Vox explains 'The House of Representatives is too small. Here is one way to fix it.'

For today's "brief evergreen educational entry worth sharing next month," I'm sharing Vox explaining The House of Representatives is too small. Here is one way to fix it.

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.

So what if we…added more seats? That’s what Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) is proposing in a new bill because he believes it’s closer to what the country’s 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.

I find all three formulas converging on one district for every 500,000 people encouraging. It also tells that my my support for the "Wyoming Plan," which has the population of every district being the size of the smallest population state, is well founded. It's also why I'm not terribly eager to add the U.S. Virgin Islands; their population would make the Wyoming Plan unwieldy, if not downright impracticable. Fortunately, the last referendum overwhelmingly supported territory status. It's also why I would be ambivalent about adding Prince Edward Island as the 62nd state, proposing it join Nova Scotia or New Brunswick first. Yeah, like that will ever happen. However, making the population of a district 500,000 and not that of the lowest population state would remove those reservations.

Vox advocating for multi-member districts and proportional representation is very on-brand for it. It's been doing so since Vox explains how proportional representation can solve gerrymandering and help minor parties in 2017 and again in Vox explains 'Why US elections only give you two choices' in 2024. I'm glad they're consistent on this issue; it will take repetition to get the idea to stick.

That's a wrap for today. Stay tuned for more Saturn Awards coverage tomorrow. Wicked Wednesday, anyone?