The US House was designed to grow — let’s expand it

If you want to weaken gerrymandering, avert government shutdowns, reduce the concentration of power among politicians, blunt the influence of money in elections, loosen the grip of national media narratives, lower the cost of running for office and give voters a stronger sense that their voice matters, there is a single structural reform for that.

If Congress won’t revisit the Reapportionment Act of 1929, then the Supreme Court should. That century-old law’s obsolescence is responsible for many of the country’s most persistent frustrations. It gives rise to districts so large they feel abstract; campaigns so expensive they depend heavily on national fundraising networks; elections shaped by media ecosystems where local concerns struggle to break through; and a U.S. House so tightly balanced that governing routinely turns into standoffs.

The simplest way to change those incentives is also the most easily forgotten: Expand the House.

The Constitution does not fix the House at 435 members. Article I, Section 2 merely sets a ceiling at one representative for every 30,000 residents of a given state. The design assumed there would be growth in the number of legislators. Today, the actual ratio is roughly one representative for every 760,000 Americans — a scale far beyond what the founders envisioned for an institution meant to be the public’s closest link to federal power.

The Census itself was created for this purpose. At the Constitutional Convention, George Washington — who spoke only once — urged that representation remain close to the people and argued for a ratio of one representative for every 30,000. James Madison later made the expectation explicit. In Federalist No. 55, he described the House’s size as temporary and looked toward “a continual augmentation of the number of representatives.”

For more than a century, Congress followed that blueprint. The House grew steadily from 65 members in 1789 to 435 by 1913.

And then it just stopped.

After the 1920 census revealed a nation becoming more urban, Congress failed to reapportion itself — the only time it simply refused to update representation after a decennial count. The political incentives were obvious: Reapportionment would have shifted seats from rural to urban states. Rather than absorb that shift openly, Congress chose a procedural escape hatch. The Permanent Apportionment (Reapportionment) Act of 1929 created an automatic apportionment procedure and cemented the House at 435.

A temporary pause hardened into permanent policy.

Whether that century-old freeze is consistent with the Constitution is a question the Supreme Court has never fully confronted.

And the costs are not abstract. They show up in how American politics actually works. Start with gerrymandering. When each seat represents a massive district, the prize is enormous. The incentive to manipulate boundaries grows, because each seat carries outsized influence. Shrink districts by expanding the House, and you shrink the payoff of any one line-drawing maneuver. You don’t eliminate the incentive, but you dilute it.

Then consider money. Large districts require large campaign budgets, pushing candidates toward national donor networks and professionalized fundraising operations. That shifts influence away from local voters and toward those who can finance large-scale campaigns. Smaller districts reduce that dependency and lower the financial barrier to entry.

Media influence follows the same logic. When candidates must reach hundreds of thousands of voters, campaigns naturally come to rely on mass media, national narratives, and broad ideological messaging. Politics gets nationalized even when local representation is the goal. Smaller districts pull campaigns back toward direct engagement, local concerns, and community visibility — making perpetual “us versus them” framing harder to sustain.

Scale doesn’t just shape elections — it also shapes power inside the chamber itself. In a 435-member House, each seat is a high-value asset — scarce, expensive to win, and disproportionately influential. Scarcity concentrates power. Expand the House, and you dilute the leverage of any single member to stall legislation, demand last-minute concessions, or turn routine governance into brinkmanship.

It would also lower the barrier to entry for challengers — and for political movements outside the two-party duopoly. America’s winner-take-all system strongly favors two parties, but the current structure makes it even more rigid by making each race so large, expensive, and media-driven that new entrants rarely gain traction.

Smaller districts won’t instantly transform the party system, but they create footholds: local victories, credible independents, and broader coalitions over time.

And when representation feels real, citizens behave differently. When voters can plausibly know their representative, see them in their communities, challenge them, and replace them, disengagement becomes less rational and participation becomes more likely.

None of this requires the Supreme Court to pick a number of seats. It would only need to confront the question of whether a century-long freeze can coexist with a constitutional structure that anticipates growth. If not, it could return the remedy to Congress under constitutional constraints.

The court has previously intervened when representative systems became unmoored from population. In Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, it rejected the idea that malapportionment was merely a political question, recognizing vote-dilution as a constitutional injury. Those cases involved state legislatures, but the principle does not evaporate at the federal level simply because the dilution is national.

If the response is “let Congress fix it,” the answer is practical, not theoretical. Congress is unlikely to do this voluntarily because it would dilute incumbents’ power. Asking lawmakers to expand the House is like asking them to impose their own term limits — possible in theory but implausible.

Yes, a larger House would be messier. But the House was designed to be messy. The founders feared concentrated power more than they feared inefficiency. Madison warned that a House too small would serve “a few of the opulent.” Jefferson cautioned that without proportional representation, “the people cannot be safe.”

For nearly a century, the people’s House has remained fixed while the people it represents have multiplied. If the Reapportionment Act of 1929 is fully consistent with the Constitution, then Article I’s expectation of growth has effectively become optional — an architectural feature treated as decorative.

That is no mere policy debate. It is a structural and constitutional question.

The Constitution has not changed. Only our willingness to follow it has.

Scott Whipkey is the founder and CEO of Ascend Executive Search and a writer on institutional structure and leadership.  

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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