One of the dark secrets of Washington State politics is that in the 1960s and 70s it took a court to force the state legislature to redistrict. The state legislators themselves had no incentive to redraw lines, so they just waited until the courts made them. This was the environment that eventually led to the state initiative to take the line-drawing job away from the legislature, so they didn’t have direct responsibility for the work. They still had to approve it, but the actual work was a bipartisan, if not entirely independent, commission.

This was the same era when the Washington legislature stopped growing. And for me, the incentives are the same. Each time any legislative body grows, the individual power of each member shrinks. So they lack the incentive to bring in more legislative neighbors. Today I’m looking hard at the history behind that process and why it actually hurts legislative bodies in the end.

Also, speaking of legislative bodies, we are back with another episode of The Olympia Standard. And this time we’re doing our traditional Sine Die episode, with a schools twist.

Going Closer to Home

I've been thinking about apportionment and the impacts of capping the House of Representatives for at least 10 years. The obsession started when Washington State felt the impacts of the 2010 apportionment, the process that created the "Denny Heck" district. This was the first major redesign of our political boundaries in my adult life, a massive shift in how we see ourselves.

We talk often about the polarization of our politics. We rarely talk about the math of it. Our legislative bodies have been effectively downzoned, capped at a fixed density while the population they serve has exploded. This isn't just about crowded calendars for representatives shuttling around their districts. It's a fundamental surrender of legislative power to the executive branch, turning our representatives from neighbors into distant brands.

The Great Capping

The pivot point for the federal government was the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. Before this, as the American population grew, the House of Representatives grew with it. But in 1929, Congress froze its membership at 435. By doing so, they didn't just limit their size. They transitioned the House from a human-scale institution to an industrial-scale one.

We can think about this like a city council decision. Imagine a neighborhood that is capped at one single-family home per parcel, even as a thousand people move into the area. That single home becomes a rare, high-value asset. Only the extremely wealthy or those with deep institutional backing can afford to buy in. The neighborhood becomes exclusive and expensive, ending up utterly disconnected from the needs of the many.

By keeping the number of representatives low while the population surged to 330 million, we created a form of political homelessness. There simply isn't enough room in our legislative neighborhood for everyone who wants to be involved. This forces the public to move their needs and demands into the only building that keeps growing. That building is the Executive Branch skyscraper.

As Danielle Allen, co-chair of the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, recently noted:

The House of Representatives was meant to be the body closest to the people. By capping its growth, we have essentially frozen the House in time, while the nation has moved on. This stagnation has allowed the executive branch to expand into the vacuum of leadership, turning a body of representatives into a body of spectators. We must enlarge the House to ensure that it has the capacity to oversee a 21st-century government and to ensure that every citizen’s voice can be heard above the din of special interests and executive overreach.

The Species of the Iconoclast

This downzoning explains why someone like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is such an odd duck in modern DC. The 3rd Congressional District has a long history of protecting iconoclasts. These are people who cut against the grain of national party lines to represent the true essence of their geography.

We saw it in Jolene Unsoeld. She was an Olympian who entered office as an outsider and stayed that way, defying party expectations on everything from open government to gun rights. We saw it in Brian Baird. His independence was grounded in evidence and firsthand experience, the kind of conviction that meant supporting a surge in Iraq after visiting the country or being the first U.S. official in years to enter the Gaza Strip to condemn humanitarian devastation.

Now we see it in MGP. She isn't a centrist in the way D.C. consultants use the term. She is a localist. Her politics are deeply rooted in the dignity of work and a Wendell Berry vision of local self-determination. When she hangs a 1950s chainsaw in her office, it's a symbol of stewardship over consumption.

But in a capped House, MGP is an endangered species. When a district has 760,000 people, a candidate can no longer win through retail politics. They must buy mass media wholesale messaging, a requirement that demands national party money and adherence to a national brand. If we uncapped the House, we would likely see more people like her. It wouldn't be because they share her specific policies. It would be because smaller districts allow for low-to-the-ground campaigns that lean into the specific nature of a community.

The Mirror in the Mirror: The DC Plateau

This same hollowing out is happening right here in Washington State. There is a fascinating irony in our history. In 1930, just one year after the federal cap, Washington voters passed Initiative 57. It increased the size of our state legislature. We were upzoning our democracy as the feds were closing theirs.

However, that expansion hit a wall in the 1970s. Following the court case Prince v. Kramer and the shift to a redistricting commission, our legislature has been effectively capped at 147 members for over 50 years. Meanwhile, our population has more than doubled.

The result is a staggering representation inflation. In 1890, a Washington legislator represented about 3,000 people. Today, that ratio is over 52,000 to 1. Since that math splits the work of a single district among two representatives and a senator, the real ratio is 156,000 to 1.

At 3,000 to 1, a representative is a neighbor. At 52,000 to 1, a representative is a brand. We are losing the space where a useful, known member of the community could win a seat without a professional campaign apparatus.

The Institutional Friction Gap

The most dangerous byproduct of this cap is the loss of institutional friction. When a legislative body is too small to manage the complexity of a modern administrative state, the Executive Branch expands to fill the vacuum.

In Washington State, this impact is blunted. Our executive apparatus is split between more than a half dozen elected executives, from Governor to Insurance Commissioner. In DC, the executive is unitary.

We see this in the fecklessness of the current Congress. When the President and the Congressional majority are the same, there is no friction. The legislature simply becomes a rubber stamp for the Executive's national platform. When they are different, Congress often lacks the processing power to truly oversee the bureaucracy, a dynamic leading to a system where the President can largely do as they wish. The courts are left as the only remaining check.

Trump has demonstrated how far the edges of presidential power can be pushed when the legislature has unilaterally disarmed by refusing to grow. If there were 1,500 members of Congress, or 300 members of the Washington State Legislature, the surface area for oversight would be vastly larger. It would be much harder for a single executive voice to swamp the collective processing power of a truly representative body.

Reclaiming the Neighborhood Scale

We cannot have a Wendell Berry style of politics in a downzoned democracy. To save the iconoclast and restore the balance of power, we have to stop treating representation as a fixed scarcity.

Capping our legislative bodies was a choice made for the convenience of the incumbents. It was about the efficiency of the managers. But democracy isn't supposed to be efficient in the industrial sense. It is supposed to be representative in the human sense. Whether in D.C. or in Olympia, we are living in the affordability crisis of a capped system. It is time to uncap the House, uncap the Legislature, and return our politics to a neighborhood scale.

The Olympia Standard #150: Sine Die 2026 with Beth and Claire

We expand our annual Sine Die episode this year to include education expert Senator Clair Wilson! Also on this episode is our own Rep. Beth Doglio, who does the traditional unpacking of what the legislative session meant for us in Olympia.

What else you should be reading or watching this week

1. A graduate of William Winlock Miller (Olympia) High School helped build the Air Force. I didn’t know that, and his history by Jennifer Crooks at Thurston Talk is worth a read.

2. Speaking of history, Oly Arts has been around for 10 years. I complain a lot about media in Olympia, but Oly Arts does not get enough credit for being around, steadily producing excellent coverage that no one else can or will.

3. This article isn’t interesting in terms of the particulars about the law enforcement certification-related law, but just as a reminder about how our community relates to our state’s legal landscape. Any more, it doesn’t matter where you file a lawsuit. If you’re suing a state agency, the case will eventually come to Thurston County.