Sec. 1. Short title; findings

279 words·~1 min read·/bill/118/hr/643/ih/section-1

A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.

This Act may be cited as the . Equal Voices Act Congress finds the following: Our Nation’s founders intended the House of Representatives to be the chamber closest to the American people: the People’s House . The number of Representatives in Congress has been 435 since 1911 when the U.S. population was 92,228,531 (1910 U.S. Census). The U.S. population has grown to more than three times that size to 331,449,281 in 2020 (2020 U.S. Census) while the size of the House has remained the same.

Our electorate has changed significantly since the size of the House last grew in 1911. Prior to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, the Civil Rights Act in 1957, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, women and people of color faced barriers and in some cases, legal prohibitions, to voting. When the cap on the size of the House was statutorily set in 1929, the average Member of the House represented approximately 280,000 people, compared to approximately 762,000 people in 2020.

Based on the 2020 Census, individuals in the State with the smallest population, Wyoming, had 1.3x more relative representation compared to the national average district size. Each Member of the House represents far more people on average than legislators in nearly all developed and developing democracies, and is an outlier among other member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with nearly 3 times the citizen to representative ratio as Japan, the country with next largest district size.

Representatives who serve fewer people are more likely to have contact with their constituents, receive higher marks for their constituent service, and better reflect the views of their districts.