Proposals to Radically Grow the House of Representatives

Proposals to Radically Grow the House of Representatives

A Washington Post column on February 28, 2023 argued in favor of radically expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives. A couple of recent Congressional bills agree.

Columnist Danielle Allen insisted that the House was originally �supposed to grow with every decennial census. James Madison even included in the Bill of Rights an amendment laying out a formula forcing the House to grow from 65 to 200 members, then allowing it to expand beyond that.” While Representatives currently �represent roughly 762,000 people each,� that number could �reach 1 million by mid-century,� she said. The 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act, Allen continued, effectively limited the size of the House to only 435 Members and �set the decennial reapportionment of the House on autopilot.�

Allen cited as her rationale: (1) “representatives are too removed from their constituents”; (2) �Congress has a much larger budget to track and manage, and many more agencies to review”; (3) smaller districts could mean cheaper election campaigns; and (4) enhancing �equal protection and inclusivity.�

Meanwhile, in the House itself, a pair of bills would follow Allen�s lead:

1. The Equal Voices Act (H.R. 643), introduced by Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL-06), would �require that the average number the average number of constituents represented by a Member from any State� would be �equivalent to the number of constituents represented by the Member from the least populous State and to apportion Representatives among the States accordingly.�
2. The Restoring Equal and Accountable Legislators in the House Act (REAL House Act) (H.R. 622), introduced by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-03), would expand the number of House seats for the post-2030 Census redistricting to 585, with increases at each census thereafter. Blumenauer has a 1-pager on the bill, and the bill�s impact was recently analyzed by the American Redistricting Project.