The Size of the US House of Representatives

Submitted by Fool in the Rain on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 7:17am. Tags:

Politics

Hi everyone!

I'm new here, but I wanted to get the ball rolling with the following topic:

Americans, in history, government, and civics classes from a very early age are taught that the two congressional houses are distinctly different in that the Senate has a static 2 senators per state while the House of Representatives is designed to grow with the size of the population.

The former is true, but seats in the House of Representatives have remained static at 435 since 1911. The Constitution wasn't amended; this was the result of a congressional action.

As a result, our per capita representation has declined to something like one rep per 500,000 citizens.

Personally, I think that this defeats the purpose of the House of Representatives. Not only does it naturally consolidate power to an increasingly smaller group, but it also promotes the gerrymandering of congressional districts.

Fixing this problem is also difficult, but it also seems to remain off the radar of contemporary discussion.

Very simply, I'd like to see the house size increase with the population again as it's supposed to. The ideal number of reps is debatable, but the UK currently has more reps for a fraction of the population that America has.

If the size does not increase, then that means power gets automatically consolidated when the population grows.

Arguments ranging from "more representatives= a more corrupt government" to "the Capital Building can't fit that many people" ring false to me given that more reps disperses power, and it's silly to say this branch of government should hinge upom the size of a building.

What do you think?
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Fool in the Rain's blog
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More reps, same total budget (#136684)

by Bird Dog on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 10:23am

It never made sense that smaller states have two Senators and only one or two representatives. They should have at least three, and the proportion can be extrapolated from there. BTW, welcome to this place. Do we call you Fool or Rain for short? ;)

"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton

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Same budget (#136687)

by Punditus Maximus on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 1:38pm

Pay peanuts, hire monkeys.

It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.

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That's the point (#136692)

by HankP on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 2:09pm

pay people with enormous influence very little money, and what kind of results do you think you'll get?

I blame it all on the Internet

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A watch which can be set... (#136726)

by Punditus Maximus on Mon, 11/17/2008 - 4:26am

...based on how regularly the officeholder can be claimed to not be a "true" conservative?

It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.

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I wonder... (#136496)

by Punditus Maximus on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 12:35pm

...if some reasonable topographical measure of gerrymandering could be derived, then used as a guide for implementing political boundaries in general.

It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.

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There is: it's called the Potts Model (#136543)

by BlaiseP on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 4:14pm

Detailed at Wolfram here

Application of Potts Model to gerrymandering (PDF)

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The Smaller States Would Oppose It (#136492)

by M Scott Eiland on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 12:23pm

It would weaken their impact in the Electoral College, as electoral votes per state = total representation in the House and Senate for that state. Small states outnumber larger states in the Senate, so legislation in Congress to increase the size of the House can't pass.

And with computers, gerrymandering smaller districts is a trivial exercise--it might even be easier than it once was.

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It's so much easier (#136499)

by HankP on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 12:52pm

it really should be called something different. With a decent GIS system you could literally move the borders of a district one house at a time, or do thousands of simulations to come up with the "best" district shape. Although it would be interesting to see fractal districts.

I blame it all on the Internet

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Welcome (#136485)

by Sulla on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 11:06am

All depends on what you believe the intent of the founders was I guess. If they wanted to keep the house small so the representatives kept in touch with their constituents then I think the ease of modern communication negates the need for the House of Representatives to keep pace with the population. There are a number of channels one could use to bring a problem to the attention of their Representative if they were so inclined and this was not the case at the time of the founding. However, if the intent of the founders was to diffuse power of each representative through maintaining some sort of ratio of congressmen to people, and this was done until 1911, then the house would need to be about 3 times the size it is today. I can see arguments both for and against increasing the house by that much, so I'll default to the founders original intention if that can be clearly determined.

"That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am!"- Dr. Seuss

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I'm not sure of your argument... (#136476)

by Wagster on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 8:57am

Why would smaller districts be harder to gerrymander?

And how is power being consolidated into a smaller group when the number of reps is the same? The opposite might be the case. The leadership is far more powerful in the House than it is in the Senate. Making the House even bigger might accentuate the relative power of the few top dogs.

Personally, I don't think I would be better served by a Rep who represented fewer people. My voice might be more important to him, but translated to the wider body, his power would be diluted.

Welcome, by the way.

More Wagster!

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I say their job most entails... (#136471)

by Bernard Guerrero on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 8:11am

....being "corrupt", insofar as that requires lying to build local voter coalitions and bringing home pork. Saddling them with smaller constituencies might actually reduce those two across the board. I'd live with some extra bribery in exchange.

The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer

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house size (#137571)

by Fool in the Rain on Sun, 11/23/2008 - 5:22am

Thanks for all of the replies.

To reply to some,

-call me Fool

-The argument that smaller states wouldn't support it is secondary to whether the house should expand. Personally, I think that, long before states started lining up on sides, the two political parties would kabosh it simply because it affords more opportunities for third parties to make in-roads.

IOW, I don't necessarily think it's feasible. I'm more concerned about whether it should happen.

-The house size wasn't frozen by amendment. It's the result of a congressional action. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but have you tried to look up this "house-size freeze" on the internet? Every high school history book explains that the house was designed to grow with population. An old CNN article since removed indicated that the house size was frozen to "curb the influence of foreign immigrants". That was 1911. Does that reflect how we want our contemporary House of representatives?

-The "I don't think more reps would give me better representation" leads to the question of when it would matter. There's currently one rep per 500,000 constituents. The UK has something like one rep per 40,000 people (600 or so MPs). 600 for 40 million people. We have 435 for almost 300 million. Whether your representation is manifest might simply come down to 1 rep per constituent. On the other hand, how many people per rep would be too many? A million? A billion? If size doesn't matter, how about 1 rep for all? Clearly, it does matter, and that's specifically why we have a senate and a house. One is supposed to grow. One not.

-Deferring to the Founding Fathers. I can appreciate that sentiment. What the Founding Fathers did was cap representation at 36,000 people per rep. What they were obviously controlling was having too many reps per capita. They should've capped it the other way. They didn't. Of course, they had no idea that the US would hit 300 million people. China would look spacious if you crammed 300 million people into the 13 colonies they were planning for. STILL, they did create a system that accommodated the much larger republic of 1911. What they didn't cover was Congress curbing its own size. I don't think their plan is an endorsement of the house freeze.

-Would smaller congressional districts reduce corruption? At the very least, it would make corruption more expensive. I'm not advocating having 10,000 reps, but, for argument's sake, yes, it would cost far more to "bribe" 10,000 reps than 435 (a completely arbitrary number).

-my intent wasn't to bring up gerrymandering, and it's not totally fair to call it gerrymandering when what the TWO parties are doing is completely legal. But again, eliminate the magic number 435 and replace it with 10,000. How much space is left to make weird, eyeglass-shaped congressional districts that stretch here and there? This is an extremely contemporary issue born of the house freeze. A Founding Father would be hard-pressed to envision districts being twisted into pretzels in a TWO-PARTY war for better control. If the house size hadn't been frozen, there'd be no need for GIS systems to determine congressional districts.

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