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HugeRaspberry t1_j38p7mv wrote

Just so everyone understands how the house works:

The Census Bureau does a Census every 10 years - the Commerce Dept uses the Census results to proportion house members between the 50 states.

In the 1990 census Montana had no growth - so they lost one of their two house seats.

In the 2020 census Montana showed a grow rate of over 20% = this resulted in them getting their seat back that they had lost in 1993.

In 2022 - Montana will have 2 senators and 2 house members.

Delaware's population over the past 10 years grew at about 1/2 of the pace of Montana... Delaware has 980k (approx) vs 1.084 million for Montana. Rhode Island is also ahead of DE in terms of population.

So bottom line... it works.

By the way - the reallocation was done under Biden. Not Trump. The split of Montana into two districts was done by the state of Montana - if if anyone thinks that a D was going to win either seat - I have some really great swampland in jersey for sale - cheap.

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RickMoranisFanPage t1_j3ddfqv wrote

The easiest way to combat this would be to increase the number of representatives in The House. Congress hasn’t increased it from 435 for over 110 years even though the country as a whole has nearly quadrupled in population in the same time.

One way to do this would be to have the number of representatives correspond to the least populous state. Taking the population of the US in 2020 divided by the population of Wyoming in 2020 would give us 575 members. This would lessen the disparity highlighted on this graph.

This would take an act of Congress to do and not even an amendment to The U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately Congress is controlled by power hungry members and this would dilute their power so it won’t get passed anytime soon.

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AgnosticAsian t1_j3e4419 wrote

>Congress hasn’t increased it from 435 for over 110 years

Another legacy of Woodrow Wilson.

There are many contenders for worst president ever but for me, he tops the chart easily.

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RickMoranisFanPage t1_j3e56hw wrote

Was he against increasing the number of House seats?

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AgnosticAsian t1_j3e8iy2 wrote

If you believe the freezing of House seats was at least partially motivated by racism and fear of the growing black population, it would certainly match with what we know of Wilson.

His opponent in the 1912 election, Taft, was also the last president to sign a bill increasing the number of House seats so there's that.

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RickMoranisFanPage t1_j3ef2b4 wrote

Wonder why no subsequent President raised it since though

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AgnosticAsian t1_j3ehuig wrote

Because everyone has just accepted the state of things and it hasn't become that big of an issue.

Yes, it's an issue but it's not something that greatly affects the daily lives of many. At least not in an immediate sense.

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