For some reason, every four years around this time, you’ll find people whining about how the Electoral College is archaic, outdated, biased towards smaller states, and generally Not Good for their side of the political aisle (curiously, it’s always the liberal one that complains).

The usual proposal is to do away with the Electoral College entirely and elect our presidents through direct national popular vote. Or, failing that, come up with some sort of dodge with how states choose their electors that would give the same effective result (the “National Popular Vote Compact”).

But there’s one other approach to the problem that they keep missing – and it’s one that would solve a handful of other problems at the same time: expand the House of Representatives.

About the only thing specified for the House in the Constitution is that seats be assigned to states in proportion to their population. Obviously, each state gets at least one…. Over time, the total number of Representatives has been increased to help keep pace with the growth of the nation. But that stopped over a century ago, and the House has been frozen at 435 Representatives – even though the nation’s population has tripled since then. Though the seats get reapportioned every ten years, the total number stays at 435.

While the larger states get a fair balance of one representative for around every 750,000 people, the smaller states get wildly varying representation. Delaware and Wyoming both get one representative, but Delaware “represents” nearly a million people while Wyoming has 578,000. How can that be fair?

A couple of proposals have been put forward. One says that the “unit” of representation be tied to the population of the smallest state (Wyoming, at the moment). Going with that method would bring the House up to 573 seats in total. Political scientists have noted that in other countries that have a legislative assembly, the number of seats is in line with the cube root of the population. In some countries (like France and Germany), the number is closer to the cube root of twice the population. Using those as guides, the House would have a total number of seats of 692 and 872, respectively.

We could also go with a more modest increase, and set the number of representatives at the nice round figure of 500.

Here’s a table of what the resulting numbers per state would be (using 2020 census data):

Actually, I’m only going to do the ten largest and ten smallest states rather than all 50. Those are where the changes will be most prominent (and even though I can easily get all the numbers, I’m too lazy to put them into a nice table).

Yes, it’s an image. Still haven’t figured out how to do tables easily.

There can’t me much to complain about giving states a voice in the House that’s more in line with their population, right? And more representatives means more competitive seats, more chances for minority representation…..

Now I can hear you whining, “What does this have to do with the Electoral College?” As you no doubt recall, a state’s electoral votes – as mandated by the Constitution – are the number of the state’s representatives, plus two for their senators. Since each state is Constitutionally required to have two senators, that number cannot be changed. So that winds up giving a bit more power to smaller states in the Electoral College. Normally, this is not a big deal – but currently, the smaller states tend to align themselves with the Republican Party, giving that party an outsized influence in presidential elections. This accounts for all the gnashing of teeth and hair-pulling by the liberals.

But when you increase the number of representatives in a state, that brings the state’s electoral votes more into line with their population, getting you closer to a true “national popular vote” election. The more representatives you add, the closer you get.

Sure, there will be plenty of logistical challenges – redesigning the House Chamber to accommodate everyone, to start with. But there’s no reason it cannot be done (and while you’re at it, acquire more office space for the representatives and their staffs, and allow for remote attendance and voting (as was done during the COVID pandemic)).

It won’t take a Constitutional amendment, and won’t open up a whole mess of legal challenges the first time a state’s electoral votes are given to the candidate the majority of that state’s voters did NOT vote for.

And for cryin’ out loud, it’s well past time to do it anyway.