LETTERS: INCREASE THE NUMBERS IN THE U.S. HOUSE

To the editor:

Cal Thomas, in his June 19 column, does not approve of racial gerrymandering. It is at least as clear that he is perfectly content to allow the political will of large racial minorities to continue to be sublimated to the will of the Euro-American majority in which they are submerged. Rightly or wrongly, these minorities perceive that their interests are not even visible on the radar scopes of U.S. representatives. And they believe that, the way things stand, they will never have a voice in the U.S. House. A fair person would find it hard to disagree.

A step toward rectifying this situation was the creation in some states of so-called minority-majority congressional districts. These districts are ugly things stretching for a hundred miles or more and having boundaries as complicated as the Norwegian coastline. They are designed to encompass enough small pockets of minority voters so that those pockets will constitute a majority in the district and thus be able, if they so choose, to coalesce and elect one of their own to the U.S. House. The U.S. Supreme Court, packed by Presidents Reagan and Bush with ideologues who generally side with the powerful over the powerless, predictably struck down this solution in two recent decisions.

Perhaps now people of goodwill will begin pressing for what should have been done from the outset: Why not increase the membership of the House of Representatives? The number of members in the lower federal body, 435, is not carved in stone. The Constitution provides only that the population of a congressional district shall not be less than 30,000. The membership of our lower house has been fixed at 435 members for as long as I can remember. With our population growth over the decades, this by now has resulted in each U.S. representative representing roughly 650,000 persons.

Between 650,000, the approximate actual number now represented by a typical U.S. rep, and 30,000, the constitutional minimum, is a more reasonable number, a number which will allow more political clout for minorities in congressional politics. This solution will be expensive, but if it results in more people feeling that they have a stake in the political system, it will be well worth the expense.

I don't expect the 104th Congress to embrace this proposal, though. It's too sensible and fair, and I do not get the impression that the Republicans are all that anxious to expand democracy except with their lips.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.