Towards a more equal representation?

There's a proposal from Thirty-thousand.org to increase the size of the US House of Representatives. By a lot. As they say, 435 representatives cannot faithfully represent 300 million Americans! I think they have a point in that we could use more members of Congress, but I am not yet convinced that we should go so far as their recommendation that in keeping with the intent of the framers, a Congressional district should never exceed 50 to 60 thousand. I disagree with a few of their arguments, but I do think there is something inherently nonrepresentative about how Montana has nearly twice the population of Wyoming and yet they have the same level of representation. And, of course, I do love thinking about Congressional reapportionment.

They say that the House needs 6300 representatives to ensure that the difference between the smallest and largest district would be no more than 5% larger than another, but they seem content with a 6000-member House. They do not, so far as I could find, give the apportionment based on the 2010 Census with 6000 members. I think it's worth looking at, and so I've put it below. By my count, the largest representation is 52,820 people per representative and the smallest is 50,567 people per representative, or 4.45%, but I don't know that I would call it reasonable.

A couple of thoughts:

I don't think there is any reason in today's society to require that we need one representative for 50,000 people. I mean, does Arizona State University (60,000+ students at its Tempe campus) really need a congressional district entirely for itself? We have one hundred athletic stadiums that seat at least 50,000 in the country.

Los Angeles County, CA, has about 9.9 million people, and so it would need around 190 districts itself. Given the large number of immigrants in LA, I suspect it would not be too difficult to draw one of these districts for which only 5% of the district would actually be legally allowed to vote. Would this representation be fair compared a district in which everyone is a citizen?

One notion the founders liked was that states be given equal representation, regardless of their size. That is of course what the Senate is for, but the House has a bit of this, too. Increasing the size of the House weakens the relative advantage of small states, both in the House and also in the Electoral College. I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing but merely observing that it would happen.

There is no way possible way we could pass a system under which Wyoming gets 11 representatives and the District of Columbia has none. If you care about fair representation of people more than fair representation of the founders ideals in the way we run our government, you have to take this into account.

State	No. of reps.
Alabama	93
Alaska	14
Arizona	124
Arkansas	57
California	725
Colorado	98
Connecticut	70
Delaware	17
Florida	366
Georgia	189
Hawaii	26
Idaho	31
Illinois	250
Indiana	126
Iowa	59
Kansas	56
Kentucky	84
Louisiana	88
Maine	26
Maryland	112
Massachusetts	127
Michigan	192
Minnesota	103
Mississippi	58
Missouri	117
Montana	19
Nebraska	36
Nevada	53
New Hampshire	26
New Jersey	171
New Mexico	40
New York	377
North Carolina	186
North Dakota	13
Ohio	225
Oklahoma	73
Oregon	75
Pennsylvania	247
Rhode Island	20
South Carolina	90
South Dakota	16
Tennessee	124
Texas	490
Utah	54
Vermont	12
Virginia	156
Washington	131
West Virginia	36
Wisconsin	111
Wyoming	11