More or less, the question in the title, would it be better if the size of congress grew at the 1^(1/3) power of the population? To illustrate what I mean, bellow are the sizes the congress would be if they followed this rule for the last 100 years, compared to the fixed size of 435 we have now, assuming as now this is done on the censuses.
Would this be an improvement over now to have the principle that the representatives would increase to the cube root of population represented, or would this be harmful to good governance?
Year | Population (millions) | Representatives | Change | Pop per Representative |
1930 | 123 | 497 | 62 | 247,000 |
1940 | 132 | 509 | 12 | 259,000 |
1950 | 151 | 533 | 24 | 283,000 |
1960 | 179 | 564 | 31 | 317,000 |
1970 | 203 | 588 | 24 | 345,000 |
1980 | 227 | 610 | 22 | 372,000 |
1990 | 249 | 629 | 19 | 396,000 |
2000 | 281 | 655 | 26 | 429,000 |
2010 | 309 | 676 | 21 | 457,000 |
2020 | 331 | 692 | 16 | 478,000 |
Would this be an improvement over now to have the principle that the representatives would increase to the cube root of population represented, or would this be harmful to good governance?