Wednesday
This idea at least 1/4-baked
Today, I was reading about the upcoming parlimentary elections in Egypt, and started wondering: why do we (U.S. citizens) have so few Congressional representatives per person? Egypt's parliament has 444 seats. Our House of Representatives only has 435. Since the (CIA world fact book) population of Egypt is 77,505,756, and the United States pop.is 295,734,134, something certainly seems out of whack here. But of course I'm being foolish, we have a Senate too. If the problem with a high number of people per representative is the lack of finely-grained districts, it's not clear at all that having two state wide Senators helps out, but let's assume it does for arguments sake and use 535 as the relevant figure. That means that Egypt has, on average, 174,563 (rounded to the nearest whole person) people per representative. The U.S. meanwhile has 552,774, 3.16 times more.
Now obviously, Egypt does it that way (Egypt is just the case that brought this to mind, I'm aware that many countries have lower such ratios), and therefore so should we is a terrible argument for any type of democratic structure, and many other things as well. So just let me note that a) it's easier for a representative to respond to their individual constituent's desires if they have fewer constituents, and b) the people who wrote the Constitution were keenly worried about this issue. See, e.g., Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography p.76-84 (discussing the concerns with the high number of people per representative in the 1st Congress, and assurances that Congress could move to a ratio of one representative per 30,000 after the first census) and U.S. Constitution Art. I, Sec. 2, Clause 3 (setting 30,000 as the minimum number of people per rep).
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Now obviously, Egypt does it that way (Egypt is just the case that brought this to mind, I'm aware that many countries have lower such ratios), and therefore so should we is a terrible argument for any type of democratic structure, and many other things as well. So just let me note that a) it's easier for a representative to respond to their individual constituent's desires if they have fewer constituents, and b) the people who wrote the Constitution were keenly worried about this issue. See, e.g., Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography p.76-84 (discussing the concerns with the high number of people per representative in the 1st Congress, and assurances that Congress could move to a ratio of one representative per 30,000 after the first census) and U.S. Constitution Art. I, Sec. 2, Clause 3 (setting 30,000 as the minimum number of people per rep).
