The Permanent Appointment Act of 1929 froze the number of Representatives at 435. At that time, each Rep covered approximately 300,000 people. Now, they “represent” almost 800,000. Removing this cap would immediately add 725 new districts if we went back to 300,000 constituents. Districts would be redrawn and gerrymandering would be much more difficult. It would also require House members to form coalitions and would force the Representatives to be much more in touch with his or her constituents. Lobbying would be less effective and the power of these seats would be diluted so as not to attract power hungry people as readily.
I agree, I’d even be fine with pushing a “minimum/maximum” population representation amendment (at the founding each representative represented ~33,000 citizens/voters). Could make it so that a district must have a minimum of 100k and not exceed 300k
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I think the number of seats should follow a well defined function of the population, with some wiggle room to minimize the differences between constituency sizes in different states. A linear function has the potential to increase the size very quickly, which can lead to challenges in the practical operation of the chamber. The cube root rule is a decent proposal, but I’m partial to a scaled square root rule:
seats = SQRT( population / 500 )
Basically, every time the number of seats increases by 1, each seat represents 500 more people. And to double the chamber size, the population has to quadruple.
Within certain ranges it is pretty close to the cube root rule. But I prefer this because it gives more reasonable sizes for lower populations, that can be applied to a city council: My function says a town of 50,000 people should have a council with 10 members. Meanwhile, the cube rule suggests a council of 37, and any linear function suggests this population is too small to justify having a council at all.
For Congress, this suggests a chamber size of around 814, going by the last census. Constituency size would be slightly more than 400,000.
That said, I haven’t worked out a specific size, because the specific number of seats should also consider state apportionment. The goal would be to minimize the average discrepancy in constituency sizes between states. I think up to a 5% increase over the ideal chamber size is reasonable, so I’d check the sizes from 814 to 854, and simply choose whichever number results in the most equal constituencies.
The House of Representatives Chambers would not have enough seats for the members if we go much above 450 members. We could add a few more seats, but nothing near 725.
Should be directly tied to population and should have no cap on number of members. They don’t all need to be in the building / room at the same time. They can create House rules to work around it.
Pay should also be removed and set by the individual States.
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Technology now makes it possible for a larger House of Representatives to communicate and debate without need to congregate in a single chamber.
Allow for one Representative per 30,000 constituents as originally allowed under the Constitution.
Capping Congress has made it easier for special interests to exert the greatest influence over members of the House.
Make our representatives accountable to their neighbors once again.
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“The smallness of the proportion of Representatives had been considered by many members of the Convention, an insufficient security for the rights & interests of the people. He acknowledged that it had always appeared to himself among the exceptionable parts of the plan; and late as the present moment was for admitting amendments, he thought this of so much consequence that it would give much satisfaction to see it adopted.” – George Washington’s comments at the Constitutional Convention on the need to preserve liberty by changing the proposed representation ratio in congress from 1:40,000 to 1:30,000; as recorded by James Madison, 17 September 1787.
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Wyoming generally has the smallest population, and as such gets one house seat. The population of the lowest population state should be the maximum population for any congressional district. Districts can be smaller, but they should all be as close to the population of the least populated state. This would also solve the problem of what happens if we add states to the union. The house would not have to decrease in number to add to Senators for a new state, congress would just increase in size.
Wyoming only gets 1 because we’ve capped it and no longer base it on a ratio of 1 Rep per 30,000.
Under the original constitution, Wyoming would get 19-20 Reps.
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