by Jake Berensen

Created on: June 27, 2007

In 1910 it was decided that there was no need for the House of Representatives to continue to grow with the United States, which is why they froze the number of Representatives at 435. At which time the each congressman represented an average of 211,000 people. According to the 2000 census the average has now increased to 600,000 people per congressman. Now to further illustrate this point let us back up to 1790 with the first congress under the new Constitution. This congress only had 106 members representing 3,929,214 people spread over 13 states. That left each congressman representing only 37,068 people.

Now with those facts in mind you can begin to see how the power of each individual congressman has increased over the years. Another thing to consider is that four states have been added since 1910, including my home state of Arizona, which is the 48th state. Each of these states in order to have representation, had to take Congressional offices away from other states, and some offices have been passed around between states ever since as populations fluctuate. Now I realize that fixing the number in the house makes it easier to prevent overcrowding on the house floor. They have had the same number of desks for almost a hundred years and have had no need to change that. If we were to say, double the number of Representatives, or make it so we had one congressman for every quarter of a million Americans, which would more than double the limit, giving us 1,044 congressman based on the last census, than we would have to construct a new building for them to meet in, more than twice the size of the current one. However I think that would be worth it to know that we had better representation. How can one man or woman represent the wishes of 600,000 people, over half a million. They don't even know what those people want. They have to get their information from pollsters, and there is an old saying that applies especially to pollsters, figures don't lie, but liars do figure. Therefore this is not an accurate way of determining the will of the people. There are way too many ways to manipulate a poll to produce desired results.

There are many things that would be beneficial to US both the United States and US as in We the people, about increasing the number of people on the House by decreasing the average number of constituents per congressman. Thus spreading out the power of the congress to a greater number of representatives, also new states would be able to obtain

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