Increase the size of the House!! [View all]

[moose65]

I don't know why this idea hasn't gained more traction.

The size of the average US House district is now well over 700,000 people. In some of the states that only have 1 member of Congress, the size of that 1 district is well over a million people. That is WAY too many people for 1 Representative.

The size of the House hasn't been changed in over 100 years. It was routinely increased after every census - including 1910, when the size of the House was set at 435 members. After the 1920 census, the size was not increased, because there were a lot of Representatives who saw that large cities were full of immigrants, and they didn't want them to have more representation (sound familiar)?

We now have the same number of Reps that we did in 1911, before New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii were states. The US population is now three times what it was then. Plus, women couldn't vote at that time, and neither could most African-American men. After the 2020 census, some states will lose Representatives, even though their populations increased. It's absolutely insane.

Plus, the number of electors is based on the number of Congressional districts. California is woefully under-represented in the Electoral College. California's population is almost 80 times that of Wyoming, but they only have 53 times as many representatives.

The Senate is already undemocratic. The House needs to make up for that!