Rep. Eric Gallager (no "h"!): what is your preferred size for it? I'm hosting a poll on the topic on Mastodon today: social.treehouse.systems/@egallager/1...

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 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.

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.

Wyoming rule gets you to that same ballpark and that's fine, too. But it wouldn't do what people often think, equalize district populations. It'd negligibly move the needle on that, it's inherent to doing state-based apportionment.

I also think the comparison to the UK is of limited relevance, considering how much less independence and power individual members are expected to have. And notably, they have been pushing to shrink it, though they haven't yet. But a backbencher MP is just a totally different job in many ways.

well what's the overall population trajectory in the UK? If it's still experiencing growth, then they can keep the size the same and just let the population catch up to it

They're not in negative population growth, at least not yet. Cube root rule they'd be about where you are in NH, 406. But the last few cycles they've talked about lowering it from 650 to 600 and that seems generally popular, but for muddled reasons it hasn't happened yet. Probably will, though.

Advocacy for a larger House (in the US) has popularized the idea some, and that's worthwhile. But "more politicians" is still terribly unpopular and you get a big kneejerk reaction against it. It's a huge uphill climb to get *any* increase, which is why I'm conservative on what's a feasible number.

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