Tentative conclusions on democracy & governance
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Why don’t they add seats to the House?
As the 2010 US census nears, redistricting and reapportionment enter the news. CMC’s Rose Institute has pulled together a handful of snippets concerned with redistricting reform. For others, the apportionment question is equally interesting. How will 435 House seats be reshuffled among states whose relative populations have changed?
A spirited Pennsylvanian call for ‘fair’ redistricting touches on the problem:
With most of the nation’s population growth taking place in the South and West, Pennsylvania is on track to lose another congressional district — dropping to 18 — when reapportionment takes place after the 2010 census.
The Burnt Orange Report cites some projections from the Swing State Project on who’s likely to get what: four more for Texas, one or two for Florida, two for Arizona and one each for Georgia, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. Expected losers are mostly in the midwest and northeast.
The partisan desire to guard marginal advantage is strong. Majority parties fight independent redistricting initiatives tooth-and-nail. A modest reform like 3-seat STV is pie-in-the-sky.
But the House sets its own size. Why wouldn’t incumbents facing the axe move to add seats?
Bipartisan gerrymandering could shore up every incumbent. Increasing the size of the House could make new seats the battlegrounds, allaying fears about freezing a status quo.
I suppose it’s possible in theory.
Posts apportionment, census 2010, Congress, gerrymandering, legislatures, redistricting, United States8 responses to to “Why don’t they add seats to the House?”
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I’d guess that raising the number of people in the house decreases to a degree the power of every member of the House. Seniority matters of course, but I don’t think it matters as much as in the Senate.
So while Gerrymander is an essentially free form of incumbent protection, raising the size of the House imposes a cost on all members. I’d think this is probably for the best, there’s probably practical limits on how large a representative body can be while still being effective.
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Big questions raised. The immediate one: does the cost of marginally diminished individual “influence” outweigh that of lost marginal seats in redistricting years? (I use quotes because influence varies with many factors including seniority, committee appointments, etc.)
Based on one local example, the parties are willing to sacrifice marginal incumbents. One of three D’s in my state’s now-five-member delegation lost his seat in 2002. The Democratic state legislature chose his district as the ‘corrective,’ packing many of his D voters into already safe D districts, forcing him to run weakened against a strong R incumbent. I’m sure there’s more to the story. What state legislators did flies in the face of intuition (i.e. bumping a sitting congressional D, having a majority in the state delegation should the presidential election end up in the House, etc).
I don’t know what arguments are actually used to counter the case for increasing the House, but we used to do it fairly regularly.
With respect to the other question, I’d wager legislative “effectiveness” has more to do with rules of procedure than assembly size – to a point, of course.
Thanks for stopping by, Greg.
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In addition to Greg’s point, increasing the size of legislative bodies is almost always unpopular with voters, who tend to accept the (wrong) notion that, no matter what problem you’re talking about, adding more politicians cannot be part of the solution to it.
This is too bad, because — short of PR — fewer voters per representative is about the only thing that might contribute to making legislative bodies more representative of more than two dominant points of view.
Greg’s statement about practical limits probably doesn’t apply to the federal House. According to the cube-root rule (reference below), it should have closer to 700 members than 435. And the California state Assembly (the most extreme example in the U.S.) should have over 300 members instead of the 80 it actually has.
On the theoretical rationale for this, see Rein Taagepera & Matthew Shugart, Seats & Votes, Yale University Press, 1989, pp. 179-182.
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» Linkage and Mentions The Rose Report: The Rose Institute of State and Local Government January 9th, 2008 at 13:45
[...] and Mentions Jack Santucci at The Democratic Piece says: As the 2010 US census nears, redistricting and reapportionment enter the news. CMC’s Rose [...]
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Thanks for the replies, it’s been a fun visit! If I knew the cube root rule I’d forgotten it, but looking at the history and the comparative examples in the link the logic seems to be solid enough. I may check out that paper Bob, sounds interesting.
Also, out of curiosity, I checked the size of Indonesia’s lower house, at 550 and with a lower population than the U.S. they manage to keep to the rule better than we do.
I’d guess the pace of expansion stopped after we slowed in adding new states. According to the link, the last expansion was in 1912 when New Mexico and Arizona were added. If those two had more than two representatives at the start, it might explain why they triggered a bump and Hawaii and Alaska in 1959 didn’t.
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Of course, I am glad that Jack has raised this issue here.
And it is nice of Bob to reference my academic work. I have also looked at the cube root and applicability to the US at F&V:
“Reapportionment–a better way?”
There are some follow-up posts grafted (er, linked) at the bottom of that one.
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Are we all forgetting the issue with desks? Last time I looked at a picture of the house floor, it was pretty full. Perhaps some could telecommute?
Note sarcasm.
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We’ve dealt with space before. The current chamber only dates back to the days of Henry Clay.
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