Pack the Union: Admit New States to Amend Constitution for Equal Representation

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Terrible idea. Republicans could just do the same in the future.

We should, however, admit Puerto Rico, DC, and Guam as states, regardless of what the political consequences may be. (Remember that PR has a Republican representing them in Congress right now, so this isn't some hyperpartisan conspiracy.)

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Incidentally, the Constitution of South Carolina has an anti-packing provision in it, that is of little relevance since Reynolds. New counties (which originally had one Senator each and at least one Representative in the General Assembly had to have at minimum one full Representative's worth of population and new county seats could be no closer than five miles to an existing one, thus preventing a city from breaking up into multiple counties.

Guam's population is far too small for Statehood, unless we are going to rewrite the Wyoming rule into the Guam Rule and more than quadruple the size of Congress. Congress arguably needs expanded in terms of the number of Representatives giving it hasn't increased in about a hundred years despite our population having vastly increased, but troubling or quadrupling is simply not feasible or desirable.

I think we may have discussed this exact topic before, but if the US could spend a century with Nevada having less than half the population of the next smallest state, we could also have Guam with less than half of the population of the next smallest state now.

If you add Guam + NMI (they have the same general culture, language, geographic proximity), you're above 200,000 people. If you extend the offer to the former US possessions in the region to make a state of Micronesia (something that would be a power move geopolitically considering their proximity to China), you could get above 500,000.

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All three of you are misunderstanding the idea. The idea is not to add these states permanently (which would indeed be undemocratic, unfair, and just as tyrannical as the current system). The idea is to add these states temporarily solely for the purpose of passing constitutional amendments to ensure the right of all voters to equal representation under the law is respected. Once these amendments were passed, they would either render the new mini-states irrelevant, or else the new states could all simply be merged back together into one state (or more likely, merged back into the Federal District of DC).

Once the amendments were passed, adding new states would serve no purpose, since nobody would get any more (or less) representation simply by virtue of living in any particular "state" entity.

I understood completely that the "new states" would be temporary, and I bet the others did too. That doesn't mean that Republicans wouldn't one day regain control of Congress and try something else like this.