Stuck On 435 (1929) w/ Philip Bump
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2022
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s June 26th. In 1929, Congress passed the “Permanent Reapportionment Act,” which capped the number of representatives in the house.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Philip Bump of the Washington Post to discuss why the overall number of representatives had shifted a fair amount up to that point, but has now been stuck for almost a century. They also discuss the efforts at reform — and the unintended consequences of adding more seats.
Be sure to subscribe to Philip’s newsletter “How To Read This Chart!”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Abergan. |
| 0:10.0 | This day in 1929, the Permanent Apportionment Act is signed into law. |
| 0:16.0 | That capped House membership at the level established after the 1910 Census |
| 0:21.0 | and created a procedure for automatically reapportioning house seats after every decennial census. |
| 0:27.0 | But basically what it did was since then stuck the number of representatives in the house at 435, give or take a couple here or there, |
| 0:35.5 | we'll get into that, but 435 members of Congress, each state generally having the same |
| 0:40.5 | number of representatives going on almost a hundred years now |
| 0:43.7 | and suffice it to say the US population has changed a lot since then |
| 0:47.3 | but not the number of representatives so there are many many ripple effects and |
| 0:52.0 | controversies and interesting things to talk about and try and figure out why we have stayed at that number. |
| 0:58.0 | So here to do that as always are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. |
| 1:05.9 | And our special guest for this episode is Philip Bump National Correspondent for the Washington |
| 1:09.7 | Post, a writer who covers all sorts of great things in politics but also does a newsletter I really like how to read this chart and has this wonky side of him that I really appreciate. |
| 1:20.0 | So Philip, thank you for doing this. |
| 1:22.0 | Thank you for appreciating their wonky sake. |
| 1:24.0 | Well, you're not. |
| 1:25.0 | There's anyone who's going to do it. |
| 1:27.0 | So we'll get into the nitty gritty of how we arrived at this number, |
| 1:31.0 | 435. |
| 1:32.0 | But one thing that strikes me about the story and Philip may be a |
| 1:34.4 | thoughts on this but you know this was a number that was |
... |
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