John Rogers: I will not clutter up the thread which inspired this thought, but will instead start a new one as your regular reminder that the true villain of American government is the Reapportionment Act of 1929.

I will not clutter up the thread which inspired this thought, but will instead start a new one as your regular reminder that the true villain of American government is the Reapportionment Act of 1929.

Many of you have heard the sermon before, but every time I inspire one more person to Google it, I consider it time well spent.

It's a little like LEVERAGE; I always consider that at least part of the job is to make people go "Well, that can't be true, I should look that up what the ACTUAL fuck?"

Tangenting to Leverage for a moment, I've been watching it with my teenagers, and they now *expect* me to pause the show after the villains are identified and explain the real-world references to them. It's been a fantastic early-21st-century-history crash course.

A horrible horrible crash course!

Yes, but an efficient one for explaining the short-term answer to "how did we get here"!!

Oh, the humanity.

I got through 2 paragraphs of the wiki before I hit WAIT WHAT?? But I’m too tired to grasp the ramifications. But something is definitely *wrong* there I can tell that much

This article cleared it up for me. fivethirtyeight.com/features/how...

How The House Got Stuck At 435 Seatsfivethirtyeight.com Apportionment, or the process of determining the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives, happens like clockwork at this point. Ever…

Thank you!

The ramification is that populous states are forever underrepresented in Congress and the states with small populations are forever overrepresented. Apportion electoral votes and House representation correctly, and baby we would be Denmark in a heartbeat instead of worrying about a fascist takeover.

(I am extremely worried about waking up in Hungary the day after the election.)

Sigh. Too fair.

AHA! Thank you so much, that was the small words I needed today!

You're very welcome. I first read about this on electoral-vote.com some years ago. It's horrifying. 1929: before the Great Depression, before FDR, before WWII, before California became a behemoth and turned liberal....

The impact on the electoral college and the House is actually pretty minimal from a partisan perspective. The Senate, of course, is a different story.

Can you explain that, please? It doesn't fit with what I have read.

Wait, all those asshats on Leverage were based on real life asshats? Now I really wish the paybacks were!

We toned them down from the real people they were based on.

Kinda fucked up how the real thing is *so fucked up* that you have to pull back because people will just think you made all that nonsense up and then 9x out of 10 they STILL think you went too far. "Couldn't have this been more realistic? People don't..." and so forth. You're made of stronger stuff.

Over on the bad site he related about (I think cheerleading?), and how everyone working on that one was OMGWTFBBQ on the source material.

"Reality Is Unrealistic" is my absolute most hated trope. :'(

And you do it SO well!

hail-fellow-well-met 👍

The Reapportionment Act of 1929 (freezing the # of districts at 435) was absolutely terrible. More + smaller districts obv wouldn't be a magic bullet, but it would make the House in general much more representative, make a lot more seats competitive, + mitigate the worst of the Electoral College

Oh Jeebus… 🤦‍♂️

I stan the Wyoming Rule: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming...

Wyoming Rule - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

WYOMING RULE!

11,000 Congressional Representatives As Per The Constitution!

Wyoming Rule & 3 Senators per state, please 👍 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming...

Hadn't thought about 3 senators per state, but it WOULD insure the every-two-years PER STATE, which is nice.

Not my idea obviously, but picked it up from bsky.app/profile/greg... a few years back 👍

Ahh you stole from @gregdoucette.bsky.social (it's not snitch tagging if it's a compliment?), good choice of source material. Hadn't seen this and I follow him.

At the cost of making small states even more over-represented. No thank you.

WYOMING RULE.... times 4!

My preference is the One Tenth Wyoming rule — basically, adds a significant figure. Wyoming gets 10, everybody else scales. Also increase house size to nearly 6,000

I’m a double Wyoming guy, I’d be at 1200 or so.

pass this on january 21, 2025

Are you suggesting that the size of the House shouldn’t be limited by the seating capacity of a 175-year old building? How could the House possibly hold votes if they can’t all be in the same room at the same time?!?

People have thought about how to handle this (gift link) wapo.st/3Vx38GC

Opinion | Can the Capitol hold a much bigger House? Yes, here’s how it would look.wapo.st A team of architectural and information designers showed me that more is possible than I imagined.

Yeah, that was sarcasm. There’s obviously any number of ways to solve that problem.

Sorry, there really are people who think that's a serious argument. And it's a great article!

No worries. Sarcasm is always a risk online and it is a great article.

This is my quest as well! It doesn't just harm congressional representation, it makes the Electoral College worse. The more the population of a single district grows, bigger the +2 Senate advantage becomes in presidential elections.

You are so right. It would be better to switch to direct election of President, but that requires a Constitutional amendment. This doesn't.

On a pettier scale, this is me always bringing up the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in discussions of the music industry and broadcast media.

I yell about this ALL THE TIME when people start saying we have to change the Senate and/or Electoral College, as if it were possible to amend the least amendable part of the Constitution instead of just repealing a freakin' law!

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