By 2040, two-thirds of Americans will be represented by 30 percent of the Senate

Although the intent of the Senate was to give smaller states representation, when the country was founded there weren't such stark differences in population. The first US census was in 1790. The most populous state was Virginia, with 747,610 people, the least populous was Delaware with 59,094 people. Roughly 13x. In 2010 California had 37,253,956 people, and Wyoming had 563,626. Roughly 66x.

The trouble with that, is that in the Senate, each state gets the same two senators. What that means is that Wyoming doesn’t have shout over so many. Cali get 2 senators to represent 37 million. Whose will be done?

As far as I'm concerned the system still works pretty well. I don't think the founding fathers ever believed that the United States should be controlled by two or three massively populated states.

The Senate is supposed to represent the states.

The House is supposed to represent the people.

Which is why a state like California has 57 electoral votes.

If anything we need to go back to the states choosing the Senators.

This.

I'm fine with the Senate having disproportionate representation--it's like that by design.

What I take issue with is the vastly disproportionate representation in the House. We need to add more Representatives.

The cap on representatives is arbitrary and should be raised. Once again, I'm forced to agree.

1,ooo House members would be a good number with it raised in proportion to population increases.

But House party leaders are about the last people who want that to happen. Its hard enough corralling 230 or so House members to pass legislation. Make it where they have to do the same but for just over 500 and their jobs get massively more difficult.

Really it should be around 5,000, but 1,000 is a good start.

Oh and I don't care if it makes their job harder, they don't do shit any way.

Yeah, that would give the House Whips something to do!

This is one of the structural issues with the US that I'm not sure can be solved within the bounds of the Constitution.

The problem isn't passing legislation, it's passing legislation AND maintaining leadership.

Unlike Senate Majority Leader which only requires a simple majority of the majority party, Speaker of the House is elected by the whole chamber. Throw in that opposition members are a given no and most majorities are slim and this means that the Speaker usually needs 90-95% of his/her caucus to stay in power. For Republicans this has resulted in the Hastert Rule.

I kind of want a separate thread on the whole Noah's ark thing, that was pretty interesting.

I have a contrarian suggestion to solve the problem.

We burn half the country to the ground.

It is even worse because the capped the house of reps so I don't even get full representation in the hpuse which is the body where large states are supposed to be fully represented.

That would ve one rep for every 330,000 igboring state lines, which is way too large. Get the number down to 10,000 then it will be much harder to gerrymander plus regular people could actually campaign and win the old fashioned retail politics way without having to be a multimillionaire.

10,000? Way too low.

At 350,000,000 people that would be 35,000 Representatives.

Good. The more the better. Give them say $25k a year and have them vote on the internet with a rotation of people changing every month as to who is physically in Washington.

Don't worry the GOP is already on it.

Any more than 1,000 Representatives is insane, unless we bifurcate the House and somehow made a tricameral legislature.

Why?

It's completely unworkable after a certain point, and at 1,000 it would be a little more than doubled. The EU has something like 750 MPs accounting for a population double the US.

I think the UK has 650ish and they are just twice the pop of Cali, who would have less than 100 house delegates even if it was doubled.

In the digital age we can do all sorts of stuff to have reps who are part time or who teleconference. Why is more representation bad?

Actually is California's 57 reps were doubled we would have 114. If we had the same number of reps from before the artificial cap being put in place we would have around 300.

Make it the whole country and we'll talk. Throw in the asteroid to deal with the rest of the world and you have a deal.

In principle great, but the majority of your reps won't have time to read the bills they are voting on or the staff to help them decipher them. (Aware that some not reading now is already an issue). You would likely see things be just as divided along party lines if not more so.

Because vast numbers of the voters are complete idiots. Treating serious national issues with the same seriousness as Survivor or American Idol is a sure fire recipe for disaster.

This here.

One teacher told me where been at 435 congresscritters because DC got tired of building bigger buildings to house them. That's...literally it. I' say at least 100 more would be a good start.