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Article I Section 2
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Although the original Constitution laid down a formula for representation based on population (and ''three fifths of all other Persons''), none of the delegates to the 1787 Convention really knew what the actual population of each of the states was. The initial apportionment of representation was merely a guess, but the Constitution did provide for a census of the population to be taken every ten years, a practice that began in 1790 and has continued to the present day.
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The ''sole Power of Impeachment'' referred only to the first step -- the equivalent of an indictment or bringing to trial -- in the removal of a federal official. The grounds for impeachment set down in Article II, Section 4 -- ''Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors'' -- have been subject to widely varying interpretations.
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The requirement that members of the House of Representatives reside in the state in which they were chosen reflected the belief that representatives, if they are to serve the people who elect them, must have close and meaningful ties to the communities in which those people live.
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The framers of the Constitution stipulated that members of the House of Representatives, the people's house, should serve relatively short terms of only two years, after which they would be required to seek reelection should they wish to continue to represent their state. The delegates could not agree on who should be allowed to vote for members of the House of Representatives, so they left the matter of voting requirements up to the state legislatures, which had up to that time set the qualifications for voters in each of the states. In 1787 all the states except New Jersey (which briefly permitted females to vote) limited the franchise to ''free men'' (a term usually interpreted to exclude free blacks) and most required that voters own at least some form of property. By the 1820s, most states had opened up the franchise to free white males regardless of whether they owned property. Subsequent amendments -- the Fifteenth, prohibiting the denial of the franchise on account of ''race, color, or previous condition of servitude''; the Nineteenth, enfranchising women, and the Twenty-sixth, a uniform voting age of eighteen -- served to create a common national standard for voting in national elections.
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The ''three-fifths of all other Persons'' referred to in this section is the result of the infamous ''three-fifths compromise,'' in which slaves, though not mentioned by name, were to be counted as three-fifths of a person in the apportionment 0f representation in the House of representatives as well as in the apportioning of the direct taxes to be paid by each state. The three-fifths ratio was a purely arbitrary one. It was a consequence of a fundamental contradiction that the Convention delegates were unable to resolve: slaves were human beings, but by the laws of most states they were also regarded as property. The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery rendered this portion of Article I, Section 2 null and void.
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