Radically expanding the House of Representatives would help solve some of the biggest problems facing Congress and, by extension, the country.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/10/28/to-fix-congress-make-it-bigger-much-bigger/
The First Amendment wasn’t supposed to be the first amendment. It’s mostly forgotten today, but Congress originally sent twelve of James Madison’s proposed constitutional amendments to the states for ratification; the ten that were ratified are what we now call the Bill of Rights. If all twelve had gotten through, the U.S. House of Representatives today might be at about 6,000 members, instead of 435. That’s because Madison’s original first amendment specified a precise formula for representation. Initially, each House member would represent 30,000 people. For the first Congress, this meant just sixty-five members. Then, when the House got to 100 members, the ratio would go to 40,000 to one. When it got to 200 members, the ratio would go to 50,000 to one. That was as far as it got.
“It is a sound and important principle that the representative ought to be acquainted with the interests and circumstances of his constituents,” Madison wrote in Federalist 56. As the new nation’s population grew, then, the “People’s House” should stay close to the people. But Madison’s forward-looking amendment was always at least one state short of the three-quarters needed for ratification. Still, for the next 120 years, Congress generally acted in accordance with the spirit of the lost first amendment. While the number of senators remained constitutionally fixed at two per state, Congress passed decennial legislation to increase the size of the House following each census. By 1832, it had grown to 240 members. After some stasis in the mid-nineteenth century (Congress was preoccupied with other things then), the House grew consistently in the post–Civil War era, rising to 433 after the 1910 census.
The 1912 admission to the union of Arizona and New Mexico, which as states were constitutionally entitled to at least one representative, brought the number to 435, with one representative for every 211,000 constituents. But even as Congress passed the Apportionment Act of 1911, rumblings about a too-big House were growing. And so was the nation: between the 1910 and 1920 censuses, the population swelled by 15 percent, from 92 million to 106 million. Much of that growth came in the form of immigration to cities like New York and Chicago. To keep the ratio at 211,000 to one would have meant adding another seventy representatives. The House couldn’t agree on a plan, with representatives from less populous, rural states fearing a dilution of their power. So, for the first time following a census, it didn’t reapportion at all.
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Look across the globe, and you’ll see that the United States is an outlier. In the United Kingdom (population 66 million), the House of Commons has 650 members, one for every 101,000 Brits. Germany’s Bundestag has 709 members, one for every 116,000 Germans. Only India (population 1.3 billion) has more constituents per representative in its lower house, the Lok Sabha. But in India, individual state governments have more autonomy than in the U.S., making the national legislature less important.
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I think 250,000 people per House Rep is a good ratio.
The House grew consistently in the post–Civil War era, rising to 433 after the 1910 census. (around 213,000 to one House rep before AZ and NM joined as States to kick it to 435)
It was not increased after the 1920 Census
It was capped by Congressional Act in 1929 (when it was roughly 282,000 to 1)
213,000 + 282,000 is 495,000, so the average for that 20 years is almost 250,000 per House rep.
The US population at the time of the 2020 Census was 331,449,281.
That yields 1,326 US House reps, but you have to add ONE, so it's an odd number (so no ties).
1,327 member of the US House
(until the 2030 Census is finished and we will increase that a bit to keep the 250,000 to 1 ratio)
The US population is likely not going to keep increasing at the current rate over the next 50 to 100 years. It could be only around 236,000,000 by 2100, after an increase and then decrease, so we will not be setting upon a course where the House will someday hit 2,000 in size (the US would have to have 500 million people to do that).
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