Pennsylvania’s legislature is big — and that’s beautiful

With 203 House members and 50 senators, Pennsylvania has the largest full-time state legislature in the country. The commonwealth’s outlier status has inspired many calls for reform over the years, and nearly every legislative session features a bill to reduce its size.

But critics are wrong: Pennsylvania’s supersized legislature is good for the people.

Efficiency in government is a virtue, but it is not the only virtue a state should pursue. While no one can honestly argue that Pennsylvania should waste money for no reason, the desire to “run government like a business” should be balanced against the positive aspects of our big legislature.

The most important positive is that smaller districts keep the government close to the people. This idea goes back to the nation’s founding — a time when, admittedly, there were a lot fewer Americans and even fewer who could legally vote.

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In the early years of the republic, the federal House had one representative for every 30,000 people. At the time, one of the main objections noted by the authors of the Federalist Papers was that there should be more representatives — that is, that the ratio should be even lower. A proposed amendment to the Constitution (part of the original Bill of Rights) would have mandated tiny House districts into the future, but it failed to be ratified.

Of course, the original ratio was unsustainable — at 30,000-1, the federal House would now have more than 11,000 members — but some pundits today believe the federal House should be enlarged, restoring its place as the “people’s house.”

In Pennsylvania, we’re much closer to that ideal. The average state House district contains just over 64,000 people. That means that if something is happening in your neighborhood, it isn’t that hard to get your state rep to pay attention. If there is an event nearby, he or she will quite possibly be there. And Pennsylvania’s strict rules on residency mean your representative must live in the district, so these legislators are quite literally close to the people.

It’s good for ensuring real representation, which is good for democracy.

Even beyond that, another reason small districts are beneficial to Pennsylvania is that the barriers to entry for potential candidates are much lower. If you want to run for a statewide office, you need a war chest and a political party organization — things most of us don’t have. For the bigger legislative districts in other states, it’s similar: California’s state Senate districts, for instance, contain almost a million people each.

Outsider candidates stand little chance of connecting with the voters in a district that requires mass media spending to do so. That may be fine for an office like governor or president — we don’t really want every candidate to run for the top spot right away. But a state House is — or should be — the entry point for a citizen-legislator, a local leader who wants to make a difference without having to join up with a political machine and all its baggage.

Consider one recent Democratic primary race in Philadelphia. In 2022, first-time candidate Tarik Khan defeated incumbent Pam DeLissio in a district she had represented for a dozen years. How? By walking the district and knocking on 10,000 doors. In a primary where fewer than 12,000 people voted, that was enough for an impressive victory.

This was not a pure grassroots victory — Khan had a ton of outside money from progressive groups — but money alone doesn’t win races. In 2016, Jared Solomon — now a candidate for attorney general — defeated longtime incumbent Mark Cohen in the same fashion (and without the outside money) after falling just short of victory in 2014. He did it by connecting directly with the people in a way the incumbent had long since stopped bothering to do.

Knocking on doors, meeting the people, discussing their concerns — that can happen in a bigger district, but it’s a lot harder. Pennsylvania’s massive state House allows for outsiders to level the playing field against incumbents.

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The same holds true in other elections. In Central Bucks, the sprawling school district is divided into nine regions, each electing one member. With 121,000 people living in the entire school district, that makes for manageable regions in which candidates without lavish funding can campaign.

However, that traditional scheme is being challenged in court by plaintiffs who want to make three large, multimember districts in Central Bucks with roughly 40,000 people each. This, for a part-time job that does not pay a salary.

The bigger the district, the harder it is for an outsider to challenge the power of a political machine. This is not a right vs. left point, it’s about insiders and incumbents vs. outsiders and new ideas.

Pennsylvania’s system isn’t the most efficient in the world, but efficiency isn’t the only value in a republic. Effective, locally focused representation matters even more.