More fundamentally, the arguments for reduced size are somewhat specious. The minor savings in salaries and expenses for the legislators is more than offset by the reduction in democratic values. The smaller the House, the less voice each constituent has, and the more voice that each member has. The extreme of the argument for smaller size would be to have a House of one member. Some critics of the present system argue that after cumulative voting was eliminated that very system is what we got because the House really is too strongly dominated by the Speaker.
Pluralism implies a large number of legislators.
The real reason people backed the Cutback Amendment, which abolished cumulative voting, had little to do with cumulative voting itself. As in the case of most big changes in the political system, the people were responding to a great deal of unhappiness with the legislature as it had been performing. The legislature had voted itself a pay raise in the period immediately after the 1978 election. Pay raises are always unpopular, and when they are enacted by a lame duck legislative body, they are perceived to be sneaky. It was easy to capitalize on that unhappiness and to blame cumulative voting.