T.C. Aurelius: Watching the British election returns I feel compelled to point out that the 650 person House of Commons represents 67 million people and the 435 person House of Representatives in the United States represents 333 million. Replace the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. We deserve representation.

Watching the British election returns I feel compelled to point out that the 650 person House of Commons represents 67 million people and the 435 person House of Representatives in the United States represents 333 million. Replace the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. We deserve representation.

I'm starting to get hostile and ridiculous replies, so I'm limiting replies at this point.

speaking of feeling compelled to point things out, I'll add that the 400 person New Hampshire House of Representatives represents 1.4 million people

LOL, Ohio has 11.8 million people and our House has a whopping 99 seats (two thirds of whom are Republicans, even though Trump only got 53% in 2020). ballotpedia.org/Ohio_General...

Ohio General Assemblyballotpedia.org Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

If we followed the so-called "Cube Root Rule," we would have around 690 members of the House of Representatives. I don't think that's too many. We already have one house of Congress where the small states are over-represented. It's stupid to have _both_ houses that way.

Back of the napkin, if we knocked the average pop represented from ~750k to 500k even we could have 666 house members 🤘🤘

I get your point and agree with it, but also I just did head math to see what our legislature would look like if we kept it proportional to the British numbers and whoa.

We don’t need to match the British ratio, though, just make it so each state has the same representation proportionally. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming...

Wyoming Rule - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

Wyoming Rule doesn't do much for population disparity in district size. Currently, the ratio of the smallest district to the largest district is 1.83. Under the Wyoming rule, it'd be 1.76. There's no way to get it much lower than that without a much larger increase or districts crossing state lines.

Main benefit for increasing the size of the House would be it allows you to potentially do multi-member districts, which would be a good electoral reform. Fewer single-seat states. But taking district population from 800k to 600k... meh. That's no huge boon for more local representation.

1/100k, which is ~what the brits have seems like a good number to me. Call it about 3300 reps. It's not like they all need to be physically in one place, and as long as you randomized speaking order, I think they'd eventually realize it's all been said before it gets to them.

what is your preferred size for it? I'm hosting a poll on the topic on Mastodon today: social.treehouse.systems/@egallager/1...

Rep. Eric Gallager (no "h"!) (@[email protected])social.treehouse.systems #MastodonPoll: What is your ideal size for the U.S. House of Representatives? #ExpandTheHouse [ ] 435 (current size) [ ] 543 (Wyoming Rule) [ ] 650 (UK House of Commons) [ ] 690 (Cube Root Rule, simp...

Cube root rule less the number of senators is how I'd write it. That'd be 592 as of the last census. Close enough to the status quo you're not totally blowing up the House as it exists and how it works, big enough to enable all but a few smallest states to do multi-member districts.

Interestingly, the size that the US House would be under the Wyoming Rule (543) is also the size of India's Lok Sabha: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lok_Sabha

Lok Sabha - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Yes, this.

For sure, which is why I said I got the point and agreed with it.

You use cube root of population to get your national legislature (about 693 in House). One added benefit? Increasing the membership of the Electoral College, which is Constitutionally tied to number of Congressional reps.

annoying thing about the cube root rule is that it produces a range of results based on which apportionment rule you use; I've seen it produce values from 690 to 695...

I may be high, so help me with the math?

We have about 5x their population, so 3,250ish legislators?

I unironically believe the Federal government should buy Capital One Arena when the Wizards vacate it and renovate it for use by a vastly expanded legislature.

I was thinking this would take an actual sporting venue to accomplish and I kinda love what that would say about American politics.

"The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California for 5 minutes."

In Ohio, state representative districts have around twice as many people as UK parliamentary constituencies.

But honestly… that’s okay?

It's wild to think about a legislature bigger then the entire Federal Highway Administration.

Shouldn’t it be, though? Like if it’s gotta represent the views of a lot of people, it should be a lot of people.

Call it one per 100k people? I don't have a problem with this. Representatives should actually be able to meet with a significant fraction of their constituency.

Congress would have to form a mini congress and elect their own representatives

Congresses all the way down.

Huh! Thanks! 🙂

As it should be. It's a big country. We all should have a say.

That’s great. The more reps the harder it is to gerrymander. We need each individual person in government to have LESS power. It’s harder to capture a system of government if it has more people in charge.

Merely doubling the number of Representatives would still be a dramatic improvement.

About one per county.

Counties don't correlate consistently with population.

Right; I only mentioned it because of how coincidentally that proportion dovetailed with how much we split up local governance.

The standard poli sci rule is not 1-1 but is to follow the cube root law by which representatives are the cube root of the population, with each representative representing a number of people equal to the number of representatives, squared. This would give the US 692 representatives.

One seat should represent whatever number represents the smallest state population. That would be Wyoming iirc, so each representative should represent like 580k people.

Yep. A super easy fix. Reapportionment if and as needed every ten years, immediately after the census. Would also mitigate, though not cure, the antidemocratic effect of the Electoral College.

Yes!

In the first United States Congress, one Congressman represented about 57,000 people. That seems like a good starting point. I think our government would actually be more functional with 5800 Congresspersons in the House.

The change this would make to the electoral college alone would be such a huge deal.

We need like a minimum of 1,503 House members.

We need more seats just to lower the barrier to entry for citizens who want to participate along with major reforms for ballot access and voting

The only time George Washington offered an opinion during the Constitutional Convention was to urge a lower number for apportionment - one representative per 30,000, because one per 40,000 was unacceptable.

I want to see a ~3200 person house of representatives meet

Here ya go

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