The House of Representatives must change, how would you vote?

[Arkansas Progressive]

Here's something I considered in VC

[vcczar]

I’ll have to think about it. I like any but the first option. So I’ll decide among the bottom three. 

[10centjimmy]

The Representative has lost its role as the person who sits and advocates for a specific district. All politics is now national, and should be reflected as such. When you have congressional candidates in North Carolina and Pennsylvania calling for increased border control, it's pretty clear the focus on the district is lost.

NPR would still require party lists to include reps from every state, and opening it up to a national vote would encourage participation of national 3rd parties.  Ideally the 2 big tents splinter and are forced to negotiate and *gasp* compromise. 

[ShortKing]

For me, I'm not sure I'm enthused about the Wyoming Rule, but I think the arbitrary 435 cap has led to the average representative having to answer to a constituency too large to have a cohesive community interest. The average Representative answers to about 750,000 people when it used to be around 200,000 when the 435 cap was enacted. It's not surprising to me that congressional candidates default to bigger issues that might not directly touch all 750k people but that they mostly have opinions about one way or the other. Not sure that the Wyoming Rule is the best answer per se, but it is the one that best addresses what I find to be a significant issue with the House as it stands.

[pilight]

The average representative represents about as many people as the mayor of Indianapolis.  That's not too much for one person.

[ShortKing]

5 minutes ago, pilight said:

The average representative represents about as many people as the mayor of Indianapolis.  That's not too much for one person.

Didn't say it was logistically too much to handle for one person, and there are countless reasons comparing the job of a mayor to that of a US Representative misses the point, but more than anything else, the Founders when creating the House meant for it to be the most directly democratic part of our government and designed for the House to grow in size as the population grew. Why that would stop being true in 1913 simply is not compelling to me, especially when the number of constituents each Representative answers to has almost tripled in size with no sign of slowing. 

Here's a piece from the American Enterprise Institute laying out more reasons in more detail why the House should be expanded.

https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-case-for-enlarging-the-house-of-representatives/

[Cenzonico]

PR with an expanded house.