.
[KW: I have not decided if I think adding more Congresspeople is a good thing. Perhaps if they were volunteer/unpaid or if they had strict term limits? We need more real people representing us, rather than career politicians.
Though, I have another suggestion. I think we should add more Supreme Court justices. For so many people clamoring for justice, their case ends in a decision at the small, unglamorous, and not-very-well-covered-by-the-media Court of Appeals, simply because the Supreme Court has too much to do to take even a tiny fraction of the cases that come to it.]
There is an old NY Times article on the increase Congress subject: here.
Thanks to Ballot Access News who found this new oped on Yahoo News!
(excerpt from) The Christian Science Monitor
Opinion
As US population increases, Congress must adjust
Today the average House district has a startling 650,000 people. How can one person fairly represent them all?
By Jane S. DeLung and Judith A. Himes / October 27, 2009
Princeton, N.J. – How would you feel if you knew that there was just one 911 operator in charge of answering and directing all the calls in your county? And that it had been this way for multiple decades, despite the fact that the population there has been steadily increasing over the years?
No matter how capable the operator may be, unless more operators were added to take the calls, the effectiveness of the whole 911 system could be distorted. This is akin to what’s happening with the US government and Congress.
The Constitution established the House of Representatives to be the “People’s House” and the Senate, representing the states, to moderate the people’s voice. Growth in the nation’s population is resulting in ever larger Congressional districts that reduce minority voices, increase the power of the wealthy, and pose a problem for members of Congress to truly represent the people of their district.
The federal courts were recently asked by plaintiffs from five states (Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, Delaware, and Utah) to rule that the size of the House be increased from its current 435 seats to reflect our nation’s population growth. The US District Court has agreed to hear the case…
Filed under: News, politics, US Politics Tagged: | congress, Government, House of Representatives, population growth, Supreme Court
Leave a Reply