435 Is Not a Magic Number

I've written about the Electoral College and National Popular Vote legislation a fair amount (here, here, and here). But somehow, I never heard of the Reapportionment Act of 1929 until this election season.

Reading about it made me want to hate-read a bunch of books about the 1920s because that decade sounds a lot like our recent years. Ouch.

The 1920 census, for one, was intentionally messed with, and that is related to the Reapportionment Act. Plus there was a ton of anti-immigrant sentiment (which resulted in the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924), and the decade started just after the Red Summer and continued with the Tulsa Massacre, not to mention it was the early-modern peak of the Ku Klux Klan, when three to eight million white people were members (out of a total population of about 100 million).

What did the Reapportionment Act do?

It ignored past practice and permanently constrained the number of members of the House of Representatives to 435, regardless of population growth in the country or a change in the number of states. When that number was established in 1910, each member represented 212,000 people; today, they represent an average of about 785,000. 

As the article linked above about the Act says, many other representative governments around the world have larger bodies than that —the U.K., Germany, Italy, and Mexico, for instance — all with smaller populations than the U.S.

Aside from bringing our representatives closer to us, substantially increasing that 435 limit would also have the effect of automatically decreasing the disaster called the Electoral College, because it ameliorates that disproportionate power of those bonus votes that come from the Senate seats for each state. Those are the ones that mean Wyoming voters have 3.6 times as much power as California voters. 

Modifying the Reapportionment Act is within the power of Congress, without any Constitutional or state legislature involvement. It would probably have to be a Congress that shares the same party in both houses and with the President, admittedly. But still, that is unlike the requirements for the National Popular Vote legislation on the state level or the multi-level process needed to make a change to the Electoral College.

Such a Congress and President could also add states to the union and expand the Electoral College further, such as Washington, D.C. or Puerto Rico (if the people of Puerto Rico are willing). The only constraint on adding states, if I understand the Constitution's language, is that changing a state's boundaries requires permission of that state's legislature. So splitting up California, Texas, or Washington (or combining small Northeastern states) would require those states' permission. 

Obviously, anything beyond a few small state additions would require some major negotiation, but when it came to voting on the additions, it would be relatively simple compared to the Constitutional amendment process.