Something I've been thinking about: 535 in congress for all America?

535 representatives & senators in Washington. For 50 states. For hundereds of millions of Americans. Never going to be more than 535 (unless we add a state?). At what point does America stop being called a Republic and start being called a representative oligarchy? But then, how do we remedy the growing gap between the number of representatives & senators and the number of people they represent? We could build bigger buildings. Add a third legislative body. I do not like the idea of oligarchy. It did not work for Athens, and I really do not think it will work for America. Other musings forthcoming....

435 in the House for how long now? Here is a short and sweet description of

Since 1931 the US House has had 435 Representatives with the brief exception of when Alaska and Hawaii became states. Then there was a temporary addition of one seat for each until the new apportionment after the 1960 Census. In 1941 the Huntington-Hill Method was adopted and has remained in continuous (and contentious) use ever since.

I got this from some mathematics site. Doing as fast as I can and it is the first thing I found:

http://www.pballew.net/arithm17.html

In 1931, America had

The BBC says that "...according to the CIA's July 2002 estimate, 280,562,489 people are living in the United States."

Divided by 435, that makes about 524,415 people per representative. (my figures)

than Congress critters and I wouldn't say they are representing the people either.

Senators, of course, are fixed at 2 per state. But upping the House is long overdue, if you ask me.

...members of congress is one representative for every 555,141 Americans. No wonder there are over 37,500 professional lobbyists in Washington DC. That works ourt to 70 lobbyists covering each representative. How about expanding the number of Senators to 3 per state and the representatives to one for every 100,000 persons in each district?

The formula for the number of Representatives is specified in the Constitution: 1 for every 30,000 people. But no one's had any guts to file a lawsuit against this unconstitutional restriction of Congress' size.

Of course, problem #1 is that we would then have over 9,000 people in the House.

Problem #2 is any attempt to increase the number of members in the House any other way would run afoul of the sparsely populated "red" states, which would lose power and influence.

Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah and all these other states contain small numbers and wield bigger power than they deserve. How is this maintained? By logical fallacy of course! The states are BIGGER and thus more important. The right says...look how RED the map is. America is clearly a RED country. Of course, there are great vacuums of empty space in those RED territories. Our legislature is supposed to be based on representatives for PEOPLE not square miles.

Problem #1 is of course a real problem. Where would we put all those representatives? How could we pay them? How would there ever be any order? My solution: at least have people in high places acknowledge that by the DAY Americans get less and less representation. Every time a person is added to America, by birth, immigration, etc. we all lose power. To cut off births and immigration would be beyond Draconian. But I want Americans to be represented more proportionally! Even if had 600 in the House it would be better.

"Problem #2 is any attempt to increase the number of members in the House any other way would run afoul of the sparsely populated "red" states, which would lose power and influence."

I imagine that four of the likely "losers" would be New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Hawaii. Hardly "red" states.

Besides, such states would retain power disproportionate to their populations. The House was designed to give power in proportion to population. The Senate advantages small states. Due to population growth, small states have gained disproportionate power even in the House.

I think this is a good idea but we have far more important issues to worry about... like fair elections. It doesn't matter how many Congresspeople we have if the voting machines are all controllable from the RNC or Karl Rove's office.

I've argued this for a long time as a way to win a more representative government, consistent with the limits on what we can do about money into the system.

Just divide up the offices and staffs among the new 870 House members so that the size is more consistent with a British MP's office and staff.

It would be a lot easier to defeat a money candidate in a district half the current size.

I don't think a body this size would necessarily be any more unwieldy than one of 435 members.