Why are there only 435 members in the U.S. House of Representatives?

Should we increase the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives? If so, what should that number be? And we really enjoyed the sponsor for this video, and so did our cat! PrettyLitter helps keep tabs on my cat's health - and keeps odors down. Save 20% on your first order of PrettyLitter and get a free cat toy with code "mrbeat" at prettylitter.com/mrbeat

435 is the maximum number of Representatives Mr. Beat can call on a livestream

Ollie is the 436th member of the House of Representatives

Ollie finally gets recognized… even if he’s just a cat.

Even crazier is the size of US city councils. Irivine, California has 300k inhabitants and 7 members (expanded from 5) while Cincinnati, Ohio has 9. In comparision Ludwigshafen, Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany has SIXTY (all of who serve for free). US city councils are tiny and in my opinion the main reason smaller parties don't have local success. Ludwigshafen for example has 10 parties elected. I think both the number of districts for US city councils needs to be increased, there need to be multi-member districts + additional levelling seats. Seriously nothing annoys me more than how US city councils are run. There can't be specialized members and they have to outsource everything to unelected technocrats.

For comparison, the UK's House of Commons has 650 seats for a population of about 66 million, so that's one seat per just over 100,000 people.

Fun fact, from 1959-1962 there were 437 house members because Alaska and Hawaii were admitted in 1959. At the time they each only qualified for 1 Rep each, and so until the 1962 reappointment for the 1960 census there wer 2 extras. It made no sense that in 1962 they all decided to go back to 435 instead of keeping the 2 extras, so 2 of the other 48 states had to lose 1 each that they otherwise would have had starting with the 1962 elections. Completely absurd.

In Finland our parliament has 200 representatives which is one for every 27 500 citizens.

MrBeast is that you

Because it takes 435 members of the House of Representatives to change a light bulb

Personally, I would like to see house seats allotted based on the population of the smallest seat, particularly, that Wyoming would get 2 seats, which would give the nation 1148 seats, 1160 if you add DC and Puerto Rico. It would be a large, but manageable and more representative house. For example, the UK parliament is 650 seats, with about 1/4 the population. Edit: This is the so-called Wyoming Rule. Also, I would prefer DC to be mostly absorbed into Maryland, to prevent altering the Senate.

Mr Beat is my favorite. I think he’s one of the best teachers and he’s found his medium. I watch his videos several times, never just once. I wish he had a greater reach!

A proposal to increase membership: 1. Least populated state = 3 members in US House (arbitrary number, I know) 2. Average population of district = (Population of least populated state) / 3 3. State population / district average = number of districts per state; round to nearest integer Wyoming (least populated state) would have 3 members, would give an average district size of 192283 Across the whole US, this would give around 1750 members of the US House

The lack of representation in the House is also the reason why the Electoral College is so messed up.

In Brazil, our Congress has consistently had more than 500 members since the 1960s. Currently, it has 594 members; 81 Senators (3 for each of the 26 states and the Federal District [!]) and 513 Deputies. There's a lot of overrepresentation of small states due to the cap on the number of deputies per stte being 70, if that were removed São Paulo for an example would have more than a hundred. It also has a minimum of 8 deputies per state. However, the number of seats is not capped and may change with every census Oh, and we have a population somewhere in the region of 216 million people

I’m about to call my Congressman Adam Smith to extend my support the expand the House of Representatives

11:05 You forgot to mention that there was one occasion where it was 437 immediately after Alaska and Hawaii became states, although that went back down to 435 shortly afterwards.

There’s actual 441 reps in the house. 6 are non voting members for DC, Puerto Rico, and the territories

This is more than 7x the constituents per representation than the UK.

Oh geez, don’t get me started on the electoral college