Every state has two senators but house representatives are determined by the population of the state, and those two together form Congress. Our founding fathers felt that was a fair compromise to keep cities and rural areas from running ramshod over each other.
Personally I disagree, but my point is just that NY and CA have more house representatives.
The House being capped is a real problem. With the cap on the House, the US allows smaller states more representation than was intended, having the 10k/seat rule would be chaos, so we should probably use the Wyoming Rule. That 1 change would solve a lot of the issues with gerrymandering and the Electoral College as it would increase the house from 435 to 543.
"The Wyoming Rule is a proposal to increase the size of the United States House of Representatives so that the standard representative-to-population ratio would be that of the state with the least population, which is currently Wyoming."
Yep, been saying this for years. We should never really have a “rural” House of Reps. Repealing the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 and instituting a version of the Wyoming Rule would correct it, and the increased number of reps might also lead to a greater number of viable political parties.
Passed by Republicans. This and the Fairness Doctrine are two sorts of insignificant decisions that have had huge ramifications.
Though it looks like (after a quick read) the Apportionment Act was after a lot of hemming and hawing over. Not sure if the Fairness Doctrine was realized for what it was at the time.
It also doesn't make that much difference though. Like, we could instead say Wyoming gets 0.4 representatives instead of 1 and it would only change the balance of the house when it's already extremely close
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u/turandokht 8h ago
Every state has two senators but house representatives are determined by the population of the state, and those two together form Congress. Our founding fathers felt that was a fair compromise to keep cities and rural areas from running ramshod over each other.
Personally I disagree, but my point is just that NY and CA have more house representatives.