Is It Reasonable To Keep The House at 435 Members?
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  Political Geography & Demographics (Moderators: muon2, 15 Down, 35 To Go)
  Is It Reasonable To Keep The House at 435 Members?
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Author Topic: Is It Reasonable To Keep The House at 435 Members?  (Read 3907 times)
Free Palestine
FallenMorgan
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« on: December 23, 2010, 06:34:43 PM »

I think it's awful that states lose representation simply because they do not grow as fast as other states, or because another state is admitted into the union, simply to maintain an arbitrary size of 435 members, which was set at a time when the U.S. had a fraction of the modern population.
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Napoleon
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« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2010, 06:39:32 PM »

The problem with the House is that distircting is based on population.

It should be based on voters.

435 is a large enough number. Members still need to be able to build personal relationships. I think most states and other countries have too many representatives.
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DrScholl
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« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2010, 06:56:05 PM »

I don't think it's reasonable at all. The average size of a district after the next reapportionment will be over 700,000. Of course, our country is so large, the size of districts is going to be very large, but it should be around 400,000 to 500,000, which is a more reasonable size.
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Franzl
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« Reply #3 on: December 23, 2010, 07:07:10 PM »

The size doesn't really matter...the way the districts are drawn is more important.
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Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)
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« Reply #4 on: December 23, 2010, 08:34:13 PM »

I don't think its very reasonable, but a better question would be "Is it practical to increase the size of the House every decade?" I agree that it's more difficult for coherent districts to exist as the population of each district goes up, but how long will it be before the size of the House becomes too large for the House chamber? The government will have to start renting football stadiums for joint sessions of Congress.

I've seen some people on this forum advocate the "cube root rule," where the number of seats is equal to the cube root of the population. If we apply this rule to the 2010 population, the House would have about 675 members, or about one per 460,000 people. This seems a bit more reasonable, but it's still possible for states to lose representation. If the population increases by 10 percent between now and 2020, the size of the House will only increase to about 700 members- an increase of only 3.7%. If one of the larger states lags behind in growth, it could still lose representation to other, faster growing states. The only real way to guarantee that states don't lose representation is to make the cutoff point the minimum number of seats where no state would lose representation.
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Padfoot
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« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2010, 01:43:29 AM »

Rather than using the cube root rule, I think that its better to just say that the average congressional district size cannot exceed the population of the smallest state by more than say 10% or so.  If you divide the population of the fifty states by the population of Wyoming there would be about 544 members of the House.

I think there may be a lot of pressure to increase the number of representatives if Rhode Island loses its 2nd seat or if Montana's population reaches 1 million.  Also, if/when Puerto Rico becomes a state there would also likely be some sort of permanent increase in the size of the House.
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bgwah
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« Reply #6 on: December 24, 2010, 01:50:50 AM »

I think there may be a lot of pressure to increase the number of representatives if Rhode Island loses its 2nd seat or if Montana's population reaches 1 million.  Also, if/when Puerto Rico becomes a state there would also likely be some sort of permanent increase in the size of the House.

There wasn't a permanent increase when Hawaii and Alaska became states. The number temporarily increased to 437 before going back down to 435 after the 1960 census... But I would hope that if PR or DC ever become states, they would just permanently increase the size accordingly. Tongue
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Napoleon
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« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2010, 01:54:11 AM »

I think it's awful that states lose representation simply because they do not grow as fast as other states, or because another state is admitted into the union, simply to maintain an arbitrary size of 435 members, which was set at a time when the U.S. had a fraction of the modern population.

States are represented in the Senate, I might add.
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Lunar
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« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2010, 02:05:06 AM »

435 seems like a particularly random number.  Something like 501 or 499 would have a feeling of cohesiveness to it.
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Landslide Lyndon
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« Reply #9 on: December 24, 2010, 02:12:51 AM »

Increasing the number of House members will also have the effect of diluting the overblown clout that small states have on the electoral college.
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #10 on: December 24, 2010, 03:55:10 AM »

Well, states lose relative representation regardless of what the size of the House is. Whether a steadily increasing House size is good for the incentives of Congressmen is ambiguous. It might make it hard to recruit good candidates for districts that are going to be eliminated during the next redistricting, but it might also make it harder for weaker incumbents to lose.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #11 on: December 26, 2010, 08:00:29 PM »

I think there may be a lot of pressure to increase the number of representatives if Rhode Island loses its 2nd seat or if Montana's population reaches 1 million.  Also, if/when Puerto Rico becomes a state there would also likely be some sort of permanent increase in the size of the House.

There wasn't a permanent increase when Hawaii and Alaska became states. The number temporarily increased to 437 before going back down to 435 after the 1960 census... But I would hope that if PR or DC ever become states, they would just permanently increase the size accordingly. Tongue

It went back to 435 automatically.  The way the current apportionment law stands, if a State is admitted, the House automatically reverts to 435 after the next reapportionment.

Maybe that law would be overridden if Puerto Rico became a State, since going back down to 435 would require 6 or 7 other States to lose a Representative at the next reapportionment.  DC won't become a State anytime soon, and even if it did, 1 State losing out won't cause a change in the way the law concerning the size of the House to be made.  It's too dependent upon the Federal largess for the Democrats to be happy about it becoming a State in the usual manner, and too Democratic for the Republicans to agree to an amendment that would make DC a quasi-State still eligible to be treated differently than other States for the Federal largess.
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phk
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« Reply #12 on: December 26, 2010, 08:06:52 PM »

No we should just follow the cube root rule at the end of every year and increase the number of reps from 435 it to 678 reps for 2010. For around like 450,000 people per CD.
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Globus Cruciger
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« Reply #13 on: December 26, 2010, 08:33:35 PM »

Haha no it is certainly not reasonable. I would say increase it to a nice even 500, and then keep it that way for at least a century.
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Free Palestine
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« Reply #14 on: December 26, 2010, 08:37:30 PM »

Haha no it is certainly not reasonable. I would say increase it to a nice even 500, and then keep it that way for at least a century.

That wouldn't really solve the problem.  You'd soon have a system where each member of the House represents more than a million people.  And people wonder why the House is a semi-oligarchy.  Roll Eyes
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Verily
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« Reply #15 on: December 27, 2010, 12:35:36 AM »

Yeah, really. We need at least a thousand members of the House to get reasonable and adequate representation. And no, I'm not joking. I'd want around 3,000 members. 1 per 100,000 people seems reasonable to me (and is what the relatively far more functional FPTP systems in Britain and Canada use, vaguely).
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Free Palestine
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« Reply #16 on: December 27, 2010, 03:04:59 AM »

Yeah, really. We need at least a thousand members of the House to get reasonable and adequate representation. And no, I'm not joking. I'd want around 3,000 members. 1 per 100,000 people seems reasonable to me (and is what the relatively far more functional FPTP systems in Britain and Canada use, vaguely).

I'd be happy with one for every two-hundred-thousand.

The only legislatures that have existed, to my knowledge, that have had a thousand or more members have been the rubber-stamp legislature of the Soviet Union, and the Chinese legislature, which is likely ineffective for other reasons besides it's huge size.  So, we don't really know if a thousand-person legislature would be so ineffective.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #17 on: December 27, 2010, 05:30:52 AM »

No, it's not reasonable at all. Really, how can one single person represent more than 700 000 people ?
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #18 on: December 27, 2010, 02:10:06 PM »

Yeah, really. We need at least a thousand members of the House to get reasonable and adequate representation. And no, I'm not joking. I'd want around 3,000 members. 1 per 100,000 people seems reasonable to me (and is what the relatively far more functional FPTP systems in Britain and Canada use, vaguely).

I've never seen an example of a cohesive legislature with more than about 800 members.
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Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon
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« Reply #19 on: December 27, 2010, 02:22:20 PM »

Does anyone know how many physical seats there are (or could be fit in) the current chamber. 

I don't think a chamber of 600 or 700 members would work that well, but even a slight increase of 50 or 60 members would help.   I strongly support whatever number of increase would net Tennessee a 10th Congressional district Smiley 

At some point in our lifetimes each congressman could represent a million people or more - which is way outside the bounds of what our founding fathers envisioned.
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Dave from Michigan
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« Reply #20 on: December 27, 2010, 02:47:59 PM »

I strongly support increasing the size of congress. Personally I would gradually go up to 800 members. Most likely to 500 members right away, 600 in 2020, 700 in 2030, and 800 in 2040. This seems like a good way to do it. Doubling the size of the House overnight might be too radical of an idea to pass. Unfortunately it seems to me that any large increase in the size of the House isn't going to happen anytime soon. There just seems so much going against it. First of all, why would congress want to dilute it's own power by having more congressman. Plus as many people have stated here, how would a larger house function, and how big is too big. Secondly try selling this too the American people. Don't get me wrong there are great arguements in favor of inlarging congress but especially in this anti government times, and the anger over government spending, I can see people getting pissed if this was proposed. Of course this is quite unfortunate because increasing the size of the House of Representatives, would be a benefit to the american people. Also another thought, this would have to be a bipartisan proposal or the opposition party could call it a seat grab (I realize this would not be true at all since it's unknown how the seats would be drawn and would would most likely have a lot of toss up seats, but we all know how politics works). I can't see either party being happy with a seat increase, It would make it harder for the political parties to control seats through gerrymandering, and I don't think the political establishment wants to give up any power they have.

mostly everyone here supports the idea of a larger house of representatives but, what do you think about it actually happening. What could be done to make it happen.

This may sound stupid but could the courts force a increase, I'm not sure how this could or would happen. Is Congress allowed to just freeze the size of the House of Representative.
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muon2
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« Reply #21 on: December 27, 2010, 03:03:01 PM »

Does anyone know how many physical seats there are (or could be fit in) the current chamber. 

I don't think a chamber of 600 or 700 members would work that well, but even a slight increase of 50 or 60 members would help.   I strongly support whatever number of increase would net Tennessee a 10th Congressional district Smiley 

At some point in our lifetimes each congressman could represent a million people or more - which is way outside the bounds of what our founding fathers envisioned.

I asked that question when I toured the Capitol about 10 years ago. The answer I got was that 600 could certainly be accommodated. The respondent noted that the 535 combined members of Congress all fit comfortably along with other dignitaries for the State of the Union.
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J. J.
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« Reply #22 on: December 27, 2010, 03:11:08 PM »

I don't think it's reasonable at all. The average size of a district after the next reapportionment will be over 700,000. Of course, our country is so large, the size of districts is going to be very large, but it should be around 400,000 to 500,000, which is a more reasonable size.

I agree.  Even though we've added new states, we are still fixed at 435.
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Free Palestine
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« Reply #23 on: December 27, 2010, 03:43:28 PM »

Yeah, really. We need at least a thousand members of the House to get reasonable and adequate representation. And no, I'm not joking. I'd want around 3,000 members. 1 per 100,000 people seems reasonable to me (and is what the relatively far more functional FPTP systems in Britain and Canada use, vaguely).

I've never seen an example of a cohesive legislature with more than about 800 members.

I haven't seen a legislature with more than eight-hundred members, except in China and the Soviet Union, and the problem with those should be obvious.
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Hatman 🍁
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« Reply #24 on: December 28, 2010, 01:14:04 PM »

while 1 per 100,000 would be ideal on a local basis, I think maybe that should be the goal on the state level. Federally, a 1000 member Congress may be the most appropriate number (but no more than that)
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