435 is Not Enough
/In another essay, I contend that knowing facts about American history and government is good, but that knowing facts is not enough. I suggested that knowing the number of members in the House of Representatives ought to lead citizens to ask how a committee with 435 members operates. I concluded in the other essay that 435 members is too many.
Here, I contend that 435 is not enough.
The ratio of constituents to US representatives is around 750,000 to one. Few other democratic nations in the world provide citizens with such a diluted representation in their national legislatures as the US does.
China has 1.3 billion citizens, but their National People’s Congress has 2,980 members, and that makes a ratio of 465,000 to one. Germany’s ratio is about 117,000 to one. Sweden’s Riksdag has 349 members: one per every 28,653 Swedes.
I had to look long to find a country that claims to be a republic and gives its citizens less representation than the US. I found India — the world’s largest democracy. India’s Lok Sabha has 545 members. India’s population is 1.3 billion. That works out to more than two million constituents for each representative.
The comparison to other countries is meaningful, but we shouldn’t make too much of it. The ratio of constituents to representatives is not the only factor determining the quality of government. China’s legislature is a rubber stamp for a smaller and more elite Communist Party ruling committee, so the fact that their constituents-to-representative ratio is better than the US’s doesn’t mean they provide better representation.
Ultimately, Americans ought to care less about how we compare to other nations and more about how we live up to our own ideals. James Madison makes it clear in Federalist #58 that keeping membership in the House proportional to state populations is essential to good government.
The unequivocal objects of these regulations are, first, to readjust, from time to time, the apportionment of representatives to the number of inhabitants, under the single exception that each State shall have one representative at least; secondly, to augment the number of representatives at the same periods, under the sole limitation that the whole number shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants.
Madison considers at great length the question of how many constituents a single member could effectively represent. He examines successful governments in Europe and the American states and finds that one representative can serve many thousands of constituents. The figure of 30,000 seems to be the founders’ choice based on lengthy discussion during the Constitutional Convention.
The Constitution tried to maintain that desirable 30,000-to-one ratio as the nation grew. It began with 65 members, ramping up to one House member for every 30,000 citizens (counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person and ignoring Indians) as soon as the first census could effectively measure the population. The rule demands not exactly 30,000, but not more than 30,000. The “not to exceed” language was added to prevent states from packing Congress with extra members.
As the country grew, more members were admitted to maintain that ratio of one member for every 30,000 citizens. They kept this up until the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, when the number of House members was capped where it stood, which was 435 members.
From that time, the founders’ ideal of 30,000-to-one has faded in the rear-view mirror. The number of constituents each member of the House represents now varies from a little over 500,000 in Rhode Island to more than a million in Montana. Montanans have half the representation that Rhode Islanders have, and that’s not fair. But nobody anywhere in America gets the level of representation the founding fathers intended, and that is not fair, either.
Surprisingly, Americans don’t support changes that might improve their numerical representation in Congress. A majority of Americans support changes to the way the president is elected, including direct popular voting and eliminating the electoral college. But only a quarter of people surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2018 liked the idea of adding more member to the House of Representatives.
Citizens have a low opinion of the Congress, and creating more of a bad things feels wrong to them. Most citizens have never had a personal encounter with their congressional member and don’t ever expect to.
For whatever combination of reasons, citizens don’t support increasing the number of congressional members. However, Pew found that some changed their minds when told about the founders’ original intentions:
The public’s views shift modestly in the direction of increasing the size of the House in a version of the question that provides additional historical context. When the question notes that there were both fewer members of the House when the first Congress met than there are today (65 then, 435 now) and that each representative then represented a smaller number of constituents (roughly 60,000 then, 700,000 now), 34% say its size should be increased (compared with 28% without the historical sizes). Still, a plurality (44%) say the size should remain the same even with this additional information.
Given historical information, more citizens agreed that the number of members ought to be increased. But more people also said the number of members ought to be diminished! Perhaps those who focused on, “The first Congress had only 65 members” concluded that the 435 we have today is too many. Meanwhile, those who focused on, “The first Congress give citizens more numerical representation than we have today” concluded that more members are needed.
The ratio of constituents to representatives does not, by itself, indicate how well the House of Representatives works. Members’ effectiveness today is enhanced by professional staff and by modern methods of communication. But given any level of resources, a representative can always serve a smaller number of constituents better than a larger number. Our founders envisioned a far smaller ratio of constituents to representatives than our modern reality provides.
Judging by what they wrote, the founders would say that 435 members in the House of Representatives is not enough.
Readers may ask whether the contention that 435 is both too many and not enough doesn’t discredit both ideas, because nothing can be one thing and the opposite of that at the same time. A cup of coffee, for example, cannot be too hot to drink and at the same time also too cold to drink. But if there are two standards, the limitation goes away. An SUV can be too big and at the same time too small. It is too big to fit in a compact parking space, but too small to haul a football team with all its equipment.
These essays evaluate the House of Representatives by two different criteria. And that is fair, because both criteria are important purposes of the Congress. Congress exists to represent the needs and wishes of the people of the country. It also exists to effectively and efficiently accomplish the work of making laws and policies by which the nation is governed. Honest assessment finds that 435 is not enough to provide good representation and at the same time is too many to work well as a management team
Think:
The founders believed each member of the House could represent 30-thousand constituents. What does it mean that today each member has more than 700-thousand constituents?
Have you ever met a member of Congress? How long did you converse? How confident are you that he or she understands you needs and speaks on your behalf in Washington?
