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Anyone heard about Thirtythousand.org? Talks about House distribution

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dubeskin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-04-07 03:30 AM
Original message
Anyone heard about Thirtythousand.org? Talks about House distribution
http://thirty-thousand.org/

The House of Representatives was intended — by this nation’s founding fathers — to be a peoples’ house. How many of us would call it that today?

As is shown in this web pamphlet, the House of Representatives has devolved into a virtual oligarchy. Incumbents’ re-election rates currently exceed 95% and their average tenure in office is more than 10 years. Most alarming is the corrupting co-dependence between the elected officials and special interests, especially those that provide campaign financing. Perhaps even more insidious is the growing lack of faith in our government by the general public.

This web pamphlet attempts to demonstrate that the primary underlying cause for these adverse trends is increasingly oversized House districts. In 1804, a member of the House of Representatives represented, on average, 40 thousand citizens. Today, each Representative “represents” over 660 thousand people (on average). This trend is illustrated by the red graph in the chart below.


It's an interesting read. Any thoughts? The author makes a good point about how the House has grown so small as to NOT represent the people evenly.
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illinoisprogressive Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-04-07 03:38 AM
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1. It was the repugs redistricting that cut the members
It shrunk when the delay scheme in redistricting came about.
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alofarabia Donating Member (65 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-04-07 05:18 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. How many House members would we need?
If the population is 48x what it was in 1789, wouldn't we need 48 x 435 members to keep the ratio of population to House members the same? That would be 20,880 members of the House. I'm not sure that's the way we want to go.
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donheld Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-04-07 06:47 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. Welcome to DU alofarabia
:hi:
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tritsofme Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-04-07 05:30 AM
Response to Original message
3. So a House of nearly 10,000 members?
Would that be the correct proportion with 1 rep for each 30,000 people?

I would sure hate to be the whip, let alone attempt to call the roll.

I don't see how a body that large could ever get anything done.
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donheld Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-04-07 06:50 AM
Response to Reply #3
5. At a cost of at least $10 billion a year
If we paid them what we pay them now.
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