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The convincing math behind a bigger House (of Representatives)

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting piece up that was inspired by a suit recently filed contesting the legality of the present system of allocating Congressional representation in the House.

The suit roughly involves a concept in a "lost amendment" to the Constitution that would've capped the size of Congressional districts at just 30,000 people. While that would be absurd now --it'd leave us with a 30 million person House-- the overall thinking behind it reveals some surprising inequalities in the present representation of the "several states" in the House.

The most populous district in America right now, according to the latest Census data, is Nevada’s 3rd District, where 960,000 people are represented in the House by just one member. All of Montana’s 958,000 people likewise have just one vote in the House. By contrast, 523,000 in Wyoming get the same voting power, as do the 527,000 in one of Rhode Island’s two districts and the 531,000 in the other.

That 400,000-person disparity between top and bottom has generated a federal court challenge that is set to be filed Thursday in Mississippi, charging that the system effectively disenfranchises people in certain states. The lawsuit asks the courts to order the House to fix the problem by increasing its size from 435 seats to at least 932, or perhaps as many as 1,761. That way, the plaintiffs argue, every state can have districts that are close to parity.

Note that the excerpted quote above comes from a NY Times piece by Peter Baker that FiveThirtyEight itself quoted, which may be found here.

Myself, my initial reaction to the premise of these articles was "Hell, no! The House is enough of a circus as it is!" But, in the end, not only is it downright unfair to have Rhode Island equally represented with states that have nearly twice the population, but I also find myself wondering if this suit has potential Electoral College ramifications.

And oh, what a bloodbath that would cause amongst the yelling classes in the punditocracy!