Expand the US House of Representatives

With every decennial Census for the past century, the United States has become less of a representative democracy. And, if we don’t intervene quickly, it will happen again.

Upon the release last week of the first population counts for the 2020 Census, officials and activists across the country were preparing for the ugly process of fighting over the scarce number of seats that are up for grabs. New Yorkers were threatening legal moves to try to avoid losing a US House seat because the Census showed the state was 89 people short—out of 20.2 million—of the number needed to maintain its current level of representation. Voting rights activists were complaining of undercounts of Latinx voters in Arizona, Texas, and Florida. There will be lawsuits, legislative battles, and protests. But the bitter end result of all this wrangling will, if the pattern holds, be a circumstance in which the vast majority of Americans will be less well represented than when the process began.

Read Full Article »