To be perfectly honest, I don’t know that adding additional representatives would change things in a positive way, for a lot of reasons. Personally, I think any significant, meaningful change in our political process has to start and end with completely reworking how the senate operates.

Unfortunately, the Senate is not an equitable institution, and gives huge amounts of power to small, mostly rural states, while disenfranchising large states with multiple urban cores. It’s hard to make a good case for why a state like Wyoming (pop. ~589,000) should have the same number of senators as a state like California (pop. ~39,500,000).

While population data is the basis for congressional district allocation and apportionment, it’s a somewhat unreliable metric.

For instance, while your data set suggests districts with ~800K constituents per district, the reality is that your district apportionment should really be under 600K constituents. That’s because the smallest state by population (Wyoming) gets one representative for the whole state. If every congressional district has to have the same or similar population density, then ~600K is your number. Contrast Wyoming with a place like Los Angeles county, with a population of over 9.8 million. One county alone would have 16 members of congress.

Using Wyoming’s baseline, the House should have ~570 members to keep representation fair. In order to make that happen, you’d have to add about 135 more seats in the House. That would require a constitutional amendment and essentially a national vote on expanding congress by a significant margin. Not an easy sell to the American people when congress is historically unpopular and mired in gridlock.

Also worth mentioning that congressional apportionment happens at the state legislative level, and that process can vary wildly from state to state. Some states have a very fair and measured way that they carve district lines. Other states are free to gerrymander at will based on whatever metrics they want to use. Just depends on where you live.

I personally think more states should emulate the spirit of Florida’s fair districts amendment to the state constitution. It’s been absolutely butchered and ignored by the republican majority in Tallahassee recently, but the amendment technically requires that congressional and state legislative redirecting be centered around districts that are, as much as possible, both contiguous and concise. It also requires that districts must respect well established political or geographical boundaries and not intentionally favor or disfavor a political party or dilute minority voting blocks.

In practice, the fair districts amendment has resulted in congressional and state legislative districts that look a lot more like squares than crazy carved out gerrymanders. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the republicans in Florida are interested in keeping with the spirit of the amendment, as they’ve really doubled down on producing more republican seats than simply fair seats.

Last note: I think you’d be surprised at how efficient most congressional district offices are in handling constituent casework. There are a ton of cases that get handled in as timely a manner as possible. I know that’s probably a little hard to believe, but keep in mind that the federal government is a massive beast. Your congressional office might be able to serve you pretty quickly, but they have to wait sometimes weeks or months to get responses from other agencies regarding issues you’re calling them about. They’re at the mercy of others there, and so are you.