Why are there only 435 Representatives in the People’s House?

Many of the founders, along with most of the states which ratified the Constitution, fully expected the House of Representatives to forever grow along with the population. In fact, the leading federalist thinkers believed that there would be 400 Representatives in the House by 1838,¹In 1788, Federalist 55 assured that at “it can scarcely be doubted that” the number of Representatives will amount to 400 by 1838 (which is only 35 fewer than what we have today). 600 Representatives by 1887,²James Wilson, a Pennsylvania delegate to the constitutional convention, predicted in 1787 there would be more than 600 federal Representatives by 1887: “…the House of Representatives will, within a single century, consist of more than six hundred members.”. James Wilson was no ordinary delegate (assuming any of the delegates were ordinary). Wilson was a lawyer and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was twice elected to the Continental Congress and was a major contributor to the drafting of the Constitution. He was also one of the six justices appointed by George Washington to the first Supreme Court. and contemplated the eventual possibility of six or seven thousand Representatives.³Federalist 55. That’s why the first Congress proposed a constitutional amendment to ensure that the House would forever grow along with the population.

And yet, over two centuries later, Congress has allowed we, the people, to have only 435 Representatives in the “People’s House”. How did this happen? To answer this question, a brief review of apportionment history is necessary.

As required by the Constitution, the federal government conducts a population census every ten years. To date, there have been 24 decennial censuses: The first one occurred in 1790, and the 24^th one in 2020.

The purpose of these population censuses is to determine how “Representatives … shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers”.⁴Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3  This apportionment process uses a mathematical algorithm to allocate the total number of Representatives to the states based on their respective population totals. Relative to each of these apportionments, Congress must determine the total number of Representatives to be apportioned, and the mathematical formula to be used to calculate the apportionment.⁵The important thing to understand about the various algorithms for calculating the apportionment is that they vary with respect to how the fractional remainder should be rounded. For many states, this can be a very consequential question when the number of Representatives is small relative to the total population, as it is now.  However, this issue will become virtually inconsequential when the size of the House is raised by a significant amount.

Each of these apportionments is implemented for the Congress that commences in third year following the census year. For example, the 1790 census was the basis for the first apportionment, which began with the third Congress in March of 1793. And the 2010 census was the basis for the 23^rd apportionment, which began with the 113^th Congress in January of 2013.⁶The Constitution mandates that Congress convene at on March 4^th. However, the 20th Amendment permanently moved the commencement of the congressional term to January 3^rd, unless the preceding Congress designates a different day by law. (The 24^th apportionment will be implemented in the 18^th Congress that begins in January of 2023.)

The first 23 of these apportionments are identified in the chart below, along with the total number of Representatives granted by Congress. (The X-axis indicates the timeline in years.) Click on the charts to enlarge.
Figure 1

Note that each of these apportionments remain constant for ten years except when new states were admitted to the union (which last happened in 1959).  As new states were added, their additional Representatives were added to the previously authorized total (until revised by the subsequent apportionment).

For context, two additional charts are provided.  The next chart again illustrates the number of Representatives by congress, along with the total US population⁷It is worth noting that illegal residents are included in the population totals developed by the U.S. Census Bureau.  These same population totals are also used to calculate the apportionment. (plotted as a line against the righthand Y-axis).

Figure 2

In the chart above, note in particular that while the total number of Representatives has been limited to 435 ever since 1913, the nation’s total population has increased by 250%.⁸From approximately 95 million (in 1913) to 331 million as of the 2020 census.

Extending the analysis further, the following chart indicates the average number of people per Representative (plotted as a dotted line against the righthand Y-axis). This average congressional district size is simply the total US population (Figure 2) divided by the total number of Representatives for each Congress.  For example, the total population per the 2020 census was 331 million. Dividing that by 435 Representatives results in an average congressional district population of 761 thousand.

Figure 3

As the revolutionaries pass into history

As shown in the preceding charts, the size of the House was increased for each of the first five apportionments just as the founders had envisioned.  And quite significantly, each of these apportionments were in compliance with the intended version of Article the first. That is, each of those apportionments resulted in congressional districts with an average population size between 30,000 and 50,000. It could not be a coincidence that, during this time, many of America’s great revolutionaries and founders were still alive, if not serving in Congress or in the White House. Though these living legends gradually passed into history over time, it is easy to imagine that their presence helped keep the revolutionary spirit alive.

However, after the sixth population census in 1840, the total number of Representatives was reduced for the first of two times.⁹The total number of Representatives was reduced only one other time. It was raised to 437 after the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, but then the 18th Apportionment reduced it back to 435.  This reduction was attributed to a change in the method used for calculating the apportionment, a manifestly flimsy rationale.  The real reason is more obvious.

A few years earlier, in 1836, the last of the American revolutionaries, James Madison, died. Six years after his death, Congress passed the Apportionment Act of 1842 in which they reduced the total number of Representatives from 242 to 223. Sadly, with all the revolutionaries and founders having finally passed into history, an emerging political class (defined by a two-party system¹⁰The two parties being the Democratic Party, which then controlled the House, and the Whig Party.) could finally consolidate their political power by reducing the number of Representatives.

It’s important to note that relative to the matter of apportionment, Madison wasn’t just any revolutionary/founder. In 1789, during the first session of the first Congress, Madison proposed a constitutional amendment to establish a minimum House size in order to correct that part of the Constitution which he had deemed “defective” (because it failed to provide for such a minimum).  After considerable deliberation in the first Congress, Madison’s proposal evolved to become “Article the first” of the Bill of Rights.  Madison’s role in the development, and eventual fate, of Article the first is too complex to be addressed here.  The point is, it cannot be thought a coincidence that Congress abandoned the spirit of Article the first shortly after Madison’s death, and they were able to do that because of the very defect that Article the first was intended to eliminate.

Institutionalizing oligarchy

Though the size of the House was reduced to 223 in 1843, it continued to slowly increase thereafter. By 1913, it had grown to 435 by the 13^th apportionment (the 63^rd Congress). However, that growth had little to do with granting the citizenry the additional representation envisioned by the founders. Instead, most of this growth resulted from the admission of 22 large western states to the union. Beyond that, the only additional seats resulted from the desire to preserve the existing congressional fiefdoms already granted to the states (especially from 1873 to 1932),¹¹During the six-decade period from the ninth apportionment (1873) to the 14th apportionment (through to 1932), there were only three instances of states having their House delegation reduced.  That is less than 1.2% of the total of 260 instances of state apportionments. Note that the sixth decade of this arrangement was merely a continuation of the 13th apportionment as the Congress failed to reapportion the House.   This arrangement ended with the 15th apportionment (1933), when 21 of the 48 states suffered a reduction in their representation. rather than allowing seats to be shifted from one state to another (as the states’ relative population totals changed).

After the 14^th census in 1920, the members of the House failed to pass an apportionment bill, evidently because many of the states were unwilling to have their House memberships transferred to other states in order to accommodate the zero-sum game created by the arbitrary cap of 435. Therefore, for the first time in history, Congress failed to fulfill its constitutional obligation to reapportion the House, and the apportionment of the House remained unchanged for 20 years (from 1913 to 1933).

Having successfully disregarded the constitutional requirement to reapportion the House, and having become accustomed to only 435 Representatives, Congress then put our government squarely on the path to oligarchy by passing the “Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929”.¹²House.gov: The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 It should have been named the Permanent Oligarchy Act as it established that, henceforth, the size of the House would be permanently fixed at 435 regardless of the nation’s total population. It has remained that size ever since (except for a four-year period when it was temporarily increased to 437 after the admission of Alaska and Hawaii).

During the debates preceding the passage of that act, Missouri Representative Ralph Lozier challenged the proposal as follows:

“I am unalterably opposed to limiting the membership of the House to the arbitrary number of 435.  Why 435?  Why not 400? Why not 300? Why not 250, 450, 535, or 600?  Why is this number 435 sacred?  What merit is there in having a membership of 435 that we would not have if the membership were 335 or 535?  There is no sanctity in the number 435 … There is absolutely no reason, philosophy, or common sense in arbitrarily fixing the membership of the House at 435 or at any other number.”

The challenge posed by Representative Lozier is still valid: Is 435 a sacred number or should it be open to debate?

A Representative for every THIRTY THOUSAND

As illustrated in Figure 3, the very first apportionment made by Congress (after the 1790 census) resulted in an average district size of just over 38,000 people for the third Congress (in accordance with the intended version of Article the first¹³Based on the 1790 census, the intended version of Article the first would have required the average district size to be between 30,000 and 40,000. ).  Largely because the number of Representatives has not increased since 1913, the average population size of a congressional district is now approximately 760,000. Why? Because while the total census population has increased by a factor of 82 from 1790 to 2020, the number of Representatives increased by a factor of less than 7.

This spectacular increase in district population size runs contrary to what was expected by the Founding Fathers as evidenced by various historical documents. For example, Federalist 56 (February 19, 1788) stated that “…it seems to give the fullest assurance, that a representative for every THIRTY THOUSAND INHABITANTS will render the [House of Representatives] both a safe and competent guardian of the interests which will be confided to it.”   Note that the reference to “thirty thousand” – which was capitalized for emphasis in the original text – was posited as the intended House size, and not merely as a maximum.

Reflecting the revolutionary zeal of the time, as well as a deep commitment to republicanism, the explicit assumption throughout the Federalist Papers was that the number of congressional districts (and therefore the number of Representatives) would be increased along with the population at the rate of one Representative for every 30,000 people (hence our name, Thirty-Thousand.org).

The chart below illustrates what would have happened had Federalist 56’s “fullest assurance” been realized. The “Maximum number per the Constitution” is the number of Representatives at one for every 30,000, which was the basis for the projections made by the founders relative to the size of the House.

Figure 4