Grouchy old political scientist here:

1. Due to geographic sorting smaller districts would be more intensely partisan than today, not less. A smaller land mass is going to be more deeply blue or red

2. A gigantic house would be less cacophonous and boisterous, not more so, because you'd need more hands-on party control to get anything done. It's deeply unrealistic that a huge mass of representatives are going to get anything passed on their own. You'd end up even closer to parliamentary-style party leader control of the House, which personally I'd like to avoid.

Combining these two points, you'd have even more ideologically intense & disciplined parties with smaller districts/a larger House- the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve I think

3. 'Objections based on convenience and space, are not serious in terms of the meaning of the House' this would be news to say Germany, which recently ended its famous 70+ year old MMP system precisely because their lower house kept expanding too much. They found the issue logistically too difficult to deal with, and are now moving to a more classic PR setup

Bonus extra point- the UK already has one of the world's largest lower houses, with relatively small districts and lots of local representation. Is the UK particularly well-governed, do you think? Small single member districts are rent-seeking machines- way too easy for a local rep to get captured by Major Local Employer (or NIMBY group)

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SubiculumCode a day ago | parent | next [-]

Smaller districts, because of geographical sorting, or spatial covariance, or however you'd like to describe it, would be more homogeneous, and that is EXACTLY the point. What matters is that Representatives better reflect the opinions and beliefs of their constituents, not just the half that won the election, and that the people know their representative, and that the Representative does not need to depend on large donations in order to speak to those people.

What you implicitly describe as a strength, competitive districts, leads to winner take-all political dynamics and MORE extreme politicking, and leads to districts that are perpetually unhappy with their representation.

And in aggregate, the less the party and President can influence a Representative's re-election chances, the more independent that Representative can act, and the more that Representative can reflect their district's particular beliefs. This is a moderating dynamic. In fact, it threatens the two party system in the House allowing cross-party. They can try to be as disciplined as they want, but if they have little leverage over its members, then it will be a fruitless endeavor.

Re: govern-ability of a large House. This is repeated over and over, yet it seems more about opinions and reinforcing the status quo, which is not working, than evidence. And the larger point is that we need to start with the purpose of the House. First fulfill that: To Represent their Constituents faithfully. Without that, none of the other stuff matters. Working efficiently for the wrong ends is not winning.

In terms of the UK, while the ratio in the UK is 100,000 citizens per MP, for a citizen to be a candidate for MP, their Party must approve them, or at least, not veto them. That is not generally true in the U.S., and only true to the extent that the party can send ad money to someone else in the primaries. I think there is good reason to think that smaller districts in the U.S. would give weaker control to Parties, not stronger control.

You are correct that major local employers and NIMBY groups can dominate in small districts. Do they not now? Between begging for money from every monied power and hoping to avoid the ire of the Party and President, where does that leave the Representative in terms of representing their constituents?

In the end, I just don't find myself convinced by these objections, but I do thank you for your considered response.

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summarybot 20 hours ago | parent [-]

I traced the two-party dynamic back to something underneath district size a while ago: how we vote. One person, one vote, actually encourages first past the post winners. Shrink the district, grow the district, doesn't matter, you're still forcing every voter into a single binary mark, and a binary mark always collapses into two stable attractors.

Consider the Olympics instead. Judges score, and 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place simply fall out of the scores, nobody had to design a tournament bracket to make that happen. Give voters that same instrument: score every candidate on desirability. For a pooled multi-seat district, take however many winners the pool needs, ranked by score. Nothing stops someone from voting like they do now, give the candidate you despise a 0 and the one you want a 100, but most people think in preference, a first, second, third choice, not a single binary mark.

The numerology of district size and pop-per-rep will always be heuristic at best. If the goal is to improve representation, we should focus on the mechanism of selecting people and elevating them into office. That's the biggest bang for the buck.

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hash872 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Because the median voter doesn't realistically have that detailed a level of knowledge on legislators/their policies. This is tough for a lot of people to believe- especially the kind of high-information voters who propose these sorts of reforms to begin with. But there's an enormous, multi-decade literature on voter ignorance. They simply don't know much about who's running or what their policies are

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SubiculumCode 18 hours ago | parent [-]

But if they came from your own small town and had a reputation in that small town based on years of living there?

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hash872 17 hours ago | parent [-]

1. I grew up in a small town, and occasionally ask my parents how mayoral/city council politics is going there. (Or, I check out the latest drama on Facebook about it). My good friend's uncle was our mayor for a long time, etc. People might know personalities, but they're still not following national policy positions. Not to mention that people would be voting purely for personalities/clan/ethnic affiliations, and again not policy- we have a term for that in poly sci, personalism

2. A country of 340 million people with an elected representative from every small town would have an unrealistic number of representatives. 1 for every 5k citizens would be 68,000 reps in the House

I get that you're fetishizing hyper-localism to the exclusion of all else, but it's just a bad basis to run a modern society. This is not a realistic vision

	▲	SubiculumCode 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Was it hyper localism in the years between 1776-1930 to have 1 Representative per <=70k citizens. We do not need to go to 5k, and no one said that. But there are ways to aggregate and distribute processes for a larger House, and you have provided no reason for why the current fixed small number of 435 should be preferred, why that is workable, but not 870 (1:350k) or 1740 for 1:175k. Practically, and with all due respect, you keep stating opinions why it is a "bad basis to run a modern society" but you never articulate why exactly. To my mind, the increased complexity of the world can use more Representatives to work and specialized in more specializes committees.

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coryrc a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's deeply unrealistic that a huge mass of representatives are going to get anything passed on their own.

Every member should be able to bring some number of proposals to full vote and all members should be forced to make a vote. Make every GOPer put a No vote on the "release DJT rape transcripts" bill, instead of burying them in committee. Make every pretend liberal vote No on "Medicare 4 All".