increasing the size of the_______is a good idea

[dead0man]

House of Reps is my answer

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

House of Reps is my answer

Agreed.

Partisan gerrymandering becomes harder, campaigning become less expensive, lobbying becomes more expensive, Reps become more accountable and responsive to their constituents.  No downsides really except the logistics of expanding the House chamber/office buildings/staff/etc.  But that would all be a drop in the bucket.

In a perfect world we would have New Hampshire's system (one legislator per ~3,300 residents), but that's obviously impossible to implement federally.

[dead0man]

House of Reps is my answer

Agreed.

Partisan gerrymandering becomes harder, campaigning become less expensive, lobbying becomes more expensive, Reps become more accountable and responsive to their constituents.  No downsides really except the logistics of expanding the House chamber/office buildings/staff/etc.  But that would all be a drop in the bucket.

In a perfect world we would have New Hampshire's system (one legislator per ~3,300 residents), but that's obviously impossible to implement federally.

yeah, a low number like 3,300 would be awesome.  Many people would actually know, personally, their rep without even trying to.  But yeah, clearly impossible.....unless Congress does most of their work from home and only meets once or twice a year in very large sports stadiums....hmmm, that would be like, 100k people, and the only stadiums that big are on Big 10 or SEC campuses. <looks it up>..and the Big 12 (Texas).  The Rose Bowl seats 90,000, they could do overflow in The Forum if for no other reason than the name fits.  The biggest stadiums in DC and NYC fit 82k, overflow should be easy to handle in those places too.  So yeah, they could rotate around the country, that would be fun.

[HillGoose]

Neither, make the government smaller

[Del Tachi]

House of Reps is my answer

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Both.

Given how the Supreme Court works, ideally there should be one per judicial circuit, which was the case until the Radical Republicans shrunk the court to keep Andrew Johnson from appointing justices.

And I've been a long term proponent of the cube root rule which was roughly followed until we fixed the size at 435 a century ago.

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

Well generally speaking, most men are within an acceptable range when it comes to the size of their unit, but I would say increasing the size is indeed a good idea if you're, say, under 4 inches.

Possibly might be a good idea to decrease the size if you're over 8 inches as well.



... Oh wait, that's not what you were talking about?

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Both.

Given how the Supreme Court works, ideally there should be one per judicial circuit, which was the case until the Radical Republicans shrunk the court to keep Andrew Johnson from appointing justices.

And I've been a long term proponent of the cube root rule which was roughly followed until we fixed the size at 435 a century ago.

This is good other than the part about the cube root rule, which I feel is less than ideal. The more I think about it honestly, the more I think a constant fixed quantity is a good idea. Maybe like 200,000 people per District (plus or minus a few in terms of national total vs national population based on the way Huntington Hill often makes totals non-exact slightly at random).

I also think a redraw of circuit court boundaries would be good, both to reduce the size of some of the gargantuan circuits like the 9th circuit, and to undo the gerrymandering that happened back in the 1860s that has resulted in very weird boundaries that have remained in place up to this point and the number of which should be increased as well.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Both.

Given how the Supreme Court works, ideally there should be one per judicial circuit, which was the case until the Radical Republicans shrunk the court to keep Andrew Johnson from appointing justices.

And I've been a long term proponent of the cube root rule which was roughly followed until we fixed the size at 435 a century ago.

This is good other than the part about the cube root rule, which I feel is less than ideal. The more I think about it honestly, the more I think a constant fixed quantity is a good idea. Maybe like 200,000 people per District (plus or minus a few in terms of national total vs national population based on the way Huntington Hill often makes totals non-exact slightly at random).

Using n^α as the size of a legislature for some value of α between 0 and 1, not necessarily 1/3 as in the cube root, rule allows balancing the desire for smaller district sizes and smaller legislature sizes be handled in a relatively automatic way as population changes over time. Using a fixed quantity implies that you think the size of the legislature is irrelevant which is utter nonsense.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I thought, before that packing SCOTUS was a bad idea, but since Gorsuch decision on death penalty changed my mind, and court packing is a must.

[The Mikado]

I prefer the Wyoming Rule for the size of the House, which would be 547.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

I prefer the Wyoming Rule for the size of the House, which would be 547.

Wyoming rule is literally the worst due to how arbitrary it is. It creates a paradox where its possible for the size of the legislature to increase while the total population decreases or vice versa.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Both.

Given how the Supreme Court works, ideally there should be one per judicial circuit, which was the case until the Radical Republicans shrunk the court to keep Andrew Johnson from appointing justices.

And I've been a long term proponent of the cube root rule which was roughly followed until we fixed the size at 435 a century ago.

This is good other than the part about the cube root rule, which I feel is less than ideal. The more I think about it honestly, the more I think a constant fixed quantity is a good idea. Maybe like 200,000 people per District (plus or minus a few in terms of national total vs national population based on the way Huntington Hill often makes totals non-exact slightly at random).

Using n^α as the size of a legislature for some value of α between 0 and 1, not necessarily 1/3 as in the cube root, rule allows balancing the desire for smaller district sizes and smaller legislature sizes be handled in a relatively automatic way as population changes over time. Using a fixed quantity implies that you think the size of the legislature is irrelevant which is utter nonsense.

I think the size of the legislature is relevant but that the pros and cons of such a situation tend to be evenly balanced against eachother to the extent that the only significant way in which things diverge from such is how it affects the general population per district.

[darklordoftech]

House of Reps is my answer

Agreed.

Partisan gerrymandering becomes harder, campaigning become less expensive, lobbying becomes more expensive, Reps become more accountable and responsive to their constituents.  No downsides really except the logistics of expanding the House chamber/office buildings/staff/etc.  But that would all be a drop in the bucket.

In a perfect world we would have New Hampshire's system (one legislator per ~3,300 residents), but that's obviously impossible to implement federally.

[The Mikado]

I prefer the Wyoming Rule for the size of the House, which would be 547.

Wyoming rule is literally the worst due to how arbitrary it is. It creates a paradox where its possible for the size of the legislature to increase while the total population decreases or vice versa.

It's not "arbitrary." Setting the standard of "the population of the smallest state = one district" is a very reasonable rule, with states getting seats based on how many multiples of that smallest state they are.

Could this system break down if, say, Wyoming lost a ton of people all of the sudden? Perhaps. I'd posit that the situation where Wyoming abruptly loses a gigantic chunk of its population so the house massively expands out of nowhere is probably a situation with a lot of other, more pressing problems.

The reverse "problem" isn't a problem at all. If Wyoming starts rapidly growing/overtakes Vermont so it becomes the Vermont Rule and the House shrinks, well, the disparity has shrunk too.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

House of Reps is my answer

Agreed.

Partisan gerrymandering becomes harder, campaigning become less expensive, lobbying becomes more expensive, Reps become more accountable and responsive to their constituents.  No downsides really except the logistics of expanding the House chamber/office buildings/staff/etc.  But that would all be a drop in the bucket.

In a perfect world we would have New Hampshire's system (one legislator per ~3,300 residents), but that's obviously impossible to implement federally.

[Sestak]

House definitely. 435 reps for 300+ million people is a travesty.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Increase the House to 650 members.

[The Mikado]

If you want more members in the House, you need to introduce at-large seats and ironclad party discipline. The place is already a freak show, and more members will only make that worse.

Is being a freak show really that undesirable, especially when the goal of increasing the House is to make the individual member and district increasingly less important?

Re: the SCOTUS, I tend to agree that expanding it isn't wise, but where does "9 is an unlucky number" come from? Also, if luck is the value, shouldn't 7 be the ideal number?