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Population of US increases, so the number of people in Congress must adjust. How do you feel about this?
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I feel that it only makes sense.
It's already set up so that a representative might have radical variance to the number of people being represented... they're called Senators.
For congressmen, the only other option would be to fix their numbers, and then have their congressional boundaries flubber in and out like an amoeba... to have it be that whatever the population of the nation is, the voting population is divided equally between whatever number of congressmen that the house of congress has been set to have.
If the population keeps growing, it could easily get to the point where a single congress person has more constituents than he can handle, so they might start breaking it into wards, each of which gets a mini-rep to talk to the congressperson, at which point you've got pyramid democracy... like in India.
It's already set up so that a representative might have radical variance to the number of people being represented... they're called Senators.
For congressmen, the only other option would be to fix their numbers, and then have their congressional boundaries flubber in and out like an amoeba... to have it be that whatever the population of the nation is, the voting population is divided equally between whatever number of congressmen that the house of congress has been set to have.
If the population keeps growing, it could easily get to the point where a single congress person has more constituents than he can handle, so they might start breaking it into wards, each of which gets a mini-rep to talk to the congressperson, at which point you've got pyramid democracy... like in India.
Voted as best: unwirklich, tealmyster
Congressional redistricting after each census has been a major and much discussed feature of American politics for the entire history of the country. It is odd that you didn't notice.
Tip albanian for this comment
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It is and was never an issue in Wyoming nor Montana. Both states have essentially the same populations they did 100 years ago, with some temporary fluctuations, i.e... for awhile Wyoming's population boomed from 360,000 to 450,000 (for the whole state, that's right, the whole state, and it's the fourth largest in surface area) and that was deemed to being akin to a serous crisis of overpopulation.
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This is incorrect. The number was fixed at 435 in 1911. The yahoo news is talking about a court case to challenge the law; but, it has been in place nearly a century so it's not likely to be thrown out now.
Without this limit the size of the House would have become hopelessly unwieldy.
This is one of the many, and one of the most minor, problems caused by our expanding population. We need to stabilize the population and then return it to a sustainable level through strict family planning and zero sum immigration/emigration.
Without this limit the size of the House would have become hopelessly unwieldy.
This is one of the many, and one of the most minor, problems caused by our expanding population. We need to stabilize the population and then return it to a sustainable level through strict family planning and zero sum immigration/emigration.
Hmm... welll... in that case, they'll have to set up something like a ward system within each congress, with councilors elected from wards that form a committee reporting to a congressman - which is getting closer to how India does it - otherwise there's no way a single congressperson would be able to represent the needs of any region.
The whole point of having regional reps was that regions were supposed to have unique regional concerns, but one a population goes above a certain point, all the concerns of the region start blending out into a sort of homogeneous mass that's not representing any concerns specific to the region.
The whole point of having regional reps was that regions were supposed to have unique regional concerns, but one a population goes above a certain point, all the concerns of the region start blending out into a sort of homogeneous mass that's not representing any concerns specific to the region.
The congressmen have staff and offices suitable for their district sizes. They don't do everything themselves. People have additional representation via their state governments and if in a town also municipal governments all of which have assorted elected officials.
Oh gee, you're so right. Get rid of them all and let's just have one king.
You know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen. Besides, can the American citizens really afford to increase paying for more member sof congress and their healthcare?
Voted as best: maggieray
How much do you think they cost that it will break the back of the US economy because of how many prisoners are in jail for minor drug offenses getting health care at how many hundreds of thousands per prisoner per year for then to do nothing productive because you downsized and privatized government services so you could pay more for fewer services so a few strangers you never voted for can quietly slurp up your taxes to spend on holidays in the Bahamas at rates that a public Congressman couldn't spend unless he had a staff of thousands working on the problems of the people whe elected him?
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