What if it was revealed that a corrupt bargain had been struck at the highest levels of government more than a century ago to forever lock in a comparative rural advantage in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College to the detriment of urban and suburban populations? And what if it was revealed that a simple statutory change requiring only Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a president willing to allow this statute to become law could right this wrong? And what if the fix would result in a permanent Democratic majority in the House and in the Electoral College, at least until the Republicans, or whatever party replaces them, actually starts serving the needs of urban and suburban populations? Well, there was such a corrupt bargain, and the solution is just that simple!
The solution is to enlarge the membership of the House of Representatives. The corrupt bargain was to set the membership at 435 at a time when the population of the United States was predominantly rural and never enlarge it again, as it had been after every decennial census from the foundation of the Republic to 1910!
A little history first: We’re all familiar with the Bill of Rights, amendments 1 through 10 to the US Constitution, but they were just ten out of 12 amendments proposed together. One of the two which failed to be ratified was the Congressional Apportionment Amendment, which would have provided for enlargement of the House as the population grew, with a maximum population per district of ultimately 50,000. If it had been ratified — and there is actually a pretty good argument that it was — the membership of the House would today approach 7000. Fast forward to 1913. The 1910 census had shown that about 45% of the population lived in communities of 2500 persons or more. The membership of the House was set at 433, and then enlarged to 435 after the admission of New Mexico and Arizona as states in 1912. In the same year that the 1920 census reported that a majority lived in urban communities, reactionary Republicans took over Congress and the Presidency. This combination gave the country strict nativist immigration quotas, Prohibition, and, after years of delay, the Permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929, which set the membership of the House for all time at “the then existing number of Representatives”, 435.
The population of each congressional district in 1788 was just over 30,000, a number expressly favored by George Washington, and as previously noted, a constitutional amendment was proposed to set the size of the House at a number not to exceed 50,000 per district. That level was exceeded fairly quickly, but the size of the House was increased after every decennial census until . . . the urban population exceeded the rural population. A consequence of the restricted size of the House since then has been a huge increase in the population of the average district to 747,000, while a low population state like Wyoming has one representative for fewer than 500,000 people. And it is easier to gerrymander the larger districts to include enough rural and exurban residents to narrowly elect Republicans, whereas an increase in the number of districts would necessarily reduce the number of rural and exurban residents per district below the tipping point, drowning out the gerrymanders.
If the size of the House was set so that the average district would not exceed the population of the smallest state, 500,000, with narrow restrictions on the variations in district sizes from smallest to largest, the population of the House would have to increase by almost 50%. Even allowing for continued gerrymandering, the majority of the additional representatives would be Democrats, and this would not change until Republicans start paying meaningful attention to the needs of urban constituencies. Likewise, the Electoral College would increase in size, with the bulk of the additional electoral votes going to states with large urban populations — blue states — eliminating the red state advantage resulting from the equal number of senators per state. And all this will require is a majority vote in the House and Senate and a president willing to sign the law.