Why are we not expanding the house numbers?

[jimrtex]

It would take an act of Congress to expand the House, and more representatives would mean less power for each individual representative. Of course they're perfectly happy to keep the number fixed. That's why there was an amendment proposed in the Bill of Rights that would have limited the population per district. If only the Founders had thought of the cube root rule...

We should all be glad that Madison's harebrained idea didn't pass. One representative for every 50,000 Americans would require a US House the size of a small town.

It just says at least 50k per district. It would allow any number from 200-6600 districts.

Madison proposed one per 30,000 until there were 100 after which there would _____ to _____, with each State guaranteed two representatives. It was ordinary for bills to have blanks, with the numbers decided by debate. A lot of these details were hashed out in the Committee of the Whole.

A House Committee on details filled in the blanks with 100 and 175, and eliminated the minimum of 2 representatives per state, keeping the minimum of one.

The House then replaced it with a version that would have required at least one per every 50,000.

The Senate had a different version, requiring one per 30,000 for the first 100, one per 40,000 for the next 100, and one per 60,000 thereafter.

The House refused the Senate amendments, and somehow the House got changed to not more than one per 50,000.

The version proposed to the States is nonsensical between 8 million and 10 million.

At 8 million, at least 200 would be required, while simultaneously requiring no more than 160. Congress may have got confused between two goal: make sure that the House would expand, but not grow without limit, and you got more or less what was proposed.

Had Madison's simple version been approved, the House would have 175 members (almost triple the number (59) that proposed the amendments - North Carolina and Rhode Island excluded, with at least two per state.

With a minimum of two per State districting might not have been required, or perhaps there would be a minimum number of districts: int(N/2). California would have 20 or so districts, States with five or less currently would have 2.

There would be 275 electors (138 to win).

[jimrtex]

It used to be that reapportionment, including setting the size of the House and determining which method to deal with fractions was done after each Census. Congress was unable to decide after the 1920 Census, so in preparation for the 1930 Census, they set a fixed number (435) to be that done for the 1910 Census, and fixed the method to apportion that number.  Significantly increasing that number would mean either building more House office space, or reducing the amount each Representative gets (and thus the amount of Staff). Actually, giving Hawaii and Alaska Statehood helped slightly as it cut the number of territorial delegates by 2. No one has been willing to reopen the can of worms since then.

The statute for the 1930 apportionment provided a choice between Huntington-Hill and Webster's Method (geometric or harmonic means). There would be no difference in 1930. I 1940, there would be a difference between Arkansas and Michigan. The Democrats voted for Arkansas, which was the smaller state and slightly favored by Huntington-Hill. The method was fixed at that time.