The House arrived at that number because of political expediency - and it has stayed there because of it, too. But that isn’t the case: 435 is entirely arbitrary. There have been 435 seats in the House for so long now that it might seem as if the Founding Fathers had foreseen it as a natural ceiling for the chamber’s size. Whether Congress will take up this issue anytime soon is another question entirely, but here’s how we got stuck at 435 in the first place - and what it would mean if we increased that number. It’s worth exploring, then, whether 435 is still an appropriate number of House members to represent our sprawling, diverse nation. The size of the House is determined by statute, not the Constitution, meaning Congress could pass (and the president could sign) a law to change it. Yet expanding the House is one of the more straightforward reforms that leaders in Washington could pursue in our era of polarized politics. For instance, adding representatives could decrease day-to-day legislative efficiency, and it would undoubtedly increase the size of the federal government. Increasing the size of the House would not resolve all the challenges facing the U.S., as any expansion would involve trade-offs. 3 Moreover, some states are severely over- and underrepresented as a result. For starters, there is an ever wider gulf between Americans and their representatives, as the average number of people represented in a district has more than tripled, from about 210,000 in 1910 to about 760,000 in 2020.
On the other hand, the fact that the size of the House hasn’t increased in more than a century is a real problem for our democracy.
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