No Cap

Making the case for expanding the House of Representatives.

You’re reading I’ve Ben Thinking, a newsletter-blog by Ben Testani. If this is your first copy of IBT, consider subscribing to support my work. It’s free!

---

News broke Monday that inspired today’s post and shook clear some of the writer’s block.

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Less change in Census reapportionment than expected: TX +2 FL, CO, MT, NC, OR +1 CA, IL, MI, NY, OH, PA, WV -1 Winners v. expectations: MN, NY, RI Losers v. expectations: AZ, FL, TX

Preliminary data from the 2020 Census is in, and states are losing or gaining seats in the House of Representatives. The news reminded me how much I despise the utterly arbitrary size limit imposed on the House almost 100 years ago.

The House of Representatives is capped at 435 members.

Way back when the Constitution was first ratified, in 1788, the minimum number of people per Representative was set at 30,000. The number of Representatives assigned to the House was also set to change every ten years based on the results of the census.

In 1790, the first year of the federal census, there were 3.9 million people registered across the United States, of which approximately 700,000 were enslaved people. The ethnic options given by the census were “free white females and males”, “other free persons”, or slaves. Native Americans were not counted.