Thursday, November 10, 2011

House Size: Is Bigger Better?

Facts:

  1. For 130 years the House was in constant growth, but in 1911 its size was finally limited, to 435 representatives.
  2. Since 1911 the amount of citizens, our population, has gradually increased to be three times what it was.
  3. Rein Taagepera calculated the "best" amount of representative there should be using the "cubic root law" and they got 669 representatives.
  4. Representative Jim Clyburn, D South Carolina, thinks that it is tough enough representing 600,000 people and that there should be more representatives.
  5. Brian Ferderick polled a public opinion on the matter with results that showed that citizens are not in big support of raising the House's numbers. He polled: 20% for increase, 60% for the House to stay the same, and 20% for the House to decrease. Though he also polled a second time changing the wording so that it said there would be more representation for minorities and 33% vote for an increase.
Questions:

  1. If there were more representatives wouldn't the amount of power they held decrease significantly?
  2. Is there any extremely under-represented districts (e.g. a district that has a representative that is D while 49% of the district is R)?
  3. How much higher would the House's numbers be raised, three times like the population or maybe by the "cubic root law,"?
  4. Has there been any significant bills to reset the number of representative, decrease or increase?
  5. How do the members of the House feel, do they want it, or do they dislike the idea because it would take away from their power?
Opinion: Well my take on this is almost a neutral one, while I would think it is great that there is more representative for the people, meaning better rep., it would also take power away from each district. In the end I do feel its current size is too small, but I would not like to see a drastic increase, maybe one that takes place. But then again I'm also not a big fan of states in general. My opinion on the size is if we are going to have representatives for each district/ region, we are going to have to do it right by representing to the best of the government's abilities.

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