The House of Representatives is too small. Here is one way to fix it.

TL;DR

The House was frozen at 435 seats in 1929 by rural lawmakers protecting power, leaving each representative with 761,000 constituents today.

Key Points

• 1.The 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act capped the House at 435 after rural members blocked reapportionment following the 1920 census, fearing population shifts toward urban, Black, and immigrant communities would dilute their power.
• 2.Rep. Sean Casten (Illinois) proposes fixing the ratio at 500,000 constituents per representative, which would add roughly 200–250 seats and automatically expand the House after every redistricting cycle.
• 3.The current Huntington-Hill formula produces unequal representation — a Delaware representative serves nearly twice as many constituents as a Montana representative after the 2020 census.
• 4.Casten's bill requires two additional reforms — multi-member districts and proportional representation — because expanding seats alone could actually worsen gerrymandering without those structural changes.
• 5.Alternative sizing formulas exist, including the "cube root law" (based on global parliamentary norms) and the "Wyoming Rule" (setting district size equal to the least-populous state), but both land near the same 500,000-constituent range.