[Political Junkie Too]

What about the idea of lifting the cap on the House of Representation from 435 to something more representative? Originally, Article I Section 2 says "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand..." Today, the average is one for every 709,760 people, assuming 308,745,538 people from the 2010 census.

Would that would make the House closer to a parliamentary style body? If we raised the cap to, say, 600, that would be one Representative per roughly 515,000 people. Would that possibly be too many to divide roughly equally between two major parties? Would smaller caucuses emerge with more clout in numbers based on alliances that one not necessarily party-based?

That would force coalitions to emerge to select the Speaker. And the Speaker *should* drive the interests of the coalition that selected him (unlike today).

Then there is the Senate. It would still be capped at 100, and the two leading parties will still run it. They would be truly forced to deal with the House, because the House would likely not be run by party cronies like it is today, where both chambers act as essentially one body.

Then there is the Electoral College, which would grow to 700, which means that the President will need to get 351 electoral votes to win. The disbursement of those 600 district votes across the states will change what we think of as battleground states.

This is all perfectly doable without changing the Constitution.

Thoughts?

-PJ

[Jacquerie]

Definitely more reps. Each district is over 720,000. Waaay too many. Reps to DC were supposed to be people you knew and trusted, not party animals.

[Publius]

This is where you tie it in with the idea of creating a virtual Congress, putting it on the Internet via secure server. Each congressional district would be drawn to contain 30,000 people, and congressmen would work out of their homes or small local offices. Committee meetings would be held via Skype or some kind of videoconferencing software, and votes would be tallied via secure server. This would put all of Congress on the Internet.

The first advantage would be local control. A congressman would have daily access to his 30,000 constituents and would hear them clearly without the current massive filtering via his staff.

The second advantage would be the disappearance of K Street. The locus of corruption would move from the District of Columbia to the 10,000 or so congressional districts. That many congressmen is far too many to bribe or pay off efficiently. It would reduce the influence of big money on the electoral process.

The third advantage would be national security. A nuclear device detonated over Washington would have no effect on the House, which would continue to do business on one or more secure servers while the remainder of the government recovered from the attempted decapitation.

This would be a good way of entering the 21st Century in terms of technology.