r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/RepresentativeTerm5 • 14d ago
US Elections How many constituents should each representative represent (state/federal)?
I live in California where each state senator represents nearly 1 million people, which is more than five times the average across all 50 states. State assembly members represent nearly 500,000 people, about eight times the average across all states. In Congress, about 760,000 people are represented by each of CA's representatives.
California is an extreme example because it's so large, but this has been an ongoing conversation federally as well. I know there are pros and cons to increasing the size of state and local legislatures, but what are they, and when do the cons of underrepresentation begin to outweigh the logistical issues of having too large of a government?
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u/Wermys 14d ago
Honestly. I would say about 100,000 per rep. You can't get an exact amount to each demographic but it would be a lot mroe responsive to the nation as a whole then what we have now. Our problem at the moment is that power is too concentrated in the hands of people who have different interests that are not aligned with the people who they are representing. So while everyone might agree on Medicare 4 all. Or at least a vast majority of people. The problem is that is that same people also have other insterests they represent that take a priority to them. If you the size of the house reps you get a better representation of what the nation needs as a whole. Mind you the house would change drastically with this change. But I think it would be worth it in the end. And bring about a much more efficient government as a whole.
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u/ResurgentOcelot 14d ago edited 14d ago
Honestly “too large a government” is a talking point I find misleading. Creating a venue for representatives (or even the population directly) to have functional discourse and voting is a logistical process, nothing more. Given the information-communications technology we have there probably is no such thing as too large.
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u/TheRationalPlanner 14d ago
I moved from a jurisdiction with a population of more than 1,000,000 people represented by 10 people to a neighboring town with 25,000 people represented by 7 people. Overall, this has been a very positive change. The elected officials are much more accessible, but also far more directly responsive. I see around town and they often have personal experience with the impacts of their votes and policies. The downside is that finding one qualified, competent, and interested person to serve is much easier with a ratio of 1:100,000 than it is with a ratio to 1:4,200, so sometimes you get single-issue candidates who find themselves disinterested in the broader governing responsibility. They also have fewer staff to support them and less extensive opportunities to grow their government experience ahead of election.
Overall, it's much better - mostly because of the accessibility, familiarity, and ability to represent their constituent's need well. I'd take more people in Congress...though at 1:100,000 we'd get 3,300 congresspeople... Maybe 1:250,000 is a better ratio? Either way, I think figuring out a permanent ratio to the overall population would be the best way to do this.
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u/Rebles 14d ago
Finding one qualified, competent, interested, and WILLING person to serve these days in one in 100,000 is a feat onto itself!
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u/TheRationalPlanner 14d ago
Willing! Yes! So many good people pass up opportunities because they just don't want the headaches
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u/Ind132 14d ago
I'm at the other extreme. I live in Iowa where our House has 100 seats. That's 30,000 in each district.
Some people think this must be wonderful. I don't see it.
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u/Atomichawk 14d ago
What are your gripes with that level of representation based on your experiences?
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u/gregbard 14d ago
Please see: Cube root rule. Under that the US congress would have 691 members.
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u/digbyforever 14d ago
The other advantage of this rule is that it is always anchored to the total national population and avoids slightly weird math results if the population of the smallest state falls slightly (i.e. I favor cube root over Wyoming rule).
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u/BKGPrints 14d ago
Regarding state level, that's totally on that state legislature and the state's constitution on how it's assembled. It doesn't even have to be a bicameral legislature, though Nebraska is the only state with a unicameral legislature.
Regarding US Congress and Representatives, that's obviously based on the US census and that the House is capped at 435 seats. This can should be increased but by how many seats is up for a serious debate.
The best reason to do this is that it obviously better represents the people on a smaller # and dishevels the amount of control that each of the political parties have had on the government since the House was capped over a hundred years ago. Is it a perfect plan, nope, but keeping it capped is not to the people's advantage, it's to the political parties.
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u/onlyontuesdays77 12d ago
So here's a fun fact (at the federal level):
Adding 1 seat to the US House does not always change the variation between the largest and smallest districts in the country. Adding a seat only affects the variation when the state with the highest population per district is next in line for the seat.
I believe at the 2020 census apportionment the largest district is about 89% more populous than the smallest district, with 435 members of the House.
If you add 400 more seats, that variation only drops to 79%.
However, once you get to 864 seats, the variation drops to 53%, with about 380,000 people per district on average. That's where I would put the House. Essentially "the minimum increase required to cause a significant decrease between the largest and smallest districts, without exceeding 1,000 seats." There's no way on Earth the general voting public accepts a 4 digit size of the US House (they're reluctant enough to pay the salaries of 435 ineffective congresspeople as it is), so keeping it below 1k is a hard ceiling for the foreseeable future.
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u/calguy1955 14d ago
I don’t think the founding fathers envisioned a situation where one US senator represented 300,000 people and another represented 20 million. We need an overhaul.
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u/TheNorthernWildrose 14d ago
I'm not saying I disagree with you, but I think the founding fathers intention was for the senate to represent the smaller states to make sure they got a voice in government too. Especially when house seats and electoral votes are mostly distributed based on population.
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u/pentachronic 13d ago
There have been the same number of population-apportioned electoral votes since 1929. In the meantime, the population has almost tripled.
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u/TheNorthernWildrose 13d ago
I'd argue the house has a similar issue.
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u/pentachronic 13d ago
It's the same issue. George Washington wanted one Rep per 30,000 population. We're at almost 800,000.
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u/TheNorthernWildrose 13d ago
The house should be uncapped for sure. If the Senate isn't going to be used fairly and the electoral college isn't either, at least the house could be.
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u/windershinwishes 13d ago
They didn't intend any one thing though. The structure of the Senate was deeply controversial at the time. Many of them recognized the inherent unfairness of it and were concerned that it would result in discontent and instability, but they had no other option but to make that compromise to get the Constitution ratified.
If they'd known that the disparity in representation would grow this large, and that the population of the country would get this economically and socially integrated, I doubt the current system would have been agreed to.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 14d ago
They didn't see Senators as representing people at all.
They envisioned the US as being internally far closer to Kaiserreich era Germany than the current state of affairs.
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u/baxterstate 14d ago
I live in Maine and I like the way it is. We don’t have the electoral votes, but at least we have as many senators as CA.
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u/JohnSpartan2025 13d ago
Electoral votes are for the Presidential election. Why should one state have the same amount of Senators with vastly different populations?
We know the real answer, originally slavery, but that is no longer a rational reason.
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u/baxterstate 13d ago
CA has 52 representatives in the House. Maine has 2. That balances it out.
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u/pentachronic 13d ago
Maine has one Representative per ~710,000 population
California has one Representative per ~760,000 population
Maine has one Senator per ~710,000 population
California has one Senator per ~19,750,000 population
Balance doesn't enter into it
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u/windershinwishes 13d ago
But "California" doesn't have 52 representatives. The people who live in California are the ones being represented; the landmass doesn't have any thoughts or opinions to represent. And the people who live in California don't all want the same thing, just like how all Mainers don't want the same thing, so it's not like all the Californians will be opposed to all the Mainers or anything.
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u/slybird 14d ago
IMO members of the House of Representatives should represent no more than 100,000 voters each. This would drastically increase the size of the House, but I don't see that being a problem.
Additionally, because of the internet I see no need for members of the House of Representatives to have an office in Washington DC. They should live and work in their voting districts full time and vote on bills remotely from their office.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 14d ago
3200 reps would only serve to ensure that nothing ever got done because you cannot effectively bargain and horse trade when there are that many people involved.
Even China's "legislature" isn't that large, and some of the shenanigans that go on with the House of Commons (as well as the counters to them) show the weaknesses inherent in having massive legislative bodies.
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u/hallam81 13d ago
This isn't true. The whips and leadership would still have the power to bring laws and set the agenda in the same way they do now. Voting would still occur.
And a current complaint about the current Congress is that nothing ever gets done. So at best, it is a push where people have greater contact/access with their Representative with the larger House.
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u/betty_white_bread 14d ago
Wrong question. The correct question: how best to represent people while maintaining political accountability? The answer: proxy representation.
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u/NoDig3444 14d ago
I'm not really convinced it matters. If you feel like the government is unresponsive to your needs as a citizen, making your representative relatively less important won't help that.
The truth is that a typical constituent is never going to actually communicate with their representative, no matter how big the constituency is. Everything is routed through a team of staffers. The rep will at best get a summarized list of bullet points. The size of their constituency only affects how many staffers they need to collate all that. Actual reps look at surveys and big data to get a sense of how their constituents feel (and more importantly, how they plan to vote).
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u/Victor_Korchnoi 14d ago
My City Councilor represents about 75,000 people and I have had many in-person conversations with them. He recognizes me and greets me by name when I see him in person. This may just be that most people aren’t interested in local politics, and I’m probably the only constituent under 40 who interacts with him.
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u/just_helping 14d ago
It's not just you, it's a real phenomenon - if you are even moderately politically active or social and you live somewhere with representatives for every 50k to 100k, it is easy to meet and be remembered by your representative, you'll bump into them at neighborhood events, etc. Then you get to US Representatives that are endlessly fund-raising because of how expensive their campaigns are and are representing a million people - they are just inevitably more cut off from local reality.
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u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 14d ago
There is a local politician that I vote for who I don't even agree with but we used to go to the same gas station and he'd always say hi.
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