I’d certainly rather try that than keep with our fully failed system, but I’m curious: with so many members (from both resetting the constituent ratio to what the original one was, plus multi-member districts), would it start to physically look like the Galaxtic Senate? Maybe a basketball arena packed with representatives? Clearly we are now equipped for simple votes to be taken instantly even in those quantities, but part of me thinks that this would be tough because ultimately 22,000 people can’t have a floor debate together unless in practice only a handful actually matter. Same for committees of say, 10x the current size.
I’m not saying it’s worse than what we have now, I’m actually more curious how the people who would like to see that reform would want it to look in practice so I can know whether I could support it and how I’d argue for it.
Congressional votes don’t need to be secret, so we have tons of technology that would permit remote participation and voting. That also frees up members to spend more time physically in their district.
When I’ve pictured this it’s with member counts in the low to mid thousands, not tens of thousands.
Floor debates are already mainly performative, with little bearing on changes to bills. All the real work happens in committee and by the Speaker’s office. I’d think about embracing this with more different caucuses of various members who come together on specific issues and bring versions of bills and amendments for committees to adopt or reject, maybe even a few levels of committees to build consensus slowly so the final floor vote is more formality than debate.
I’m not saying it’s worse than what we have now, I’m actually more curious how the people who would like to see that reform would want it to look in practice so I can know whether I could support it and how I’d argue for it.