We Need More Representatives In The House Of Representatives

1) Diversity"Con presented an article that stated how women and minorities are now predominately on the political left with white men comprising most of the political right. This House makeup ignores the reality of women and minorities not being on the left and white men not always being on the political right."You kind of missed the point on that one... The dominant party in the House of Representatives is the Republican party, the one which represents the American population the least. This means that if we did add more seats to the House of Representatives, most of those would be won by the Republican party, the party that has the greatest gap between the makeup of the American Public and their Congressional representatives. This means that more seats wont lead to a more diverse Congress since those seats would go to the Republican party, who has the worst track record when it comes to diversity out of the two major parties. "Con does not provide evidence to support that women and minorities wouldn’t win any new seats created in a larger Congress. He just says so"I provided a source showing how the Republican party was the dominant party in the House and from last election actually lost 2 minorities and a dozen women from their ranks.... Heres the link again since apparently Con missed it. http://www.cnn.com...The evidence shows that the biggest party in the House is growing less diverse, meaning that more seats wont automatically go to minorities like he claims and gives no sources implying this is true. "As we have a black President who won against a woman Senator in the Democratic party primary, I find it difficult to believe Con’s claim that “([a] bunch of old white men)” will automatically pick up any and all new seats added to the House of Representatives."See source ive had to provide twice now.... The Republican party is growing less diverse yet they have held the House for 10 elections in a row. Ive given evidence showing how more seats would lead to an even bigger gap in diversity, con has yet to provide a single source supporting his claims that the opposite is true. "Con claimed that the House of Representatives currently provides a cross-section of America. This is simply not true"I never once claimed that the House provides a cross section of America. Dont put words in my mouth Pro. "Con’s argument is about the Senate; therefore, Con’s argument is invalid in this discussion"You were the one who brought up the approval rating of CONGRESS. The Senate is part of the Congress last I checked.The point with McConnell was to show that Americans disapprove of Congress as a whole, but that on an individual level most congressmen have approval ratings well above that of Congress. Americans disapprove of Congress because of its overall inefficiency and because they dont like some of the other people who have been elected to Congress, but evidence shows that people are more then happy with the actual congressmen who they elected and who represent them. This indicates that con's claim that adding more representatives will boost approval ratings is contrary to what would happen, and hes trying to dance around this point through semantics. 2) Reform Campaign FinancePro actually dropped every argument in this one and didnt respond to a single thing I said about how Incumbents have numerous non-funding related advantages over challengers. 3) Reform the electoral college"Maine & Nebraska already allocate electors on a proportional basis, not winner-take-all."2 states use a proportional basis, the other 48 are still winner take all. Con is again resorting to semantics to try to dance around the point that increasing the number of people in the House of Representatives will not change the final results of the electoral college to more accurately reflect the popular vote. The electoral college by definition is literally defined as a winner-take-all system, so the argument standshttp://en.wikipedia.org...(United_States)http://www.archives.gov..."Adding more Representatives in the process has the same effect that adding more voters does in a DDO debate; it allows for more opinions and also stops a single voter from unduly influencing the outcome."People on DDO dont operate like members of the House of Representatives.... People in the House have to stay loyal to their party, vote along party lines, hell the only way they get elected is if they convince voters that they will be faithful to their own party. The House isnt a free-for-all system where anyone can vote however they want, people stay within party lines and party platforms, and the amount of gridlock we have in the House highly suggests that more members added to both sides would just continue such gridlock. http://outpost2012.net...http://www.usnews.com...Adding more members to a dysfunctional system doesnt fix the problem, it just makes it worse. Also the House doesnt operate like DDO does, and to assume that it does is simply ridiculous to claim."More Reps in Congress would give Americans the ability to achieve better outcomes in the House by having more Congressmen voting on issues"More voting doesnt equal less gridlock though, there are only two ways you can vote on a bill in the House, yes or no, and party politics is the driving force behind how someone votes. If you add more people to both sides then half of those new people will being saying yes, the other half will say no, and then you'll be right back to square one. "More Representatives would bring more voices to the legislative process. Con has not provided evidence to dispute this."Ive shown how gridlocked Congress is, has been, and will continue to be in the near future, and how adding more people wont change anything. "Con talked about campaigning for Senate when this debate discusses the House of Representatives, a different legislative body"You were the one who brought up the approval ratings of Congress, the Senate is part of Congress and Senators serve the exact same role as Representatives, just on a larger scale. All you did was try to chicken out of the argument by using semantical arguments rather then give a half decent response. ==========================================================================List of dropped arguments:1 - Pro completely ignored the fact that the dominant and controlling party in the House grew less diverse from last election2 - Pro tries to use semantics to avoid the fact that more representatives wont give Congress better approval ratings since Americans like their own representatives and Senators but dont approve of others in Congress. 3 - Pro drops that the reason incumbents win re-election so much is because of non-money based advantages they have available to them4 - Pro tries to use semantics to dance around the fact that more representatives would have no impact on the outcome of the electoral college since electoral votes are added proportionately to all states, meaning there would be no change in percentage overall. 5 - Pro flat puts words in my mouth that I clearly didnt say and then has the nerve to accuse me of overwhelming him with arguments that he ended up responding to with semantics anyways. 6 - Pro drops the fact that adding more members to the house wont change the electoral count at all unless all states resort to using proportional representation, which is something only done in 2 states. I look forward to the Pro actually give straightforward responses to my arguments, not put words in my mouth, try to not use semantics as his entire arguments, actually provide sources for his own unsubstantiated points, and actually read the sources Ive already given that support my arguments....