One thing I didn't touch on in my earlier post was the suggestion of expanding the House of Representatives from 435 to an even 1,000. My first response, like I figure a lot of others' response would be, was "What?! We need MORE corrupt bastards in office?"
Sabato's focus is on improving statistical balance in representation: we're currently at 650,000 per Representative (in the states that have multiple Congresspersons), which he feels is too many to properly represent. So he's looking at increasing the number of Reps, and then balancing the numbers out to get that number down to about 150,000 per Representative.
The problem here is that there's still no guarantee of effective representation: most Congresspersons care more about their lobbyists and special interest support groups than they do their own constituents. If we did have effective representation in the House, by Representatives actively responding to their constituents' needs and beliefs... Cheney would have been executed for high crimes months ago, and Bush standing before the Senate on about 100 counts of impeachment.
Going to 1,000 Representatives would make more sense if we had guarantees that those Representatives would actually listen to the voters. So... for now, not buying it.
I *would* consider shifting the Representation to have the small states start off with 3 Representatives rather than a lone one (to balance out the suggestion I have of bumping up to 3 Senators per state), and then balancing out the Representatives from there.
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