The House of Representatives is too small. Here is one way to fix it.
Video Overview & Insights
For more than a century, the size of the House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 seats; in that same period, the US population has tripled. This means that today, the average representative is responsible for more than 750,000 constituents. Scholars and politicians say this imbalance is why many Americans feel like Congress is disconnected from them.
6:19 why not triple the numbers since we have triple the population since the cap?? The only reason not to is to harm republicans.
So what if weâŠadded more seats? Thatâs what Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) is proposing in a new bill because he believes itâs closer to what the countryâs founders originally envisioned. While expanding Congress could make our ratio of voters to representatives smaller, it also raises a difficult question: Can a larger, more crowded legislature actually govern, or are we just adding more voices to the gridlock? Vox dives into the math, the history, and the potential future of a "bigger" American democracy.
Read more about expanding the House of Representatives:
How to fix the government: More Government
The Case for Enlarging the House of Representatives, a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, co-authored by Lee Drutman, whoâs featured in the video.
https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house
Destiny had a chat on YouTube channel this week with a smart guy talking about all of this. We need UN CAP the house
Protect Democracy:
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/expanding-the-house-of-representatives-explained/
We'd need way more than one rep per 500,000 people but it's a start i guess
The text of Rep. Sean Castenâs bill:
https://casten.house.gov/imo/media/doc/equal_voices_act_119th.pdf
Now we're talking about packing the House?
The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929:
https://www.census.gov/topics/public-sector/congressional-apportionment/about/historical-perspective.html
as a non-american no it's not, it's your electoral system brother, this is just a patch
US population keeps growing, but House of Representatives is same size as in Taft era:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/05/31/u-s-population-keeps-growing-but-house-of-representatives-is-same-size-as-in-taft-era/
A 1050 house membership would be nice.
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I agree with expanding the house, ideally using the Wyoming Rule. In my perfect world, then, each state would elect its representatives at-large using party-list proportional voting.
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The problem isn't the number of congressmen. 435 is most likely plenty enough to represent even the diverse interests of the people all over the nation. The problem is that we only have 2 choices for each one of those 435 seats, which is no better than having just 2 seats. And in reality almost all of us actually only have 1 choice due to gerrymandering. And when you have no alternatives, that means it's actually 0 choices.
If you actually want to fix the House of representatives then you need to get rid of districts entirely. The only reason we had district representatives originally was because transportation and communication was so slow back in the day that you'd only ever know about people living near you, so it made sense for voters to elect someone who lived near them. But today the district system is completely obsolete. Instead, we should allow voters to vote for anyone they want, and the representatives would get as much voting power in congress and they got as a share of all the votes from the people. If a Representative gets 1 % of the vote, then they have 1% of the voting power in Congress. That would get rid of gerrymandering, break the 2 party system since no one is going to restrict themselves to just 1 of 2 parties when there are representatives who more accurately align with them on all their policy goals and priorities than either of the 2 parties do today. And it would allow geographically dispersed populations get representation instead of only allowing geographically concentrated groups that power.
Just expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives does nothing to address the actual problems.
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Cube Root.
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Vox only posts stuff like this when the Democrats power
More User Perspectives
The US is a Republic not a reprasentative democracy...
@evertisakjulius2249The House of Representatives is too large, should only be around 200-300 seats
@somebodyoncetoldme186Yeah 500 000 per district is right for the usa
@andrelandry548Sounds to me like there is no way to solve the democracy problem and that a non-democratic Republic might just be the only way of governing.
@thomaswdeesCanada has 343 MPs for 10 times less the you guys ... 100,000 people to 1 MP is our bench mark.
@jameshenrieAlso it would cost more money as well ,,, more moey fr staff.
@jameshenrieProportional representation is a trap, if it implies that representatives would need the consent of a political party to go on the ticket and be elected (which for almost all proportional systems in the world, it is the case)
@pepitodecremaI feel like mr Beatâs efforts are paying off!!
@ArgyJackalSame with states.. we need more states
@bigtobacco1098But USA is not a Parliamentary democracy, so why bother with more representatives?
@AntoinecalligrapherHow do we pay for all this buracracy. We need to move more power to the states where our representative our closer to us.
@RandyHilbert-w3cI honestly believe itâs too big. I think you need to have two senators and two congress members per state. You have areas of the country voting on national decisions that have absolutely no direct impact on those areas like Iâm sorry I donât care what some dude in a district in Tennessee thinks about artificial intelligence or tech industry jobs in California and I donât think that some dude in a state like South Dakota that relies heavily on government assistance for their budget should be voting on economic policy for the country. You need to have it to where you have the two senators and two Congress that way the entire state is represented. Itâs not like Congress has been doing what it was even meant to do it was meant for areas to have a person in DC to push for their communities growth and in reality itâs turned into whatever foreign country that politician is aligned to.
@AmericanFascismoYTAlso, get rid of congressional committees and make every representative and senator equal in the sense that anyone sitting representative or senator can forward a bill and any other representative or senator can second it.
@destroyer2973I think we should use a mixed mode system. The first half elected by closed list promotional representation and the other half by single transferable vote using the hare quota. Also, raise the number of representatives to 888.
@destroyer2973I can't believe you are debating on how to enlarge your parliament. In Germany we only discuss on how it could be reduced in size!
@davidh.5294Find the largest number that can be represented without jerrymandering being affective, and go with that. I'm no demographer, but I bet it's less than 500k.
I don't care if freshmen reps make it chaotic, it should be chaotic, I don't want my representative to be buddy buddy with some senior rep worth 10million, I want them to be competitive and responsive to my needs. The senate is for order and rapport.
When you say that the house is too small it seems like youâre stating a fact but itâs an opinion, and itâs a bad one. The size of the house is determined by our laws and those laws were passed by our democratically elected officials. So, itâs exactly the right size.
@jabasabonAnd make it proportional!
@tweaker1bmsExpanding the number of representatives then putting in proportional representation is long overdue.
@HungryLike2018... Alarm! Alarm! Keep it reasonable!
There should be a global guideline for # of representatives per Capita!
1) Belgium is so far beyond that line it's on the moon.
2) The USA is irrelevant, 2 party systems are inherently broken.
3) I have no clue about India, I suspect it's not proportional. I am not even making a guess for China.
# of global representatives # Capita roughly equal across countries might be an interesting concept. But it does not scale well at all! 100 representatives for 1-10M and 100 for 300M-1.xB...
Excluding the 2 party system states and the dictatorships! They have bigger issues to address.
I find it funny that people are commenting saying this shouldn't work because 'it would give the democrats/republicans more power'
Like buddy, take away party politics for one second here. Are you really saying people shouldn't get MORE representation because it will benefit one party YOU don't like?
Sounds kinda like a lite dictatorship where one groups ability to be represented is based on weather they'll support the 'correct' party.
435 representatives already causes enough problems, why do we need more?
@luiseduardomarquezquezada4898Iâm in favor of this
@rimfire8217The House of Representative just as his name should represent its people fairly and equally, which is the foundation of democracy.
@imallthewayA few years ago, after the 2020 census data came out, I did Cube-Root on the US population and the "ideal" number in the House came out to 679. I don't think it's asking too much to increase the size to 699 including the Territories. It works out to districts with populations a bit under 450,000, which is a lot better than the >750k things currently stand at.
@Soufriere84No more public spending, don't touch that number !!
@EmberlittThe government was never designed to serve the popular will of the people. The founding fathers thought the layperson was far too uninformed and easily manipulated to choose what was best for them... And, you know, that's really not a terrible argument.
@teddysmith8725That's enough representatives; more politicians means more terrible ideas.
@RandomDude198682 people in a room can get more done than 100, unless you're trying to move a piano. NOTHING would ever get done if we increase the number of representatives. The smaller the government, the better.
@Danntheman1776MR BEATTTTTTT
@acesofspades2964Great, so letâs pay more people to do much of nothing.
@NyhiakWhy is this such a difficult concept? Stop gerrymandering and reset the House.
@Mamma_BirdDemocracy in the last 50 years has gotten us into the situation we're in today. We need less democracy, not more.
@WBT_1995It's not the House that's too small. Its the senate. There should be at least 6 senators per state by now, to keep the proportions.
@ThomasPain2025The biggest problem, is all of these congress men and women think of us as employees. That theyâre our boss. Not the other way around. They work for us!
@robbyrose5504Trust us with your history
@Alastor-t3eIt seems to me that maybe the design of the house needs to change in general.
So if we with the 500k rule, Perhaps there is a sub-house that is a collection of reps from each state and they send their own rep to the full house, maybe call them Rep-Govs. Different laws could be set to require different kinds of majorities. Some only needing the majority of Rep-Govs, but others needing a full majority of all reps.
The House isn't supposed to be "Democratic", we're a Republic.
@MortlupoRightwind Republicans capped the House just before the Great Republican Depression. They did this because they were terrified by the "urban vote." Sound familiar? Republicans racist then. Racist now.
@matthewmalpass9999