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The House stopped growing over a century ago even as the U.S. quadrupled. A new bill would fix that [1]

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Date: 2023-02-06  

The size of the House of Representatives hasn't kept up with population growth for a very long time—in fact, it hasn't even tried to—but one congressman has a solution.

Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon just introduced a bill that would increase the House to 585 members from its present 435 following the next census in 2030, reducing the number of constituents each representative would have and, hopefully, making government more responsive and more reflective. While the proposed change wouldn't take effect for another 10 years, we've envisioned how it would have affected congressional reapportionment following the 2020 census in the map at the top of this story (click here to enlarge).

Up until the 1910s, the House had increased in size nearly every decade as the population grew, but with only a two-year exception—when Alaska and Hawaii first became states—it's been stuck at 435 members since 1913. At the time, America’s population was just one-quarter of what it currently is, yet the number of seats in the House has been frozen in place by law since 1929. Consequently, the number of constituents in the average House district has grown from 210,000 after the 1910 census to 761,000 today, and that number could pass 1 million in the coming decades if the law does not change.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/6/2150906/-The-House-stopped-growing-over-a-century-ago-even-as-the-U-S-quadrupled-A-new-bill-would-fix-that

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