Should the House of Representatives be larger? Some suggest that because there are wide discrepancies between the size of House districts, and because it's impossible for representatives to really hear from all their constituents, that we should add hundreds of seat to the House.
I'm not so sure. It seems to me that the problem with the House these days is safe seats and extreme ideology. We should find ways to redistrict that create lots of moderate seats. And ways to change campaign financing (public financing and massively public disclosure of independent group funding) so that the Representatives' corporate ties are weakened or at least laid bare.
I do get that if we add lots of seats to Congress, most of them would be in blue states. Montana and Wyoming would still only have one seat, but California would get a bunch more. But I don't know that would be a good thing. There would be a bunch of extremely liberal districts, with Representatives-for-life, who would never be willing to compromise on anything.
Our country has had many periods of fierce partisan rancor, with intense dirty politics. We are not that special. But I don't think we should build a system that makes it even worse.
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