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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Fix Congress with more Congressmen?

Jonah Goldberg has an interesting idea. We're going to need a bigger House. A much bigger House.
Except for a brief effort to accommodate Alaska and Hawaii, the size of the House has been frozen at 435 members since 1911. A 1929 law, driven in part to keep immigrants underrepresented, has kept it that way.

But there's nothing sacred about the 435 number. In fact, the Founders would be aghast at the idea that the "peoples' house" is filled with pols speaking for hundreds of thousands of citizens.
Goldberg's idea, published in his latest column in the Union Leader, would be to expand the House to around 5,000 members, which would slash Congressional districts to 1/10 their size. So instead of two district in New Hampshire, we'd have 20. Imainge Congressional campaigns being more like State Senate campaigns. Never gonna happen, but an interesting idea.

1 comment:

  1. I have thought the very same thing. In New Hampshire, we have the luxury of a true citizen legislature because the population is properly represented. I can't possibly be properly represented at the federal level when I am one of over 600,000 constitutents for a single representative. It is absurd.

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