For several years I have been asking erstwhile colleagues in the House of Representatives, "Why are in that location 435 members in the House?" They normally answer with a shrug or a brusque laugh and say, "Okay, you must know. Tell me." The number of congressional members is not mandated by the Constitution. Nor does the size of congressional districts appear in the document. The number 435 was adopted in 1929, and information technology was a number driven by racism, xenophobia, and the cocky-involvement of members. Withal information technology could all change with an act of Congress.

The Framers of the Constitution believed the "people's branch" of government—the Business firm—should grow in size equally the population grew, thereby guaranteeing the people access to their elected representatives. The first Congress in 1789 had districts of 33,000 constituents; today'due south districts have 740,000. Districts need to be smaller, and the membership of the Firm larger. That change in law would eliminate a 90-yr monument to bigotry, brand the House more democratic, and make the Balloter College more representative of the population of our country. Smaller districts, accompanied by redistricting and electoral reform, will also create more than competitive districts, which will hateful less virulently partisan candidates—and, hopefully, legislators. Republican candidates running in cities and the suburbs will detect it hard to exist xenophobic or to oppose reproductive rights and activity on climate change. Meanwhile, Democrats in rural areas will be like the Southern Democrats I served with in the Business firm in the 1970s and '80s: pro-business concern, pro-life, but too pro-civil rights. This may non finish political polarization, but it is a vital get-go step in reforming the Firm.

It Started in Philadelphia

The respond to "Why 435" starts with the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and three contentious issues regarding the creation of the Senate and the House: the limerick of the Senate; whether and how to count the enslaved population; and the size of the congressional districts.

On the first matter, James Madison had strenuously argued for proportional representation in both bodies. He believed this was essential for a strong national government. The mid-Atlantic small states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey—were obdurate: equal representation in the Senate or nix.

The second issue was how to count enslaved persons. In 1783, the Congress, desperate for revenue, sought to impose a per-country levy based on population, which raised the issue of whether and how to count the enslaved. The Southern states argued confronting the counting of any slaves considering it would keep their acquirement contribution lower; the Northern members wanted to count all slaves. Madison proposed a iii-fifths compromise for acquirement purposes—three out of every v of the enslaved population would be counted. Four years later, during the Constitutional Convention, the issue of how to count enslaved persons arose again. This time the issue was not revenue merely representation, and the positions of the North and South were reversed. By 1787, enslaved persons made upwardly almost xl percentage of the populations of Maryland and the Southern states. Those states wanted to count enslaved persons in the aforementioned as "gratis people." Some Northern states, concerned that the Southern states would "import slaves" to increase their population and thus their number of representatives, argued that no enslaved persons should be counted. Still others argued for another three-fifths rule—three of every five enslaved persons would be counted.

Finally, they had to decide on the number of people that constituted a congressional district—and thus the size of the House of Representatives. The only time George Washington, the convention's chairman, spoke was to argue for smaller districts of 30,000 persons versus the leading alternative of twoscore,000 persons.

The second matter was settled first, when, in June 1787, the iii-fifths dominion was agreed to. In July, the "Great Compromise" passed five-four, and small states were guaranteed equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House. Finally, on the final 24-hour interval of the convention, September 17, Washington's smaller district choice was adopted.

The debate on the first matter, the size of the House, remained contentious during the country ramble ratifying conventions, with states arguing for more than members to meliorate constituents' access to them as well every bit a means to prevent corruption. In 1789, James Madison, so running for a House seat, had written a campaign letter of the alphabet to the voters of his district promising them a "bill of rights" and a requirement to increase the size of the House. These amendments were the almost important issues in his entrada for Congress against James Monroe, his opponent then and, 28 years later, his successor to the presidency. He defeated Monroe i,308 to 972. Yes, the districts where much smaller so. Lesson learned, Congressman Madison went to New York as member of the First Congress and authored a series of amendments now known as the Bill of Rights. His proposed First Amendment was a guarantee that the House would begin with a defined number of members—which was not included in the Constitution—and would abound according to a specific formula laid out in the amendment. It fell curt of ratification by one land. Had information technology been ratified, the freedoms we now savour every bit office of the First Amendment, including speech and the press, would have been the Second Amendment.

The 1920 Census: White, Rural America Reacts

For the next 120 years, from 1790-1910, membership in the House of Representatives grew every bit the population increased and every bit new states were admitted to the Spousal relationship—with the exception of 1840, when the Congress reduced the size of the Firm membership. The Reapportionment Human activity of 1911 increased House membership from 386 to 433 and immune a new member each from the Arizona and the New United mexican states territories when they joined the Wedlock. In 1912, Fenway Park opened, the Titanic sank, and the Business firm had 435 members. Fenway Park has inverse, ocean liners are ancient history—only the House still has the same number of representatives today as it did and then, even as the population has more than tripled—from 92 meg to 325 million.

Afterward the 1920 Demography determined that more than Americans lived in cities than in the rural areas, a nativist Congress with a racist Southern cadre faced its decennial responsibility of reapportioning a country that had experienced a large growth in immigrants. The population had grown in x years by 15 per centum, to 106 million. Recent immigrants lived in vibrant enclaves with their boyfriend countrymen. They spoke their mother tongues, shopped at ethnic stores and markets, partied at ethnic clubs, and attended ethnic plays and movies. While 85 percent of Americans were native born, Firm members debating the effects of the Census routinely referred to the big cities as "foreign" and likewise much similar the "old world." In 1921 and 1924, Congress passed anti-clearing legislation, the 2nd establishing a "national origins formula" that severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Earlier anti-inclusion acts had already restricted immigration from Asia.

The congressional hearings held after that 1920 Census exposed the country's racial separation and its urban-rural carve up. The House Census Commission'southward first hearing included African-American witnesses James Weldon Johnson and Walter White of the NAACP, Monroe Trotter from the National Equal Rights League, and George H. Harvey, general counsel of the Colored Quango of Washington, who detailed the systematic bigotry confronting black voting. White testified that anyone helping blacks vote in certain Florida communities would be "subjected to mob violence." The panel demanded that Congress use the Fourteenth Amendment's provisions—specifically Section 2, which deals with circulation and representation matters—to reduce a state's congressional delegation as a punishment for denying its citizens the right to vote.

The Southerners on the committee, offended by the African Americans' presence, rejected the evidence of bigotry. Representative William Larsen, Democrat of Georgia, said: "In my domicile, one,365, I believe is the number, n——-southward are registered. . . . We take a white master, which has nothing to do with the general election. The n——— does not participate in the white primary." He explained that blacks choose not to vote in the general election because their party—the Republican Party—"lacked the strength to win," as historian Charles West. Eagles put it.

Meanwhile, as Congress debated how to reapportion the country, women got the right to vote, and alcohol was banned. Though World War I brought the country together, the stop of the war brought 2 years of a "blood-red scare" in which labor unions and "dissenters" of all types were harassed, jailed, and deported by Woodrow Wilson's fanatical Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who feared the spread of Soviet-style Communism.

By 1924, the Ku Klux Klan had 4 million members. The Klan was organized, lethal, and speedily expanding to the West and Midwest. This "2nd rising" of the Klan had begun in 1915, and its membership was anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and pro-Prohibition. In the South, the Klan was Democratic, in the W and Midwest it was Republican, and everywhere its members saw a country where white Protestants were losing ability and immigrants were ascendant.

In 1929, having failed to hold on how to account for the growth in the country's population, the House set up by police the number of members at 435, or the 1912 level. Keeping the number at 435 ensured that Congress would non recognize the changes brought about by the African-American migration and the immigrant population growth in the Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities. The South and rural America, which dominated the House, rejoiced. At the last infinitesimal, the Republican authors of the beak removed a decades-long requirement that districts be compact, face-to-face, and of equal population. The states were now gratuitous to draw districts of varying sizes and shapes, or to elect their representatives at big. (At-large representation had actually existed before, at the beginning of the republic, just was made illegal over the class of the nineteenth century.)

A Century-Plus Later, It's Time for Change

No one would accept imagined that the racist, anti-urban, capricious number of 435 would last, unchanged, for 108 years. Certainly not the Framers of the Constitution, who believed that the House should grow with each decennial Demography. The "bargain" of 1929 that fixed the House at 435 members has allowed the boilerplate size of a congressional district to grow from 230,000 people to approximately 780,000 in 2020. Communication with constituents today is more than and more electronic than personal. Some members nonetheless practise in-person boondocks halls, though social media makes organizing to disrupt them easy. As the districts abound in size, the likelihood of having personal contact with House members diminishes.

During my 18 years in Congress, the thousands of unscripted, oft poignant, crazy, and contentious moments with my constituents shaped me and gave them a run a risk to accept my measure out. Today, members and their constituents can instantaneously communicate with each other, but a digital presence is no substitute for the existent thing. Information technology is like watching Fourth of July fireworks on your iPhone.

And so what to do? I propose we do what the Founding Fathers thought made sense: Increase the size of the Firm of Representatives as the population grows and then that it can become representative of the people once once more. I once raised the thought of increasing the size of the Business firm with a prominent member. The response did non surprise me: "Oh, they don't like 435 of us now. Surely they won't like more of us." Probably truthful if the effect is presented solely as increasing the size of an already extremely unpopular and trivial-trusted institution. But what if the statement is not just about more members, only rather smaller and more representative districts and greater citizen access to their members? And what if the event is a more diverse group of representatives and even, maybe, a reduction in the polarization that paralyzes Congress today?

The first question is, what is the correct size of an expanded Business firm? The Wyoming Rule provides one model for how to determine the size of new districts. It would decrease the number of people in a congressional district to the "lowest standard unit of measurement." The Constitution provides that each state is entitled to at least ane representative. Wyoming being currently the least populous state, its population (577,000) would exist used to make up one's mind the "lowest standard unit," which would then be the number of people in each congressional commune across the country. To decide how many total members, the population of the country is divided by the "lowest standard unit of measurement."

In 2020, the U.Due south. population is estimated to exist 330-plus million. Wyoming'due south population is likely to exist shut to what information technology is today. That would hateful congressional districts of approximately 577,000 or so people. Not exactly small only significantly better than the 780,000 it is likely to be in 2020. The number of members in the Firm would increase by 142, from 435 to 577. Big plenty to make a difference, just without being unwieldy. The Wyoming rule has the virtue of requiring merely a statutory change.

So size is the first question. Merely it is non the only question. Nosotros also need to talk nigh how to expand the House. The idea of increasing the size of the House without the necessary balloter reforms would merely exacerbate the absurd outcomes we see in states like North Carolina, where 50 percent of the votes cast in the 2022 election were for Democratic candidates yet Republicans won 10 of the state's 13 Firm seats. Similar instances of gerrymandering in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are being challenged in state courts. In that location is no excuse for allowing either Democrats or Republicans to appoint in partisan redistricting. Last June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-four in Rucho v. Mutual Cause that "partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts"—a shameful dereliction of the Courtroom's responsibility to protect the rights of all Americans to, as the minority wrote, "participate every bit in the political process." The Rucho decision is a return to 1940s Supreme Courtroom reasoning that electoral questions are best left to the political sphere, which the Courtroom had overcome by 1962, when information technology ruled in Baker 5. Carr that such political questions were indeed within the Courtroom's purview. While we wait for legislative action, old Attorney General Eric Holder's National Autonomous Redistricting Committee has vigorously fought a state-by-country battle to insure that the 2022 redistricting maps are nonpartisan. In N Carolina, the group's efforts were successful recently when a three-judge panel ruled that new nonpartisan districts must replace the Republican gerrymandered plan.

How practice nosotros keep simultaneously to expand and reform? There are several thoughtful plans that could frame the debate. The place to start is a bundle of election and voting reforms introduced by Maryland Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes that includes a provision for nonpartisan commissions in united states to examine how to describe district lines adequately. It passed the House in March, but Senate Majority Leader McConnell, unsurprisingly, will non bring it upwardly in the Senate.

Another possible change would exist to give states the option to take some number of the added congressional seats and have them elected "at-big" on a statewide ground. Electing some members statewide will result in greater voter participation and more competitive House races, which is likely to hateful fewer extreme candidates. Here's how information technology might work. Subsequently the Census, in states receiving additional seats, parties would advance a list of statewide candidates. The total number of votes cast for all the Democrats and Republicans running in the state's individual commune races would be tallied to determine which party's at-large candidates would be elected. So, for example, if the votes cast for Democrats running in all of the commune races amounted to 60 percentage of the full statewide vote—Democrats would receive lx per centum of the at-big seats, and the Republicans would get twoscore percent. The at-large concept is more nuanced than this example and is most likely to make sense in more populated states. Many states will not qualify for an at-big seat, and some will go only one or 2 seats, but even in those instances there would be a strong incentive to maximize individual commune turnout; at-large/statewide elections volition drive both parties to field candidates in every district in an try to run upwardly the statewide voting totals. The days of candidates running unopposed would be over. Even in the districts that were overwhelmingly Democratic, the Republicans would still want to field a serious candidate to increase their amass statewide vote full. The same would be truthful for Democrats in potent Republican areas.

More than competition for every seat will have a moderating effect on both parties. In order to exist constructive in maximizing their vote, parties volition accept to field candidates who appeal to more than than a narrow ideological base. In a further effort to drive upwardly turnout the parties might want to field at-large candidates of prominence: Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, Beto O'Rouke in Texas, Andrew Gillum in Florida, Michael Bloomberg and Shepard Smith in New York, Ashley Judd in Kentucky, and Madeleine Albright in Virginia.

Don't Forget the Balloter Higher

Increasing the total number of House members would besides increase the size of the Electoral College by approximately 142, from 538 to 680 members.

What impact would this have? In sum, the more populated states would increment their number of Electoral College votes significantly. Consider a comparison of Wyoming and Florida. Today, Wyoming, with a population of 577,000, gets three balloter votes—one balloter vote per 193,000 people. Florida, meanwhile, with a population of 21.three one thousand thousand, gets 29 electors—one balloter vote for every 734,500 people. Merely if congressional districts were reduced from 720,000 people to 577,000, Florida would abound to 37 congressional districts, and 39 electors, while Wyoming would even so take just the 3. Ohio would get four more congressional seats, and Michigan three more. The big winners of course would be California with 16 more seats and Texas with fifteen. This would translate into 71 electoral votes for California and 53 for Texas.

Of course, the minor states would hate this. Simply the Electoral Higher has given modest states disproportionate power throughout our history. Also, of course, slave states, in the beginning: The three-fifths compromise for counting enslaved people adopted at the Constitutional Convention gave the South more Electoral College votes, which resulted in 5 of the outset six presidents being from Virginia. All 5 were slaveholders.

A constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College would be the best way to proceed, but it'south extremely unlikely. Increasing the size of the Electoral Higher would reduce the small-country reward. The large and growing states—Florida, Texas, California, other Lord's day Chugalug states—will go more important to the issue of the presidential ballot. Whether this increment in the larger states will favor one party over the other is non clear, merely the means by which we elect a President will certainly be more representative of the population. And, of course, Nate Silver will have to change the name of his website.

Time for a Debate

For 140 years, the correct size of congressional districts was hotly debated. Yet we oasis't had a serious debate on the size of House districts in 90 years, during which time the country's population has more than tripled. The stasis has left us an outlier amongst representative democracies. U.S. House districts are gigantic compared to "lower house" constituencies in Europe. Swell U.k.'s House of Eatables has 650 members, each representing about 110,000 people. France's Chamber of Deputies is 577, Germany'southward Bundestag is 709; both, about 100,000-plus people per constituency. The Japanese Diet's lower house with 465 members is the side by side closest in size to the U.S. House, merely its districts are much smaller, with about 272,000 people.

The Framers recognized that the population would grow and the country would change. The population has tripled since 1910, the demographic makeup of our country has changed, merely that change is not matched in the makeup of the congressional membership. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2017, whites deemed for 81 percent of Congress but only 62 percent of the population. In the 2022 Congress, women make up 20 percent of the membership, despite being just more than than half the population. In the terminal v decades, the Hispanic population increased more than fivefold. Yet the percentage of Hispanics in Congress, while it has grown, is still just shy of 8 pct. Expanding the Firm gives u.s. a take a chance to have a legislative branch that is representative of the people in more ways than 1.

Many have said to me that the idea of more members is simply crazy. Simply what is truly crazy, distressing, and inarguably objectionable is that a racist, nativist congressional decision of 90 years ago withal stands. Four hundred and thirty-v members is tantamount to a Amalgamated Battle Flag of numbers hiding in plain sight. Apparently there is no real understanding of the Framers' intent that House districts grow in number as the population increases. Where are the "strict constructionists" when we really need them? While we fence what questions to enquire on the next Census form, there appears to be little recognition that the purpose of Article 1, Section two of the Constitution was to determine the size of a growing Firm of Representatives.

Congress will not decrease the size of districts without a fight, of course. Why would any member want to dilute his or her private power and authority? But for democracy to work, democratic institutions must have the trust and support of the people. The Framers promised a people's House. It is time to laurels that promise. Congress owes it to the American people to revisit the decision of 435 fabricated 108 years ago and adopted into law 90 years ago.

Visit your member of Congress, inquire them why at that place are 435 members of the House; since you at present know, yous could educate them and the process of reform tin can brainstorm.