Forum: Snohomish County has outgrown its share of Congress
Published 1:30 am Saturday, October 24, 2026
The 2020 census counted about 828,000 people in Snohomish County. That is more than live in the average Washington congressional district. Yet the county has no member of Congress to call wholly its own. It is divided among districts it shares with neighbors, and its voice in the House is divided with them.
That is not the fault of anyone in Olympia. It is the result of a decision Congress made in 1929, when it froze the House of Representatives at 435 seats, the number set after the 1910 census. The country has more than tripled in size since then, and Snohomish County has grown faster than most of it. Washington has 10 members of the House today, each speaking for about 770,000 people.
I have practiced law in this state for more than fifty years. This month, at 89, I published my sixth book, The Fourth Branch: Some Civics Lessons. Its argument is that registered voters, together with citizens who serve on juries, in the armed services and in the civil service, form a fourth branch of government. Snohomish County has a large share of that branch: the sailors of Naval Station Everett, the public servants who keep our cities and county running, and the neighbors called to jury duty in Everett every week.
Washington’s Constitution says it plainly in its first section: “All political power is inherent in the people.” But power needs a place to stand. When one member of Congress must answer to three-quarters of a million constituents, ordinary citizens are easily crowded out by those who can afford to be heard.
The 435-seat cap is an ordinary statute, not part of the Constitution, and Congress can change it. If the least populous state, Wyoming, set the size of a district, the House would grow with every census, and Washington would be entitled to 13 members instead of 10. A fast-growing county like this one could have a representative who knows Marysville, Lynnwood, Snohomish and the Stillaguamish valley as communities rather than as precincts on a map.
The same neglect reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, which has had nine seats since 1837, apart from brief changes around the Civil War. It now decides fewer than half the argued cases it decided in the 1980s, and more of its rulings arrive as unexplained emergency orders. Congress sets the Court’s size by statute too, and could enlarge it on a fixed schedule that neither party could time to its advantage.
These criticisms are not partisan. Both major parties have controlled Congress many times since 1929, and neither has lifted the cap. The loss falls on voters of every persuasion.
Ballots arrive in Snohomish County mailboxes in a couple of weeks. Before you mark yours, ask every candidate for Congress a plain question: Will you support a House that grows with the people it represents? You are not a spectator to your government. You are part of it.
Edward D. Campbell, J.D., is a retired Seattle attorney and author of “The Fourth Branch: Some Civics Lessons.” In 1954 he was elected Secretary of State at Missouri Boys State, sponsored by the American Legion.
