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I was very excited to be introduced to Thirty-Thousand.org. The first introduction on the site states an obvious fact:
435 can not faithfully represent 300,000,000 Americans.
Our constitution designed the House of Representatives to represent the people of the United States (while the senate was meant to represent the states as soverign powers within the union). The number of representatives was intended to expand or contract with the population. In 1913 the Congress capped the number of Representatives at 435 which would be apportioned according to the relative population of the states. This is what causes situations where Utah and North Carolina are essentially competing with each other for a representative (which is what happened in 2000). The result is that representatives can never be truly equal among states. For example, California has 18 times as many representatives in Congress as Utah, but they only have 15 times the population of Utah.
When the Constitution was being constructed the founders settled on 30,000 as the minimum number of people that each district should have (hence the name of the site). Considering the advances in communication I believe that a representative could possibly be expected to represent more than 30,000 people so I would be open to choosing a new number for our modern congressional districts, but I am confident that the number should only be a small fraction of the 700,000 that the average congressional district contains now. The result of returning to the original practice would be that each state would receive the number of representatives that their population warranted without issues of deciding which state was more deserving of "that last seat"
The more I have thought about this the more I realize that it could also address two other issues that I care about. Those who would like to see the electoral college abolished should try expanding the electoral college by expanding the house of representatives. This would increase the chances of the electoral college reflecting the outcome of the popular vote – especially if the states were to discontinue block voting in the electoral college. Also, if the representatives were apportioned not simply according to populate but according to voting population it would provide incentive for people to take their voting seriously since voting in low numbers could lower the number of representatives that would be sent from low voting areas for ten years (I’m assuming that apportionment of representatives would still be based on the decennial census).
We should return to a system where the number of representatives is based on the population of the state and not on the relative population of the state compared to the population of other states. This would bring us closer in line with the constitution in a very important way and has the potential of other very positive side effects.
2 replies on “Expand Congress”
Count me in on this. I believe much good would come from representatives that were more accountable to the people. Perfect? No, but better than what we have today.
This effort will be fought hammer and tongs by everyone in the political class, as it will diminish power and personal fiefdoms.
Yes, no member of Congress who is primarily interested in keeping their job would support this (I’ll bet that is the vast majority of Congress). I’d love to see this change made and then watch the chaos that ensued when thousands of new congressmen were sworn in and committee assignments were handed out.