Eye On Illinois: Rather than gerrymandering spree, why not uncap the U.S. House?

A lot can change in a hundred years.

Amidst the current social media squabbling over Gov. JB Pritzker hinting Illinois and other blue states could retaliate if Texas proceeds with plans to abruptly redraw its Congressional districts, one suggestion remains almost entirely overlooked: revisit, for the first time in a century, how many seats there should be in Congress.

The 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act froze the size of the U.S. House of Representatives at 435. At the time, when Illinois had 27, each House district covered about 210,000 residents. By 2020, the average is 760,000. Illinois has 17 seats.

Before 1929, the House size changed with every census, almost always an increase. According to a 2021 analysis from Geoffrey Skelley of FiveThirtyEight, the change came about with a significant shift in national demographics: the 1920 census was the first to report that a majority of Americans occupied urban settings.

“And although the Census Bureau’s definition was broad – it included any place with at least 2,500 people – the finding reflected America’s power center was moving away from rural areas toward urban ones due to industrialization and high levels of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe,” Skelley wrote. “This made the apportionment process particularly challenging, as Congress had to navigate two competing concerns: first, the worry that greater urban power would lead to rural seat loss if the House didn’t expand, and second, a growing belief among many members that the House was already too crowded and that an increase in seats would make it truly unwieldy.”

There have been several attempts to change the system since 1929, including insistence on adopting an amendment Congress itself proposed in 1789 that didn’t make the cut into the Bill of Rights after failing to reach the state legislature ratification minimum.

While many shudder at the thought of having even more elected officials, there’s an appeal in diluting the power of each individual member of Congress (including by spreading out the allotment of staff budget and office space). While a significantly larger House wouldn’t eliminate the prospects for gerrymandering, smaller geographical districts would almost necessarily be more likely to result in more different types of political thought to find a voice on Capitol Hill.

The current composition of Congress is the complete inverse of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – the general consensus is complete frustration with the status quo, and no one (especially the people elected to work there) seems remotely interested in exploring practical solutions.

Does Illinois need 60 representatives to complement its two senators? That does seem preposterous. But so does plugging along for another century under the current structure and feigning surprise that a 1929 solution isn’t practical well into the 21st century.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.