Gerrymandering, the pervasive practice of drawing congressional districts for political purposes, owns a great deal of responsibility for the dysfunction of our government and the loss of trust among Americans in their government.
This story is a smokescreen obscuring the real problem, which is that Congress voted decades ago to stop the growth of representation. Gerrymandering is simply the problem you face after committing the offense of fixing the number of districts.
By 1930 the number of congressional districts had grown to 435, more or less naturally as required by the Constitution and the Census every ten years. The number would have kept growing, but the natural process was halted, by a bigoted, power hungry Congress.
The very people who are supposed to represent us stopped the growth of representation and fixed it at 435 in the 1920s, because they could.
The original First Amendment, never ratified with the rest of the Bill of Rights for want of but one vote, would have ensured the natural growth of representation with the natural growth of population in perpetuity by a formula. The argument was over the formula, so our forebears punted the problem, and the issue was never settled. Post-WWI, however, alarums began to sound over the expansion of the Congress to include lots of new representatives for America's burgeoning German-American population, so the Congress voted to fix representation at its then current level, 435, so they didn't have to sit next to the evil Hun in their own Capitol. (The Congress also effectively halted immigration, but that's another story).
So in 1930 one US representative held the power of the purse over 283,000 Americans, on average. Fast forward to today and a US representative can steal from 757,000 of us at a stroke, on average. How their power has grown, and how coveted the seats! Now you know why it takes $10 million to win one.
Just to get the ratio back down to 1930 levels, we'd have to have 1,163 congressional districts today instead of the 435 we do have.
Adding them would dramatically reduce the power the current 435 have over us, which is why it doesn't happen. Nancy Pelosi would have to herd 582 cats to get anything done instead of 238. And with 1,163 representatives, it's unlikely Nancy Pelosi would be the Speaker in the first place.
Redrawing the lines of this tyranny which they exercise over us isn't the solution. That's simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The power hungry House is the biggest impediment to our democracy. Ironically, a bigger House is the answer, because it returns power to the people.
