A Bigger House? Not a Fan

Many people, understandably frustrated with Congress, think a way to improve the place would be to increase the size of the House. Here's Chuck Todd arguing for it today on Twitter: I'm very skeptical. There are good reasons to maybe expand the House a few dozen seats, but the calls to add hundreds of seats or double it seem very much misguided to me. It's absolutely true that the House districts have grown in population. The House has not been expanded from 435 Members since the Reapportionment Act of 1911 set the House at 433 seats, plus a seat for the potential incoming states of Arizona and Mex Mexico.1 This has increased the federal ratio of representation (FRR)---the total U.S. population / number of House seats--- from under 210k in 1910 to nearing 760k today. Good CRS report here. Always get your data from CRS It's also true that the U.S. is pretty far off in House size under the cube-root law, which states that the size of the lower house of legislature is normally about the…