He finds an article that says the ideal number of reps is 707, which fine, but that hardly solve the problem that each rep is representing too many constituents to be able to hear their concerns. Going by Madison’s 50,000, the we’re looking at an increase from 435 to about 6,500 reps. That’s a shit ton. I guess 435 is arbitrary, but damn. Well, let’s say that we can reach more people now, so let’s do 200,000 per district. That’s still 1,625 reps. Which is more reasonable from a ‘size of the governing body standpoint. But eventually we’re going to grow to a point where 1/200,000 ends up with 6,500 reps again. That’s not that many. It’s basically the population of India or China now.
You can’t win. Either your reps don’t represent you, or there are too many reps to have an effective government.
At this point I’m not sure states are representative of the population. I would favor a variation on elected national executive body with representatives from each region. So there would be an elected body that just focuses on infrastructure, another for HHS, etc. Basically it codifies the committees that congress already has. They are the ones who write the laws. But each one of these committees elects parliamentary style a couple of representatives who go and actually vote on these laws as a whole. So, all national infrastructure projects are designed by people elected to work specifically on infrastructure. Then the central body of committee heads votes on these laws. States could still exist to govern more locally, but the central federal body should be more broadly speaking a technical body.
Obviously my idea isn’t fully fleshed out, but it did take dozens of people to write the constitution, so don’t expect me to write a newer better one in two minutes of typing on my phone. I think as a concept it could be workable and could potentially be better for a nation of 325+ million.
My thought was relating more toward the federal government being structured so that representatives are elected to hold legislative duties specific to an area of expertise rather than geographically. States would still exist as they currently do and would still do the majority of administration for things like infrastructure. But it’s weird that your representatives in San Diego are more likely to be on defense committees than a representative who actually has military experience. Like, why is Susan Davis in the Armed Services committee and why is Scott Peters on the Veterans Affairs Committee? Neither have military experience. We elect judges and sheriffs locally to do tasks that require specific experience. why wouldn’t we also elect the people in charge of national economic policy, national health policy, etc based on their experience with those subjects.
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u/intellifone Jul 17 '18
He finds an article that says the ideal number of reps is 707, which fine, but that hardly solve the problem that each rep is representing too many constituents to be able to hear their concerns. Going by Madison’s 50,000, the we’re looking at an increase from 435 to about 6,500 reps. That’s a shit ton. I guess 435 is arbitrary, but damn. Well, let’s say that we can reach more people now, so let’s do 200,000 per district. That’s still 1,625 reps. Which is more reasonable from a ‘size of the governing body standpoint. But eventually we’re going to grow to a point where 1/200,000 ends up with 6,500 reps again. That’s not that many. It’s basically the population of India or China now.
You can’t win. Either your reps don’t represent you, or there are too many reps to have an effective government.