The real problem happened in 1929 when Congressional apportionment was set at 435. Congress regularly increased in size before then. The population has more than doubled since 1930, yet the overall number of representatives hasn’t changed, which means each district gets bigger.
There are 990K people in the largest district by population currently, with 545k in the smallest. (Plot twist: that large district is actually Delaware, which still has only one district, somehow)
I have been saying this for years. The Senate is supposed to be where small states get an outsized voice, but by freezing the size of the House, small states have been getting an outsized voice in both houses on Congress and they’ve been getting a disproportionately high number of electors in the Electoral College.
Based on the 2020 census, Wyoming is the least populous state at 576,851 people. If that were used as the smallest number of people that could be in a district, the US’s total population of 335,073,176 would be divided into 580 congressional districts. Over a third of the population is being underrepresented because the House hasn’t added seats in almost 100 years.
Also we need to go back to giving the Senate back to state legislatures to appoint. By making it another smaller house, we have two places where the “Mob” can control instead of one chamber controlled by the people with another chamber controlled by the states.
State legislatures have had a diminished presence in state elections since the direct election of Senators. Also it would Remove the money from Senate reelection PAC’s, which is a win in my book.
Plot twist: that large district is actually Delaware, which still has only one district, somehow)
Because of the method used to calculate apportionment. It’s mathematically designed to assign each representative in a way that minimizes the average difference in population/representative.
It’s actually very good at doing that, it’s just that a few states are very small and still get the minimum one House Rep and two Senators and four are so big they blow the curve on the other end.
Frankly, we’d be better off in general if we merged some of the states that get one or two House Reps. We really only need one Dakota, for example.
The real problem happened in 1929 when Congressional apportionment was set at 435. Congress regularly increased in size before then. The population has more than doubled since 1930, yet the overall number of representatives hasn’t changed, which means each district gets bigger.
There are 990K people in the largest district by population currently, with 545k in the smallest. (Plot twist: that large district is actually Delaware, which still has only one district, somehow)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congressional_districts
I have been saying this for years. The Senate is supposed to be where small states get an outsized voice, but by freezing the size of the House, small states have been getting an outsized voice in both houses on Congress and they’ve been getting a disproportionately high number of electors in the Electoral College.
Based on the 2020 census, Wyoming is the least populous state at 576,851 people. If that were used as the smallest number of people that could be in a district, the US’s total population of 335,073,176 would be divided into 580 congressional districts. Over a third of the population is being underrepresented because the House hasn’t added seats in almost 100 years.
Also we need to go back to giving the Senate back to state legislatures to appoint. By making it another smaller house, we have two places where the “Mob” can control instead of one chamber controlled by the people with another chamber controlled by the states.
State legislatures have had a diminished presence in state elections since the direct election of Senators. Also it would Remove the money from Senate reelection PAC’s, which is a win in my book.
Because of the method used to calculate apportionment. It’s mathematically designed to assign each representative in a way that minimizes the average difference in population/representative.
It’s actually very good at doing that, it’s just that a few states are very small and still get the minimum one House Rep and two Senators and four are so big they blow the curve on the other end.
Frankly, we’d be better off in general if we merged some of the states that get one or two House Reps. We really only need one Dakota, for example.