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Comment by google234123 | Hacker News Reader

Is this really a big deal? There are just a few states with a few reps that have a slightly lower ratio than average. Seems like a nothing burger to me.

Fixing this would solve 0 problems anyway from what I see. Please name a single issue that would be solved if there were, idk, 470 reps instead of 435?

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Yes it really is a big deal, and it would require a pretty significant increase in the size of the House of Representatives. The increase would need to be in the range of 690-900 to really see any effect tough. What this does is reduce the power of lobbying as each rep is now roughly half as valuable, but a lobbyist can't really see and work with twice as many reps. More reps also further reduces the chance that electoral college and popular vote ever differ. The power of money in elections would also be reduced simply due to the massive increase in people seeking funds compared to the amount of money available to raise for elections.

> but a lobbyist can't really see and work with twice as many reps

Wait, what? Is there a constitutional cap on the total number of lobbyists that I wasn't aware of?

Yes. It really is a big deal. Each representative now represents differing amounts of people. If you're a resident of California or Texas your amount of representation is diminished. Conservatives love to point out that America isn't a democracy but is a Representative Republic - but even that is skewed because not everybody has equal amounts of representation. Your demand for a single issue that would be resolved if everybody had equal representation is simply a red herring.

I don't worry about wether my representative has +/- 3% representation compared to some other random state. Again, there are just a few small states with small population that have increased representation.

Overall, I bet adding more people to the house would actually make the political process much worse. If you actually cared about this, getting a better census estimate would be the first step since that's currently helping democrats quite a bit.

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