Should the Reapportionment Act be Repealed?

  • Yes

    Votes: 18 90.0%
  • No

    Votes: 2 10.0%

  • Total voters
    20
One act that I have always never been fond of and wished to be repealed is the Reapportionment Act of 1929 which limits the amount of members of the House to just 435. I've always found this to be rather undemocratic method as it does not take into account the growth of the United States, which has doubled in size since then, and will always limit the smaller states such as Wyoming to just one congressmen, not allowing them the chance to have a broad and diverse federal representation.

So, assuming that events roughly play similar to OTL, which time period has the best chance of repealing the act, which President would have been most in favor, and which party would it benefit the most?
 
What do you do about seats in the House Chamber and office space? I always had the understanding that one reason for the change was the lack of space for a larger House of Representatives. I do understand that some states are bitter since they lose seats which impacts their image. I would have wished that the law had required contiguous and compact.
 
What do you do about seats in the House Chamber and office space? I always had the understanding that one reason for the change was the lack of space for a larger House of Representatives. I do understand that some states are bitter since they lose seats which impacts their image. I would have wished that the law had required contiguous and compact.

Can't they just rebuild Capitol Hill and expand for some space for a bigger House of Representatives? I'm sure that it wouldn't be too fiscally draining and while some people might whine about preserving history, it's better to reconstruct it in order to provide a stable government for future generations than base one of the biggest rules of Congress off of office space.
 

sprite

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Only about 450 MPs can fit in the House of Commons, 200 less than are elected. Voting is determined by moving to Aye and Nay lobbies rather than a house on the floor.

Australia's parliament was quite overcrowded until New Parliament House was built. With thin walls, you could apparently hear meetings in the party rooms from the men's toilet. There are about 20 or so empty seats in the new chamber.

So I think size of the actual floor does not really matter. Most work is done by committee in separate rooms and individual work in offices off-site.
 
After 1929, the best chance to repeal the Act with something more up to date would probably have been the 1960's. Perhaps it could have happened if the Civil Rights Movement had pushed for an expanded House to provide greater representation to minorities.
 
What do you do about seats in the House Chamber and office space? I always had the understanding that one reason for the change was the lack of space for a larger House of Representatives. I do understand that some states are bitter since they lose seats which impacts their image. I would have wished that the law had required contiguous and compact.
Build a new parliament building. One designed for today's (and tomorrow's) conditions, technologies and threats.
 
After 1929, the best chance to repeal the Act with something more up to date would probably have been the 1960s. Perhaps it could have happened if the Civil Rights Movement had pushed for an expanded House to provide greater representation to minorities.
That is logical on paper, since it was around that time that urban minorities were asserting themselves politically in the wake of Smith v. Allright and the Great Migration.

The problem is that, even had apportionment kept pace with population, “white flight” would not have been substantial enough to increase minority representation with an increase to about 700 members of the House, and was not to be until after the peak of Civil Rights in the 1970s and 1980s. More than that, by the 1980s it would have been politically much more difficult to expand the Capitol to allow a 700-member House.
 
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