Is the House of Representatives too small?

Yes. Yes, it is.

At present, the average population of each congressional district in the United States is 770,000. With the notable exception of India, every other nation with anything resembling a functional democracy has at least one legislative assembly with smaller average constituencies. Even the supranational European Parliament averages a ratio of only 630,000 constituents per member.

Graph of seats in the House of Representatives by year, showing the sudden stall at 435 seats.

The size of the United States House of Representatives increased fairly regularly from 1788 to 1912, and then suddenly stopped growing. This has probably reduced the quality of representative government afforded to American citizens.

What’s wrong with a small House?

A too-small legislature is less responsive to the needs of citizens. A too-large legislature has trouble operating and passing legislation. But why is the cube root ideal?

The cube root law began as an observational law: Most of the functional legislative bodies found in the world are approximately the size of the cube root of the population. However, in support of this observation, there are very simple and very clear models for why the cube root of the population is a natural lower limit for an effective representative body where each representative has a similarly-sized group of…