Geoffrey Skelley looks at how congressional representation has changed between 1960 and 2010:
Trende wants more congressmen:
Today a representative answers to over 700,000 constituents, well over 10 times the number of constituents deemed appropriate by the First Congress. While it seems unwise to adhere to the strict letter of Article the First, the time has likely come to abide by its spirit and increase the size the House.
The United States is supposed to be the world’s premier representative democracy, yet India’s Lok Sabha is the only lower chamber on the globe where representatives have more constituents. Indeed, Pakistan’s National Assembly and Indonesia’s People’s Representative Council are the only other lower chambers with a population-per-seat ratio exceeding even 400,000.
Among his reasons for increasing the size of the House:
[It] could help mend some of the detachment that is felt between Washington and the states. Campaigns would be less expensive, so politicians would have to spend less time fundraising, and representatives would have fewer constituents to answer to, allowing for more personalized representation. It may even be that smaller constituencies allow for the election of more ideologically diverse members. Indeed, there is some correlation between the size of state legislative chambers and the number of third-party/independent candidates elected.
Bernstein is against the idea:
For elections, it would probably mean fewer voters in competitive districts, and less media attention to each individual election. Given the way redistricting works in most states, competitive districts are what’s left after both parties have grabbed the solidly partisan areas. That means there are often are as few competitive districts in California and Texas as there are in states with only a handful of seats. So a bigger House would likely leave us with about the same number of competitive districts as we have now, but with fewer people in each. And with more races to cover and each one a little less important, the resources devoted by the media to individual elections probably would decrease. That’s good news for incumbents, but bad news for competition and democracy.
The Dish 