What Is the Number of Representatives in the House

February 21, 2022 Post a Comment

55

Why 435?

The House of Representatives has had 435 members since 1912. Expanding it would right historical wrongs—and maybe reduce polarization, too.

Past Thomas Downey

from Winter, No. 55 – 18 MIN READ

Tagged Electoral ReformHouse of Representatives

U.S. Capitol Edifice under renovation. Photograph by Macieklew via CC 2.0

For several years I take been asking former colleagues in the House of Representatives, "Why are there 435 members in the Business firm?" They usually respond with a shrug or a short laugh and say, "Okay, yous 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 it was a number driven by racism, xenophobia, and the cocky-interest of members. Yet information technology could all alter with an human action of Congress.

The Framers of the Constitution believed the "people's branch" of government—the House—should grow in size as the population grew, thereby guaranteeing the people admission to their elected representatives. The first Congress in 1789 had districts of 33,000 constituents; today'south districts accept 740,000. Districts need to be smaller, and the membership of the House larger. That modify in law would eliminate a 90-year monument to bigotry, make the House more than democratic, and make the Electoral Higher more representative of the population of our country. Smaller districts, accompanied by redistricting and electoral reform, will also create more competitive districts, which will hateful less virulently partisan candidates—and, hopefully, legislators. Republican candidates running in cities and the suburbs will find it hard to exist xenophobic or to oppose reproductive rights and action 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 organisation, pro-life, but too pro-ceremonious rights. This may not end political polarization, but it is a vital get-go step in reforming the House.

It Started in Philadelphia

The answer to "Why 435" starts with the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and 3 contentious issues regarding the creation of the Senate and the House: the composition of the Senate; whether and how to count the enslaved population; and the size of the congressional districts.

On the offset thing, James Madison had strenuously argued for proportional representation in both bodies. He believed this was essential for a strong national regime. The mid-Atlantic small states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and New Bailiwick of jersey—were obdurate: equal representation in the Senate or nothing.

The second consequence was how to count enslaved persons. In 1783, the Congress, desperate for acquirement, 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 whatever slaves because it would keep their acquirement contribution lower; the Northern members wanted to count all slaves. Madison proposed a three-fifths compromise for revenue purposes—three out of every five of the enslaved population would exist counted. Four years later, during the Ramble Convention, the issue of how to count enslaved persons arose again. This time the issue was not revenue but representation, and the positions of the North and South were reversed. Past 1787, enslaved persons made upwardly about twoscore pct of the populations of Maryland and the Southern states. Those states wanted to count enslaved persons in the same 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. Even so others argued for another three-fifths rule—three of every five enslaved persons would exist counted.

Finally, they had to decide on the number of people that constituted a congressional district—and thus the size of the Business firm of Representatives. The only fourth dimension George Washington, the convention'southward chairman, spoke was to argue for smaller districts of 30,000 persons versus the leading culling of 40,000 persons.

The 2d matter was settled first, when, in June 1787, the 3-fifths dominion was agreed to. In July, the "Great Compromise" passed 5-4, and minor states were guaranteed equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House. Finally, on the last 24-hour interval of the convention, September 17, Washington's smaller district pick was adopted.

The debate on the first matter, the size of the House, remained contentious during the state ramble ratifying conventions, with states arguing for more members to improve constituents' access to them as well as a means to forbid abuse. In 1789, James Madison, and so running for a House seat, had written a campaign letter of the alphabet to the voters of his commune promising them a "bill of rights" and a requirement to increase the size of the House. These amendments were the most of import issues in his campaign for Congress confronting James Monroe, his opponent then and, 28 years later on, his successor to the presidency. He defeated Monroe 1,308 to 972. Yep, the districts where much smaller then. Lesson learned, Congressman Madison went to New York as member of the Commencement Congress and authored a series of amendments now known as the Bill of Rights. His proposed Beginning Amendment was a guarantee that the House would begin with a defined number of members—which was not included in the Constitution—and would grow according to a specific formula laid out in the subpoena. Information technology fell short of ratification by ane country. Had information technology been ratified, the freedoms nosotros now relish as part of the First Amendment, including speech and the press, would have been the 2d 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 as new states were admitted to the Wedlock—with the exception of 1840, when the Congress reduced the size of the House membership. The Reapportionment Act of 1911 increased Business firm membership from 386 to 433 and allowed a new member each from the Arizona and the New United mexican states territories when they joined the Marriage. In 1912, Fenway Park opened, the Titanic sank, and the Business firm had 435 members. Fenway Park has changed, sea liners are ancient history—just the Firm yet has the same number of representatives today as it did then, even as the population has more than tripled—from 92 1000000 to 325 million.

After 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 fifteen percentage, to 106 million. Recent immigrants lived in vibrant enclaves with their fellow countrymen. They spoke their mother tongues, shopped at ethnic stores and markets, partied at ethnic clubs, and attended indigenous plays and movies. While 85 percent of Americans were native born, House members debating the effects of the Demography routinely referred to the big cities as "foreign" and too much similar the "old world." In 1921 and 1924, Congress passed anti-immigration legislation, the second 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 Demography exposed the country's racial separation and its urban-rural divide. The House Demography Committee'southward get-go 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 Council of Washington, who detailed the systematic discrimination 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'due south provisions—specifically Department two, which deals with apportionment and representation matters—to reduce a land's congressional delegation as a penalty for denying its citizens the right to vote.

The Southerners on the committee, offended by the African Americans' presence, rejected the show of discrimination. Representative William Larsen, Democrat of Georgia, said: "In my dwelling house, one,365, I believe is the number, due north——-s are registered. . . . We accept a white main, which has zero to do with the full general election. The n——— does non participate in the white primary." He explained that blacks choose non to vote in the full general election because their party—the Republican Political party—"lacked the strength to win," as historian Charles W. Eagles put it.

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

Past 1924, the Ku Klux Klan had iv 1000000 members. The Klan was organized, lethal, and rapidly expanding to the Westward and Midwest. This "2nd rise" of the Klan had begun in 1915, and its membership was anti-black, anti-Cosmic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and pro-Prohibition. In the Southward, the Klan was Democratic, in the West and Midwest it was Republican, and everywhere its members saw a country where white Protestants were losing power and immigrants were ascendant.

In 1929, having failed to hold on how to account for the growth in the state's population, the House gear up by law the number of members at 435, or the 1912 level. Keeping the number at 435 ensured that Congress would not 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 Firm, rejoiced. At the final minute, the Republican authors of the nib removed a decades-long requirement that districts be meaty, contiguous, and of equal population. The states were now free to describe districts of varying sizes and shapes, or to elect their representatives at big. (At-large representation had actually existed before, at the commencement of the republic, just was fabricated illegal over the course of the nineteenth century.)

A Century-Plus Afterwards, It'south Time for Change

No i would have 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 Firm should grow with each decennial Demography. The "bargain" of 1929 that fixed the House at 435 members has allowed the average size of a congressional district to abound from 230,000 people to approximately 780,000 in 2020. Advice with constituents today is more and more than electronic than personal. Some members still do in-person town halls, though social media makes organizing to disrupt them piece of cake. Every bit the districts abound in size, the likelihood of having personal contact with Business firm 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 hazard to accept my measure. Today, members and their constituents tin instantaneously communicate with each other, but a digital presence is no substitute for the real thing. It is like watching Fourth of July fireworks on your iPhone.

So what to practice? I suggest we do what the Founding Fathers thought made sense: Increase the size of the Firm of Representatives every bit the population grows so that it can get representative of the people in one case again. I once raised the thought of increasing the size of the House with a prominent fellow member. The response did not surprise me: "Oh, they don't similar 435 of us now. Surely they won't like more of us." Probably true if the issue is presented solely as increasing the size of an already extremely unpopular and little-trusted establishment. Simply what if the argument is not just about more members, just rather smaller and more representative districts and greater citizen access to their members? And what if the result is a more than various 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 Firm? The Wyoming Dominion provides one model for how to decide the size of new districts. Information technology would subtract the number of people in a congressional district to the "everyman standard unit." The Constitution provides that each state is entitled to at least 1 representative. Wyoming being currently the to the lowest degree populous land, its population (577,000) would exist used to determine the "lowest standard unit," which would and then exist the number of people in each congressional commune across the land. To determine 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 be 330-plus one thousand thousand. Wyoming'southward population is probable to be close to what it is today. That would mean congressional districts of approximately 577,000 or so people. Not exactly pocket-sized but significantly better than the 780,000 it is likely to be in 2020. The number of members in the House would increase by 142, from 435 to 577. Big enough to make a difference, but without being unwieldy. The Wyoming rule has the virtue of requiring simply a statutory alter.

So size is the offset question. Simply it is not the only question. Nosotros also demand to talk about how to expand the House. The idea of increasing the size of the House without the necessary balloter reforms would simply exacerbate the absurd outcomes nosotros see in states like Northward Carolina, where 50 pct of the votes cast in the 2022 ballot were for Democratic candidates withal Republicans won 10 of the country's 13 House seats. Similar instances of gerrymandering in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are being challenged in state courts. In that location is no alibi for allowing either Democrats or Republicans to engage in partisan redistricting. Concluding June, the Supreme Courtroom ruled v-iv in Rucho five. Mutual Cause that "partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the achieve of the federal courts"—a shameful dereliction of the Court'south responsibleness to protect the rights of all Americans to, as the minority wrote, "participate equally in the political process." The Rucho determination is a render to 1940s Supreme Courtroom reasoning that electoral questions are all-time left to the political sphere, which the Court had overcome by 1962, when it ruled in Baker v. Carr that such political questions were indeed inside the Courtroom'due south purview. While we look for legislative activeness, former Attorney General Eric Holder's National Autonomous Redistricting Committee has vigorously fought a land-by-land boxing to insure that the 2022 redistricting maps are nonpartisan. In North Carolina, the grouping's efforts were successful recently when a three-judge panel ruled that new nonpartisan districts must replace the Republican gerrymandered plan.

How do nosotros go on simultaneously to expand and reform? In that location are several thoughtful plans that could frame the argue. The identify to start is a package of election and voting reforms introduced past Maryland Democratic Congressman John Sarbanes that includes a provision for nonpartisan commissions in united states to examine how to depict district lines fairly. It passed the House in March, simply Senate Majority Leader McConnell, unsurprisingly, volition non bring it up in the Senate.

Another possible alter would be to give states the selection to take some number of the added congressional seats and take them elected "at-large" on a statewide ground. Electing some members statewide will result in greater voter participation and more competitive Business firm races, which is likely to mean fewer extreme candidates. Hither's how information technology might work. Later the Demography, in states receiving additional seats, parties would accelerate a list of statewide candidates. The full number of votes cast for all the Democrats and Republicans running in the state's individual district races would be tallied to determine which party'southward at-big candidates would be elected. So, for example, if the votes cast for Democrats running in all of the district races amounted to 60 percentage of the total statewide vote—Democrats would receive threescore percent of the at-big seats, and the Republicans would go 40 percent. The at-large concept is more nuanced than this example and is nigh likely to make sense in more populated states. Many states will non qualify for an at-large seat, and some will get simply 1 or two seats, but fifty-fifty in those instances there would exist a stiff incentive to maximize individual district turnout; at-large/statewide elections will bulldoze both parties to field candidates in every district in an effort to run up the statewide voting totals. The days of candidates running unopposed would be over. Fifty-fifty in the districts that were overwhelmingly Democratic, the Republicans would however want to field a serious candidate to increment their aggregate statewide vote total. The same would be true for Democrats in strong Republican areas.

More competition for every seat will have a moderating result on both parties. In order to be effective in maximizing their vote, parties volition have to field candidates who appeal to more than than a narrow ideological base. In a further try to drive upwards turnout the parties might want to field at-big 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 Electoral College

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

What touch would this have? In sum, the more populated states would increase 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 electoral vote per 193,000 people. Florida, meanwhile, with a population of 21.3 meg, gets 29 electors—one electoral vote for every 734,500 people. Simply if congressional districts were reduced from 720,000 people to 577,000, Florida would grow to 37 congressional districts, and 39 electors, while Wyoming would yet have just the three. Ohio would get four more congressional seats, and Michigan 3 more than. The big winners of course would be California with 16 more seats and Texas with 15. This would translate into 71 electoral votes for California and 53 for Texas.

Of form, the small states would detest this. Merely the Balloter College has given minor states disproportionate ability throughout our history. Besides, of class, slave states, in the showtime: The three-fifths compromise for counting enslaved people adopted at the Constitutional Convention gave the S more Electoral College votes, which resulted in 5 of the first six presidents beingness from Virginia. All 5 were slaveholders.

A constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College would exist the best way to proceed, merely it'southward extremely unlikely. Increasing the size of the Balloter Higher would reduce the small-scale-state advantage. The big and growing states—Florida, Texas, California, other Sun Belt states—volition become more important to the outcome of the presidential election. Whether this increase in the larger states will favor one party over the other is not clear, merely the ways by which nosotros elect a President volition certainly be more representative of the population. And, of course, Nate Silver will have to change the name of his website.

Time for a Argue

For 140 years, the right size of congressional districts was hotly debated. Even so we oasis't had a serious debate on the size of Firm districts in 90 years, during which time the country'due south population has more than than tripled. The stasis has left us an outlier amid representative democracies. U.S. House districts are gigantic compared to "lower firm" constituencies in Europe. Great Great britain's Business firm of Commons has 650 members, each representing about 110,000 people. France'due south Sleeping room of Deputies is 577, Germany's Bundestag is 709; both, well-nigh 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.Due south. House, but its districts are much smaller, with about 272,000 people.

The Framers recognized that the population would abound and the country would change. The population has tripled since 1910, the demographic makeup of our state has changed, but that change is not matched in the makeup of the congressional membership. Co-ordinate to the Pew Research Center, in 2017, whites deemed for 81 percent of Congress but just 62 percentage of the population. In the 2022 Congress, women make up 20 percentage of the membership, despite being simply more than than half the population. In the concluding v decades, the Hispanic population increased more than fivefold. Still the percentage of Hispanics in Congress, while it has grown, is nevertheless just shy of viii percent. Expanding the Business firm gives us a take a chance to have a legislative co-operative that is representative of the people in more ways than one.

Many have said to me that the idea of more than members is just crazy. But what is truly crazy, pitiful, and inarguably objectionable is that a racist, nativist congressional determination of 90 years ago still stands. 4 hundred and thirty-five members is tantamount to a Confederate Battle Flag of numbers hiding in plainly sight. Manifestly there is no existent understanding of the Framers' intent that Business firm districts abound in number every bit the population increases. Where are the "strict constructionists" when nosotros actually need them? While we fence what questions to ask on the adjacent Demography form, there appears to be footling recognition that the purpose of Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution was to decide the size of a growing House of Representatives.

Congress volition not subtract the size of districts without a fight, of course. Why would whatsoever member want to dilute his or her individual power and authority? But for democracy to work, autonomous institutions must have the trust and support of the people. The Framers promised a people'south Business firm. It is fourth dimension to honor that promise. Congress owes it to the American people to revisit the decision of 435 made 108 years ago and adopted into law 90 years ago.

Visit your member of Congress, enquire them why there are 435 members of the Firm; since you now know, you could educate them and the process of reform can brainstorm.

Giordano Clibing