Up to and including the 13th Census in , Congress enacted a law designating the specific changes in the actual number of Representatives as well as the increase in the representation ratio.
The U. Census Bureau provides more information on this method of computing apportionment. In order to keep the House at a manageable number, Congress twice set the size of the House at voting Members—the then-existing number of Representatives. In , Congress designated the number of Representatives to be , with provisions made for two additional Members when Arizona and New Mexico were admitted to the Union see Act of August 8, , ch.
The 63rd Congress — was the first to have Members. The total membership of the House of Representatives is Members. There are Representatives from the 50 states. To determine the magic number, I ran an experiment in which, using this official method of apportionment, I calculated how many delegates each state would get for every number of total seats from to 1,, three times the current figure.
The results were curious. While the disparity declines as the House gets larger, as one would expect, there are certain key numbers of seats that are ideal.
Looking under the hood, these magic numbers occur when the last underrepresented small state gets the last available seat. Then, interestingly enough, it actually gets worse for obscenely large numbers of representatives.
The optimal value, within reason, is seats, which would look like this:. Here, four small states get two seats — Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming — while the rest get at least three. In none of the scenarios did the outcome of the election change, given that the winner-take-all system that almost every states uses for the Electoral College is impervious to the denominator. The question, of course, is what a member House of Representatives would look like. My suspicion is that it would be much more representative of the population it represents, with enough seats for a healthy variety of people from more than two parties and many walks of life, rather than the litany of lawyers and businessmen who make up the current roster.
And democracy has a deep bench. Just over 1, people will appear on a ballot in November, and thousands more made a respectable run in the primaries. Some are more qualified than others, but many would make reasonable lawmakers. The smaller the districts get, the lower the cost of entry becomes. Even if no number of seats can nullify the name recognition that an incumbent enjoys, the natural churn of members would increase, as would the odds of surprise upsets of the Eric Cantor variety.
A cast of nearly a thousand, in other words, would be chaos of the best variety. Wrangling members would be a nightmare for the House leadership and a dream for democracy. Fenway Park has changed, ocean liners are ancient history—but the House still has the same number of representatives today as it did then, even as the population has more than tripled—from 92 million to million. After the Census determined that more Americans lived in cities than in the rural areas, a nativist Congress with a racist Southern core faced its decennial responsibility of reapportioning a country that had experienced a large growth in immigrants.
The population had grown in ten years by 15 percent, to million. Recent immigrants lived in vibrant enclaves with their fellow countrymen. They spoke their mother tongues, shopped at ethnic stores and markets, partied at ethnic clubs, and attended ethnic plays and movies.
Earlier anti-inclusion acts had already restricted immigration from Asia. Harvey, general counsel of the Colored Council of Washington, who detailed the systematic discrimination against black voting. We have a white primary, which has nothing to do with the general election.
The n——— does not participate in the white primary. Eagles put it. Meanwhile, as Congress debated how to reapportion the country, women got the right to vote, and alcohol was banned. Mitchell Palmer, who feared the spread of Soviet-style Communism. By , the Ku Klux Klan had 4 million members.
The Klan was organized, lethal, and rapidly expanding to the West and Midwest. In the South, the Klan was Democratic, in the West and Midwest it was Republican, and everywhere its members saw a country where white Protestants were losing power and immigrants were ascendant. Keeping the number at ensured that Congress would not recognize the changes brought about by the African-American migration and the immigrant population growth in the Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities.
The South and rural America, which dominated the House, rejoiced. At the last minute, the Republican authors of the bill removed a decades-long requirement that districts be compact, contiguous, and of equal population.
The states were now free to draw districts of varying sizes and shapes, or to elect their representatives at large. At-large representation had actually existed before, at the beginning of the republic, but was made illegal over the course of the nineteenth century.
No one would have imagined that the racist, anti-urban, arbitrary number of would last, unchanged, for years. Certainly not the Framers of the Constitution, who believed that the House should grow with each decennial Census.
Communication with constituents today is more and more electronic than personal. Some members still do in-person town halls, though social media makes organizing to disrupt them easy. As the districts grow in size, the likelihood of having personal contact with House members diminishes. During my 18 years in Congress, the thousands of unscripted, often poignant, crazy, and contentious moments with my constituents shaped me and gave them a chance to take my measure.
Today, members and their constituents can instantaneously communicate with each other, but a digital presence is no substitute for the real thing. It is like watching Fourth of July fireworks on your iPhone. So what to do? I propose we do what the Founding Fathers thought made sense: Increase the size of the House of Representatives as the population grows so that it can become representative of the people once again.
I once raised the idea of increasing the size of the House with a prominent member. But what if the argument is not just about more members, but rather smaller and more representative districts and greater citizen access to their members?
And what if the result is a more diverse group of representatives and even, possibly, a reduction in the polarization that paralyzes Congress today? The first question is, what is the correct size of an expanded House? The Wyoming Rule provides one model for how to determine the size of new districts. In , the U. That would mean congressional districts of approximately , or so people.
Not exactly small but significantly better than the , it is likely to be in The number of members in the House would increase by , from to Big enough to make a difference, but without being unwieldy. The Wyoming rule has the virtue of requiring only a statutory change. So size is the first question. But it is not the only question. We also need to talk about how to expand the House. Similar instances of gerrymandering in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are being challenged in state courts.
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