I'm interested in the proportion of residents to representatives in legislative bodies.
One member of the assembly of Nunavut represents on average about 1700 residents. An assemblyperson in New York state represents on average about 132,000 people.
Do people in Nunavut feel like their assembly is more responsive to their needs than New Yorkers do?
The US House of Representatives was fixed at 435 members in 1911, when the US population was 92M. That's 1 representative per 212K residents.
Today, it's about 1 representative per every 754K resident, on average.
It's probably worth noting that in 1911 many women in the US were denied the vote, and Jim Crow laws plus segregationist terrorism prevented African Americans from voting.
Also, the voting age nationally was dropped to 18 in 1971.
So there are about 3.5x more residents per representative today than 100 years ago, and a higher proportion of those residents are voters than in 1911.
That 435 number is not defined in the Constitution. The number of seats in the house is set by Congress after each census.
It would make some sense to have about a 7-8x multiple of seats in the House of Representatives after 2020. That would give us about the same voter/representative ratio as in 1911 (3.5x population growth, 2x voter growth for women's suffrage alone)
More granular representation would mean more responsive legislators. It would mean more participation in government at a national level. And, maybe, better government.
It would also even out the disproportionate effect of rural, low population states on the Electoral College, which would make it less likely that we'd have popular votes that don't match the Electoral College votes.
Now, a legislature with 3045 (435 x 7) members wouldn't fit in the House Chamber of the U. S. Capitol building.
That room has been used since 1857 for the House of Representatives.
However, it seems to me that in designing our democracy, the space constraints of an 160-year-old room shouldn't be the top priority.
Designing a space where 3000 people could comfortably assemble is not an architectural impossibility.
That's on the order of the size of the auditorium for a large high school.
That's on the order of the size of the auditorium for a large high school.
It would mean changes in Congress. Bigger caucuses. Different committee structures. Power shifts into different leadership groups.
But for citizens, it would mean a Congressional Representative who lives in your neighborhood, who knows your needs personally and could represent them on a national level.
I'd like to make it clear that I have no attachment to the government of the year 1911, which as I've mentioned was horrendous for women, African Americans, and other people. We have come a long way in terms of voting rights alone.
But it's interesting to think about Canada's parliament, whose 338 members represent Canada's population of 37M. That's a proportion of ~109K residents per MP, on average. About 7x more representative than the US Congress.
I think I'm going to take a shot at doing some analysis of representation levels in national legislatures and see how they track with corruption, happiness, Gini coefficient, GDP per capita, and other indicators of good government.
(I'm pretty sure that I could say *most* women, although some states had women's suffrage for local or state offices at this time. I'm not sure if any women could vote for Congressional representatives in any state in 1911.)
(Not to mention that roll call votes would go from tedious to practically impossible.)
