To Fix Congress, Make It Bigger. Much Bigger.

Lee Drutman wrote for Washington Monthly on the benefits of radically expanding the size of the U.S. House of Representatives.

There’s no magic formula for the exact perfect size of a legislature. But bringing the House back to the ratio that stood in 1911—211,000 constituents to one representative—would be a good start. It would still put the U.S. toward the upper end of the thirty-six countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-ordination and Development, but we would no longer be a major outlier. To get there, in a nation of 333 million people, the 2021 House would need about 1,600 members. Bringing the House up to that level would likely go a long way toward reducing inequality and could restore much-needed trust in government. It would also have several other major benefits.

For one, expanding the House would strike a more powerful blow against the influence of money in politics than any past campaign finance regulation, simply by cutting down on the costs of campaigning—reducing the candidate demand instead of trying to cut off the supply. With one representative for 200,000 people, it’s much more feasible to run a grassroots, door-to-door campaign than when you’re trying to represent 765,000 people. It’s true that more campaigns could mean more money spent on House races overall, but the average cost would drop dramatically, giving less-deep-pocketed candidates a better chance. And it would mean that individual members, once in office, could spend more time with their constituents and less time hanging out with lobbyists and rich donors.

Another benefit would be added diversity. Today’s House is 80 percent male, and 80 percent white, with an average age of fifty-seven. Adding 1,165 new members would be a quick way to make the legislature look a lot more like the country it represents.