I was just browsing around the CIA Factbook and came up with some interesting numbers. lets see how this comes out:
| Country | Population | Xcameral | #of Rep in commons | K Pop/Rep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland | 4,015,676 | Bi | 166 | 24 |
| Isreal | 6,276,883 | Uni | 120 | 52 |
| Italy | 58,103,033 | Bi | 630 | 92 |
| UK | 60,441,457 | Bi | 646 | 94 |
| France | 60,656,178 | Bi | 577 | 105 |
| Canada | 32,805,041 | Bi | 308 | 107 |
| South Africa | 44,344,136 | Bi | 400 | 111 |
| Australia | 20,090,437 | Bi | 150 | 134 |
| Germany | 82,431,390 | Bi | 613 | 134 |
| Mexico | 106,202,903 | Bi | 500 | 212 |
| Japan | 127,417,244 | Bi | 480 | 265 |
| Russia | 143,420,309 | Bi | 450 | 319 |
| Brazil | 186,112,794 | Bi | 513 | 363 |
| Euro Union | 456,953,258 | Bi | 732 | 624 |
| United States | 295,734,134 | Bi | 435 | 680 |
| India | 1,080,264,388 | Bi | 545 | 1982 |
The Population Numbers are July 2005 estimates. X Cameral refers to how many legislative bodies there are. And I used the number of seats in the lower house for the overall representative number. and the final column notes how many citizens each representative represents, in thousands.
Interesting to note that Russia, that hotbed of democracy, has fewer citizens per representive than the US. Indeed, all but India have a more representative democracy than the US. And with India pushing 2 million citizens per representative, I don’t know if they will last much longer, as a democracy.
I threw the European Union in just to see what their numbers look like. The CIA reports that the Euro Parliament doesn’t make the major decisions; that’s for the Council and it is something different.
Once again, I call to make the US a more representative democracy, and bring us the the point where we have at least 1 representative for every 100,000 citizens.