November Question

Congressional apportionment in the House has been an issue throughout the years. Some states believing that they deserve more seats than others and other states believing this system is fine as is. However, I feel that the congressional apportionment in the House inaccurately represents our United States. Our population is constantly growing and in order to have an effective representative democracy, it is imperative that all states are represented proportionally in the House. Therefore, I do believe there is a way to change congressional apportionment in the House.

I believe we can change congressional apportionment in the House by increasing the number of seats. We currently have 435 seats in the House which allows for the misrepresentation of some states. For example, there are multiple states where they share the same number of seats as another state and their population is greater. This means that some states have a greater percent of representation with a smaller population. So, we can fix the situation by adding at least an additional 500 seats to the House.

In order to make this change, all Congress has to do is pass legislation and detail specifically how they want to divide the new seats among the 50 states. By increasing the number of seats in the House, it creates a sense of fairness for voters. If voters feel they are better represented, they will feel that their vote matters and will want to participate more in our democracy. So, voter participation will increase.

Increasing the size of the House is only a mere suggestion. Although accurate representation and voter participation sounds good, there are potential ways that this increase may only create additional problems. Of course with more seats we are at risk for gerrymandering, a large influx of candidates, and lack of space for the new representatives. All of these things must be taken into account before the change within the House can occur.

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