For many Americans, the most directly impactful thing their member of Congress may do in their lives is not necessarily pass legislation but provide constituent service. In district offices across the country, congressional staff pick up the phones to help constituents navigate challenges with the federal bureaucracy; answer questions about government services; and direct resources like grants and earmarks. In an era when 83 percent of Americans say their elected officials “don’t care about what people like me think,” constituent service is one of Congress’ strongest tools to address this trust deficit by demonstrating accountability, caring, competence, and a commitment to solving shared problems.

Today, each member of Congress is (in theory) accountable to all people living in one congressional district who request their assistance. But recently, some reformers have suggested that proportional multi-member districts would better represent Americans than the existing model of single-member districts, meaning that constituents would have more than one member representing them in both the House and — as is already the case — the Senate.

Advocates of structural congressional reform, including advocates for a shift to proportional representation and multi-member districts, believe that moving away from the winner-take-all nature of congressional elections could help address challenges related to the two-party doom loop, including mitigating political polarization, addressing gridlock, and providing alternatives for constituents who currently do not feel effectively represented by either party or an elected member they did not vote for.

However, such a major change raises many questions about constituent service: As a constituent, what happens to constituent service when I don’t have just one representative but many? Whom do I contact? And will they care as much about me?

Although we do not advocate for any particular system in this paper, we explore the implications of a multi-party system for constituent services and representative governance. We describe the mechanics of how constituent service operations work in Congress today, and provide initial directions and considerations on how constituent service could work in proportional multi-member districts in a U.S. context.

We establish working definitions for both casework and proportional representation systems; discuss the mechanics of casework in Congress today; and contrast today’s casework to hypothetical new systems under a proportional representation system. We also explore potential tradeoffs to different models, and survey the international political science literature for clues as to how these tradeoffs may play out in the U.S.

Key Takeaways