Name: 立法院太小了？一個超有創意的方法解決它！ (The House of Representatives is too small. Here is one way to fix it.)
Uploaded: 2026-02-06T17:13:22.000Z
Duration: 8 min 4 s

That's how many people are in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the legislative branch of the United States government.

這就是美國政府立法部門下議院眾議院的席次人數。

The country's founders expected the House to expand along with the country.

國家創始人原本期望眾議院能隨著國家一同擴張。

But that number, 435, hasn't changed in about 100 years, even though the US population has tripled in that time frame.

但這個數字 435，在過去大約一百年裡都沒有改變，即使美國人口在這段期間翻了三倍。

Some scholars think that imbalance helps explain why many Americans feel like Congress is disconnected from them.

有些學者認為，這種失衡有助於解釋為何許多美國人覺得國會與他們脫節。

Here's the thing that you really care about, which is whether you can get the ear, somebody who represents you, whether you can find that person in your district.

這才是你真正關心的，也就是你能不能獲得關注，能不能找到一位代表你的人，能不能在你的選區找到那個人。

The more people that person represents, the less likelihood you can get the attention of that person.

那個人代表的人越多，你獲得那個人關注的可能性就越小。

But this one congressman thinks it's time to think bigger than 435.

但這位國會議員認為，是時候該思考超越 435 的問題了。

If you were going to make government more democratic, what would that look like?

如果你要讓政府更民主，那會是什麼樣子？

Why don't we continually expand the House?

為什麼我們不持續擴張眾議院的席次呢？

It's something that would make us more representative.

It's something that would give more representation to the parts of the country where people actually live.

這會讓人口真正居住的地方獲得更多代表權。

Representative Sean Caston of Illinois has presented a bill that would continuously expand the House as the country's population grows.

伊利諾州的選區議員肖恩·卡斯頓提出了一項法案，主張隨著國家人口增長，眾議院席次能持續擴張。

But will adding more seats to the House actually be a good balance of effective governance and representation, or will it only add more chaos and gridlock?

但增加眾議院席次，真的能讓有效治理和代表權取得良好平衡，還是隻會增加更多混亂和僵局呢？

所以435這個數字並不在憲法裡。

The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000, but

眾議院代表名額不得超過每三萬人一位，但

each state shall have at least one representative.

But we got rid of this idea pretty quickly.

但我們很快就放棄了這個想法。

Today we would have a House that would be astronomically large if we kept that number in place.

如果我們維持那個數字，今天的眾議院規模將會非常龐大。

And the Constitution is in many ways an aspirational document.

而憲法在很多方面都是一份充滿理想的文件。

Now, what the framers did enshrine was that the census would determine the number of representatives for each state.

現在，創始人所確立的是，人口普查將決定每個州的眾議院代表人數。

As long as the House was apportioned or divided off of that, it was constitutional.

只要眾議院是根據人口普查來分配或劃分的，那就是合憲的。

So for over 100 years, we did that modestly, adding seats through apportionment acts as the new states joined the Union.

所以在一百多年來，我們都是這樣做的，隨著新州加入聯邦，透過分配法案來增加席位。

But after World War I, the population shifted to urban centers.

但第一次世界大戰後，人口轉移到都市中心。

Black communities and immigrants with different religious beliefs were changing the landscape captured by the census.

非裔社群和有不同宗教信仰的移民改變了人口普查所捕捉到的景象。

As members of Congress are trying to create a new apportionment act after 1920 and the 1920 census.

國會議員們正試圖在1920年和1920年人口普查後，制定新的分配法案。

農村地區的成員阻擋了這件事。

So after the battle between rural and urban factions, the House passed the Permanent apportionment Act of 1929, fixing the number of representatives at 435 for the next century.

是以，在農村和城市派系之間的鬥爭後，眾議院通過了《1929年永久分配法》，將代表人數固定在435人，為下一個世紀。

Today, more than 80% of the U.S. lives in urban areas.

如今，美國超過80%的人口居住在都市地區。

It's this massive overrepresentation of rural parts of the country.

這就是這個國家農村地區的嚴重過度代表。

Our purpose, if we're a representative democracy, should be to represent the people who wherever they live.

如果我們是一個代表民主國家，我們的目標應該是代表居住在任何地方的人民。

This divide is magnified by how we split that cap of 435among the states.

我們如何將這435個席位分配給各州，放大了這種差距。

Because these days we use something called the Huntington Hill formula.

因為現在我們使用一種叫做杭廷頓-希爾公式的方法。

It can get pretty complicated, so I won't go over all the details.

這可能會變得相當複雜，所以我不會詳細說明。

The important thing to know is that it assumes each of the 50 states has at least one seat in the House of Representatives.

重要的是要知道，它假設50個州中的每一個在眾議院都至少有一個席位。

Then it uses a formula to divide up the remaining 385 roughly based on the state's population size as determined by the census.

然後它會使用一個公式，根據人口普查確定的州人口規模，大致分配剩下的385個席位。

What gets tricky is determining which states get an extra representative when their population sizes are really close.

比較棘手的是，當各州的總人口數非常接近時，要決定哪個州可以多獲得一個代表名額。

Their population sizes are similar, but after the 2020 census, the formula gave Montana an extra seat.

它們的人口規模差不多，但在2020年人口普查後，這個公式讓蒙大拿州多了一個席位。

This means that a Delaware representative speaks for nearly twice the number of constituents as a Montana representative.

這意味著，一位德拉瓦州的國會議員所代表的選民人數，幾乎是蒙大拿州國會議員的兩倍。

For context, 761,000 constituents per representative is a way higher ratio than many other democracies around the world.

作為參考，每位國會議員代表76萬1千名選民，這個比例比世界上許多其他民主國家都高得多。

This is why Representative Kastin introduced new legislation to expand the House.

這就是為什麼選區議員肖恩·卡斯頓提出了擴大眾議院的新法案。

As your districts get bigger and bigger, you have to represent a much larger, more diverse set of interests.

隨著你的選區越來越大，你必須代表更多樣化的利益。

We come to have to represent the average of those interests rather than their specificity.

我們要代表這些利益的平均值，而不是它們的特殊性。

So if you're generally convinced that we should expand the House, here comes the tricky part.

所以，如果你普遍認為我們應該擴大眾議院，接下來就是棘手的 part 了。

It can't be too big and it can't be too small.

Political scientists came up with two formulas that really guided Castan's ideas for his own legislation.

政治學者提出了兩個公式，確實引導了卡斯頓提出他法案的想法。

this is the wonkiest, probably the most accurate, is this cube root law that looks at parliamentary bodies all over the world and says how many people do they typically represent?

而且這是最學術、最精確的，是這個立方根定律，它觀察世界各地的議會機構，並說它們通常代表多少人？

And if you squint your eyes, it sort of follows with the cube root of the population in the United States.

如果你瞇著眼睛看，它大致上符合美國人口的立方根。

Because if you've tuned out once I said cube root, you understand the political problem with that as an approach.

因為如果你一聽到立方根就關掉，你大概能理解這種方法的政治問題。

There's another approach that says you should set the size of a congressional district to be the population of the smallest state at the time of any redistricting.

另一個方法是說，國會選區的大小應該設定為任何重新劃分選區時，最小州的總人口數。

It's called the Wyoming rule because Wyoming for a long time has been the lowest population state.

這被稱為懷俄明州規則，因為懷俄明州長期以來一直是人口最少的州。

But Kastan's bill proposes something he believes is way commit to a specific ratio of voters per representative.

但卡斯頓的法案提議了一個他認為是更傾向於選民與代表特定比例的方案。

And for him, that magic number is 500,000.

對他來說，這個神奇數字是五十萬。

I think the important thing is whether you do the wyoming rule or 500,000 or the cube root, all of these tend to lock in somewhere in the 500,000 ish range.

我認為重要的是，無論你採用懷俄明州規則、五十萬，還是立方根，這些方法都會鎖定在大約五十萬的範圍內。

And that would add somewhere 200, 250 seats to the House and then say every time we redistrict, we will expand the members but keep the representation level the same.

這將會增加眾議院約兩百到兩百五十個席次，然後說每次重新劃分選區時，我們會增加議員人數，但保持代表權的層級不變。

His proposal has two additional elements to ensure expanding the House is actually more representative of the electorate.

他的提議還有另外兩個要素，以確保擴大眾議院實際上能更代表選民。

The system needs multi member districts, meaning a single congressional district could have multiple representatives for the same area.

這個系統需要多席次選區，這意味著一個國會選區可以為同一地區有多位國會議員。

It would also need to have proportional representation, which is where seats are allocated based on the percentage of votes political parties receive.

這也需要有比例代表制，也就是席次會根據政黨獲得的選票百分比來分配。

We have videos on these systems if you're interested in getting more in the weeds without implementing these two other systems.

如果你對更深入瞭解這些系統有興趣，但又不想實施這兩個額外的系統，我們有關於這些系統的影片。

傑利躭馬德瑞可能會變得更糟。

我做了一些這方面的模型分析。

If you were to bring districts down from 765,000 to about 500,000 issuance per district, you would probably make the gerrymandering problem worse.

如果你把選區從七十六萬五千人縮小到每區約五十萬人，你可能會讓傑利躭馬德瑞的問題變得更糟。

If we want to solve the gerrymandering problem, which I think we do, combining a larger House with proportional representation is essential.

如果我們想解決傑利躭馬德瑞的問題，而我認為我們應該這麼做，結合一個更大的眾議院和比例代表制是不可或缺的。

So if we manage to do all of that, this new legislative body still needs to be able to pass bills and govern.

所以，如果我們能做到這一切，這個新的立法機構仍然需要能夠通過法案並進行治理。

But if there's a lot of freshman representatives, it might be harder for them to all come to a consensus.

但如果有很多新任的國會議員，他們可能比較難達成共識。

I don't think that it's just talk when people express concerns that the House could become so unwieldy as an institution such that each individual member would lose their voice, I think that's a significant impediment to increasing the size of the chamber.

我不認為當人們表達擔憂，認為眾議院可能會變得如此龐大，以至於每個個別的成員都會失去他們的聲音時，這只是空談，我認為這對增加議院規模是一個重大的阻礙。

so much of what it does is actually decided by a very small number of people that the inner circle of the majority party makes a lot of decisions.

其實很多事情都是由極少數人決定的，由多數黨的內部核心圈做出很多決定。

So these are the power structures that will make it hard for Kastin to pass his bill.

所以這些權力結構將會讓卡斯頓很難通過他的法案。

He tried to pass a version of this in 2023 and it died in committee.

他在 2023 年試圖通過一個版本的法案，但它在委員會就胎死腹中了。

But he's reintroducing the legislation because for him the stakes are way too high to not try again.

但他重新提出了這項立法，因為對他來說，賭注太高了，不能不再次嘗試。

The structure of our government is not designed to carry out the popular will of the majority of the American people.

我們政府的結構並不是為了實現美國人民大多數人的意願而設計的。

If we don't take steps to fix that, then we're doing nothing to shut down the cynicism that's in the American public that the government claims to represent us.

如果我們不採取措施來解決這個問題，那麼我們就沒有辦法消除美國民眾對政府聲稱代表我們卻做不到的憤世嫉俗。

We vote for them, and then they don' don't do what we want.

我們投票給他們，然後他們卻不照我們希望的去做。

So we can either let that cynicism destroy the government, or we can fix the government and heal the cynicism.

所以，我們要嘛任由這種憤世嫉俗摧毀政府，要嘛就修復政府，治癒這種憤世嫉俗。