I asked this question last night, and looked up how we apportion representatives. I found that with 435 reps under the current Hill Method, no state's population is misrepresented in the House by more than 0.13% over or under.

Then, I compared that to a simple system where we give out representatives as a multiple of the lowest populated state (WY). (chart and graphs at bottom) In this Smallest State Method, Wyoming's population is the baseline for 1 representative. Every other state is apportioned representatives based on how many Wyomings they have in their population. With this method, the House of Representatives would grow to 573 members.

I found that this method is slightly more accurate, with no state being misrepresented by more than 0.09% of their population, and has a lower inaccuracy for most states across the board. It also has less variance between the states for how many citizens one representative covers. This study shows me that the Smallest State method is slightly more accurate.

Does it Matter?

No! However, if the current method is accurate to within 0.13% of the state's population, why are right-wing voters over-represented in many states?

The answer is gerrymandering! Even if we added all of these new representatives (which I think we should), states can still draw their congressional district borders to skew the party strength in their state. Here's a great video from a programmer who makes an AI to draw congressional districts. He shows how he can change parameters to make the AI skew the districts heavily to one side while still making them look "fair" with smooth borders.

What does this mean?

Well, if you ever hear anyone say that the House needs to add more members to make more Democrats, you can say, "Ackshewally, it might not be that simple..."

This also means that the main focus should be on gerrymandering when we talk about correcting right-wing over-representation in the House.

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3 Graphs and a Chart

Dark blue: Hill Method

Light Blue: Smallest State

Also, I'm not sure how to upload an excel doc but if anyone wants to play around with it, I'll figure out a way to send it.

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Percent Deviated from State Population

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Absolute Percent Deviated from State Population

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Population per Representative by State

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The full data is there, but some of these are rounded to conserve visual space.