Cleaning House

Last week when I was writing the post with my plan to fix the mess of redrawing congressional districts, I read this interesting and related article by Lee Drutman and Yuval Letvin in the Washington Post: One Way to Reform the House of Representatives? Expand It.

The authors begin their piece with the observation that "Americans observing the members of the House of Representatives in action generally don’t end up wishing there were more of them." Boy, ain't that the truth? But they then go on to cogently explain why that might be a good idea and lead to a more functioning and representative body.

The first House, representing a much smaller nation, had just 65 members, each of whom represented about 30,000 people. But the country continued to grow as more states were admitted to the union and the population increased to its present size of 331.4 million, while the House of Representatives has remained capped at 435 members - a ratio of one representative to approximately 762,000 citizens. The cap of 435 was set by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 at a time when the ratio was one to approximately 280,000.

What this means, of course, is that the personal connection between each of us and our elected Representative is all but nonexistent. When my voice is one of some 762,000 clamoring for the attention of a single Representative, the chances of my opinion being heard and acted upon are pretty small, especially if my access has not been enhanced by large campaign contributions or other political influence. Although I write lots of letters to my Senators and my Representative (19 so far this year), I have little confidence that they are actually read by the recipients ... more likely, they are aggregated with others into a daily/weekly/monthly summary of "what the little people are bleating about now." I always receive a reply, although it is usually boilerplate and often doesn't actually address the original points I had written about.

Sigh.

So, back to the size of the House. I believe, as do Messrs Drutman and Levin, that it has become too small to allow for adequate representation, particularly as congressional districts are drawn for political advantage and protection of incumbents rather than representational adequacy. It also gives outsized influence to states with small populations.* But what is the right size? What size balances the need for each elected representative to answer to the smallest possible number of citizens with the need to facilitate face-to-face negotiation in the legislature? What degree of flexibility should we build in?

Part 5 of a study published by Drutman and Levin with Norman Ornstein and Jonathan Cohen discusses the ratio of representatives to citizens of various countries. For example, the UK's House of Commons has 650 members, or one per 101,000 citizens; the German Bundestag (lower house) has 709 members, or one per 116,000 Germans. A House of Representatives that would produce the UK representative-to-citizen ratio would have 3,280 members; the German ratio would require a House of Representatives with 2,587 members. Clearly, these are not workable numbers, although they would certainly help address the problem of underrepresentation.

What, then, is the ideal size?

Drutman and Levin recommended adding 150 seats to the House, bringing it to a total of 535, with more seats added with each census to prevent loss of representation and always result in an odd number of total seats to prevent tie votes (a problem not found in the Senate, where the Constitution dictates that the Vice President casts tie-breaking votes). There are two immediately obvious advantages to this proposal:

- It would bring the ratio of Representatives to citizens down to a somewhat more reasonable level. The difference between a ratio of one to 762,000 (today) and one to 619,000 (in a 535-seat House) isn't a lot, but it's a start.

- It would begin to improve the balance of the electoral college. Because each state’s electoral vote total equals the number of its members of Congress, it would begin to address the chronic overrepresentation of less populous states in the electoral college. 

They offer several other options for addressing the problem, all rooted in complex electoral mathematics, but perhaps there's another, easier way to fix the problem of inadequate representation**.

Instead of expanding the size of the House, provide enough funds to each Representative to establish additional local offices in his or her district closer to where their constituents live. For example, my Representative - Don Beyer of Virginia's 8th District - has one local office to serve all of the people he represents. 

Granted, the compact geographical size of this district and the density of its population may argue for a single local office, as opposed to, say, Colorado's third district represented*** by Lauren Boebert, who has three local offices to serve her geographically far larger area ... 

Mr Beyer's office is about a 24-minute drive from my home in optimal traffic conditions^†

- not unreasonable, but it can be a monumental pain in Northern Virginia traffic. In such cases, it might make sense to simply add additional, neighborhood-based local offices to maximize citizen access to their Representatives through more accessible staffs rather than growing the size of the House. 

In any case, the House of Representatives, as unsatisfyingly unrepresentative as it has become, needs reforming, by rationally drawing districts, increasing the number of members to improve the ratio of members to constituents, improving citizens' access to members, or some combination of all three. What do you think? Leave a comment ... or, better yet, write to your elected representatives. They may ignore your letter as other than a data point, but you will have at least made your wishes known.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming. 

Bilbo

* Of course, this was the point of the whole original design: that more populous states would have an advantage in the House of Representatives that would be balanced out by equal representation in the Senate.

** I'm speaking here of the representative-to-citizen ratio, not the competence of the individual representatives (e.g., Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, or Lauren Boebert)

*** Not very well, in any case. I wonder how she finds time to do any actual representing, busy as she is with nonsensical posturing.

† According to Google Maps, which is usually fairly accurate.