Florida Congressman Calls for Reforms to the U.S. House From Ending Gerrymandering to Expanding Members

This article reports that Hastings, a Florida congressman, has reintroduced a proposal that could lead to major reforms in the U.S. House, including cracking down on gerrymandering and expanding the number of members, citing RepresentWomen as a supporter. Read an excerpt below:

While Hastings did not get his bill through last year, he brought it back this week. On Monday, Hastings took to the House floor to weigh in on his proposal.

“I rise to reintroduce the Congress Commission Act of 2021. This bill establishes the bipartisan Congressional Commission to Strengthen Representative Democracy to study and make recommendations on membership of the House of Representatives, the methods by which representatives are elected, and how to ensure opportunities for greater constituent and representative engagement,” he said. “The United States is the least representative democracy out of all of our international peers. It has been over one hundred years since the representative chamber has increased in size. During those intervening years the United States has added four additional states, the population has expanded exponentially, and the extension of voting suffrage means our national electorate looks vastly different than it did in the early twentieth century. And yet, over the course of more than a century, there has been insufficient effort to consider or enact changes to House membership that could improve how such population growth in number and diversity are reflected by federal representatives. Too many years have passed us by without any serious consideration of how our nation’s growth and progress is reflected in the People’s House,” Hastings said.

U.S. Reps. André Carson, D-Ind., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass., are co sponsoring the bill which is headed to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

FairVote; RepresentWomen; Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy; Election Reformers Network (ERN); and Ranked Choice Voting Research Center are all backing the proposal.

Read the full article here.