Over in The Atlantic, David Litt argues that Congress should be much larger than it currently is:

In the 90 years since the cap [on the number of reps in Congress] was put in place, the number of House seats has stayed flat while the population has boomed. To put it slightly differently, each member of Congress has become responsible for several times more constituents. District populations have doubled since my parents were born, in the late 1950s. In my own 33-year lifetime, the number of Americans per lawmaker has increased by about 200,000—the equivalent of adding a Salt Lake City to every district in the United States.

Believe it or not, I've been working on a similar post, coming at the argument through looking at the ratio of people-to-reps in other countries.

Litt makes the case much better than I ever could (for example, I didn't know that the number of House Reps was commonly increased after every census until 1919!), but here's a plot of person-per-rep vs population for about two dozen democracies, from Mexico to South Korea to Nigeria to Norway:

You'll notice most countries are clustered together in the lower-left-hand corner.

See that outlier, waaaay up in the corner, far away from everyone else? That's the United States.

We're mail-in voters, but between the move and everything else, I ended up heading to polling station yesterday anyway.

I wanted to be sure I got in, because San Diego holds its local elections on the same day as the primary. So I got to vote for mayor, some state reps, judges, etc, as well as some voter-sponsored initiatives that got on the ballot.

Oh, and I got to vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary :)

Confession time: I really, really, seriously enjoy voting in California.

They send us a little booklet before the election, where every candidate who agrees to accept spending limits can issue a statement, laying out their case. (Naturally, I only vote for candidates who issue such a statement). It's also got the full text of the ballot initiatives, plus pro and con arguments, and a fiscal impact analysis for each measure.

It's homework, but it also means I feel much more informed going into the election than I would otherwise. Not only from reading the booklet, but using it as a jumping-off point for further research.

The last election we spent in Arkansas, I felt so disconnected and lost. No booklet. No easy-to-navigate state-gov-run website to look everything up. Nothing.

What does your state (or country!) do, to make sure its voters are as informed as possible before heading to the polls?