Americans probably assume that number is somehow embedded in the Constitution.It isn’t.The Constitution did address the relationship between population and representation, but it did not fix the size of the House. Article I provided that there could be no more than one representative for every 30,000 people. In other words, it set a minimum population for each representative, but no maximum size for the House.For most of Ame
The Godfather and the Primordial Appeal of The Mafia Ethic (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="328" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!naqb!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7fe4201-2d90-4ae0-87bb-112e52ccb52c_443x328.jpeg"
Suppose We Did This? (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="300" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lZ6F!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F164e3f92-d30e-463f-952e-933b7d66c70a_400x300.jpeg"
The Justice Department Is Already Reined In (opens the original)
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What exactly does it mean to say that the Justice Department works for the President?The President appoints the Attorney General. He exercises broad authority over the executive branch. He can establish policy priorities, supervise personnel, and, within the limits of the law, direct the work of the Justice Department.But the Justice Department is not quite like most other executive agencies.The reason is easy to overlook: the people who exercise much of its authority are lawyers.Justice Departm
Suppose we did this? (opens the original)
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I want to try something a little different: an occasional series of political thought experiments.Each piece will begin with the same question: Suppose we did this?The idea is not necessarily to advocate a particular reform. Some of these proposals I may favor; others I may not. Instead, I want to take institutional changes seriously enough to game them out. If we changed a rule, what would actually happen? How would politicians and voters adapt? Who would gain and who would lose? Would the refo
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