thumb|500px|[[Reapportionment|Allocation of congressional districts after the
2000 census.]]
United States congressional apportionment is the process by which seats in the
United States House of Representatives are redistributed amongst the 50
states following each
constitutionally mandated decennial
census. Each state is
apportioned a number of seats which approximately corresponds to its share of the aggregate population of the 50 states. However, every state is constitutionally guaranteed at least one seat.
Reapportionment
The number of seats in the House of Representatives is currently set to 435, and has been since 1913, except for temporary increase to 437 after the admission of Alaska and Hawaii. Though the actual reapportionment will normally occur in respect of a decennial census, the law that governs the total number of representatives and the method of apportionment to be carried into force at that time can be created prior to the census.
The decennial apportionment also determines the size of each state's representation in the
U.S. Electoral College—that is, any state's number of electors equals the size of its total congressional delegation (i.e., House seat(s) plus Senate seats).
Federal law requires the
Clerk of the House of Representatives to notify each state government of its entitled number of seats no later than January 25 of the year immediately following the census. After seats have been reapportioned, each state determines the boundaries of
congressional districts—geographical areas within the state of approximately equal population—in a process called
redistricting.
Constitutional text
The subject of representation is addressed twice in the
Constitution. Originally, the apportionment of
House seats was commanded by
Article I, Section 2, clause 3, which states:
Following the end of the
Civil War, the above provision was superseded by Section 2 of the
Fourteenth Amendment, which states:
Article I additionally provides that:
House size
The size of the United States House of Representatives refers to total number of congressional districts (or seats) into which the land area of the United States proper has been divided. The number of voting representatives is currently set at 435. There are an additional five delegates to the House of Representatives. They represent the
District of Columbia and the territories of
American Samoa,
Guam, the
Northern Mariana Islands, which first elected a representative in 2008, and the
U.S. Virgin Islands.
Puerto Rico also elects a
resident commissioner every four years. Proposals have been made to add
voting representation for the District of Columbia, now represented only by a non-voting delegate (see below), who is not counted as one of the apportioned House representatives. Recent bills, such as the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007, would resolve the issue by permanently increasing House membership to 437. One of the new members would be from the District of Columbia; the other would be from the next state in line to receive another House seat (as described below), presently
Utah.
Controversy and history
During the period that the current U.S. Constitution has been in effect, the number of citizens per congressional district has risen from an average of 33,000 in 1790 to almost 700,000 . Prior to the 20th century, the number of representatives increased every decade as more states joined the union, and the population increased. In 1911,
Public Law 62-5 raised the membership of the U.S. House to 433 with a provision to add one permanent seat each upon the admissions of
Arizona and
New Mexico as states. As provided, membership increased to 435 in 1912.
But in 1921, Congress failed to reapportion the House membership as required by the United States Constitution. This failure to reapportion may have been politically motivated, as the
newly elected Republican majority may have feared the effect such a reapportionment would have on their future electoral prospects. Then in 1929 Congress passed the
Reapportionment Act of 1929 which capped the size of the House at 435.
left|thumb|400px|The U.S. population has increased more rapidly than the membership of the House of Represenatives.The current size of 435 seats means one member represents on average about 650,000 people; but exact representation per member varies by state. Four states –
Wyoming,
Vermont,
Alaska and
North Dakota – have populations smaller than the average for a single district.
The ideal number of members has been a contentious issue since the country's founding.
George Washington agreed that the original representation proposed in the Constitution
Constitutional Convention (one representative for every 40,000) was inadequate and supported an alteration to reduce that number to 30,000. This was the only time that Washington pronounced an opinion on any of the actual issues debated during the entire convention. In
Federalist No. 55,
James Madison addressed the claims that the representation will be inadequate and proposes that the major inadequacies are of minimal inconvenience since these will be cured rather quickly by virtue of decennial reapportionment. He noted, however, "I take for granted here what I shall, in answering the forth objection, hereinafter show, that the number of representatives will be augmented from time to time in the manner provided by the Constitution. On a contrary supposition, I should admit the objection to have very great weight indeed." He also argued against the assumption that more is better, "Sixty or seventy men may be more properly trusted with a given degree of power than six or seven. But it does not follow that six or seven hundred would be proportionably a better depositary. And if we carry on the supposition to six or seven thousand, the whole reasoning ought to be reversed. ... In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason."
The
first proposed amendment to the Constitution attempted to set a pattern for growth of the House along with the population, but was never ratified. There has been debate over why the amendment was altered by a joint House and Senate subcommittee to .
Apportionment methods
Apart from the fact that the number of delegates is at least one for each state, as required by the Constitution, a state's number of representatives is in principle proportional to population thus assuring reasonably consistent representation to the people regardless of the state boundaries and populations. Though no method of calculating a fair distribution of voting power across the various states is possible because of the size of current electoral districts, five distinct apportionment methods have been used since the adoption of the
Constitution, all of them susceptible to
mathematical paradoxes.
The Method of Equal Proportions
The apportionment methodology currently used is the "Method of Equal Proportions", so called because it guarantees that no additional transfer of a seat (from one state to another) will reduce the ratio between the numbers of persons per Representative in any two states. According to , the method of equal proportions minimizes the percentage differences in the size of the congressional districts
In this method, as a first step, each of the 50 states is initially guaranteed at least one seat in the House of Representatives, leaving the remaining 385 seats to assign.
The remaining seats are allocated one at a time, to the state that "deserves" the next assigned seat the most. Thus, the 51
st seat would go to the most populous state (currently California). The measure of how much a state "deserves" the next allocatable seat is determined by a priority formula that is mathematically computed to be the ratio of the state population to the
geometric mean of the number of seats it currently holds in the assignment process,
n (initially 1), and the number of seats it
would hold
if the seat were assigned to it,
n+1. For instance, in the example above, California has already received a second seat and thus "deserves" another seat some measure less than it had before the second seat was assigned.
The formula for determining the priority of a state to be apportioned the next available seat defined by the method of equal proportions is
where
P is the population of the state, and
n is the number of seats it currently holds before the possible allocation of the next seat. An equivalent, recursive definition is
where
n is still the number of seats the state has before allocation of the next, and for
n = 1, the initial
A1 is explicitly defined as
Consider the reapportionment following the 2000 U.S. Census. Beginning with all states initially being allocated one seat, the largest value of
A1 corresponds to the largest state, California, which is allocated seat 51. But after being allocated its 2
nd seat, its priority value decreases to its
A2 value which is reordered to a position back in line. The 52
nd seat goes to Texas, the 2
nd largest state, because its
A1 priority value is larger than the
An of any other state. However, the 53
rd goes back to California because its
A2 priority value is larger than the
An of any other state. The 54
th seat goes to New York because its
A1 priority value is larger than the
An of any other state at this point. This process continues until all 435 seats have assigned (in 2000, just after the 13
th seat for North Carolina was allocated, much to the chagrin of state officials in Utah). Each time a state is assigned a seat,
n is incremented by 1, causing its priority value to be reduced and reordered among the states when normally another state rises to the top of the list.
The Census 2000 Ranking of Priority Values shows the order in which seats 51–435 were apportioned after the 2000 Census, with additional listings for the next five priorities.
North Carolina was allocated the final (435
th) seat.
Utah (priority list 436) missed a fourth seat by only 857 residents. Legal action by Utah to amend the results, citing irregularities in the North Carolina count and undercounting of Utah's overseas missionary population (suggested to be as many as 14,000), was unsuccessful. The proposed Voting Rights Act of 2007 would have granted Utah a fourth seat, as well as a voting Representative to the District of Columbia, had it passed.
Past apportionments
Projected changes following the 2010 census
The
U.S. Census Bureau will conduct a comprehensive
census in April 2010. Based on the populations counted in each state, the
United States Congress will be reapportioned based on the Equal Proportions Method defined above. The total number of voting representatives is expected to remain at 435, assuming no legislation passes that would modify the apportionment process. Since the Census Bureau releases population estimates every year, projections have been made that predict the states' populations as of April 2010.
One study estimates that fourteen seats would shift between the states as follows:
Other possible changes include California losing a seat, and North Carolina gaining one.
[ In addition, Florida may gain only one seat, rather than two, and Oregon may gain a seat.]
The 10-year national growth rate is 12.5%. In this estimate, the population of states losing seats grew at a slower rate and the population of states gaining seats grew at a faster pace. Louisiana is the only state losing a seat that is estimated to have lost population between 2000 and 2010, significantly due to the exodus precipitated by the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. The losing states are in the industrial northeast and midwest, while gainers are in the southeast, southwest and Pacific northwest.Past increases
The size of the U.S. House has increased as follows:1789-1800
1801-1820
1821-1840
1841-1860
1861-1880
1881-1900
1901-present
Proposed expansion
Expansion would cause the United States Electoral College result to more closely reflect the national popular vote, as the number of Representatives would begin to dwarf the number of Senators, which is fixed at two per state. The Wyoming Rule, an idea with some contemporary currency, calls for expanding the House until the standard Representative-to-population ratio equals that of the smallest entitled unit (i.e., Wyoming). This proposal is primarily designed to address the fact that some House districts are currently nearly twice the size of others; for instance, there are about 944,000 residents in Montana's single district, compared to about 515,000 in Wyoming's. See List of U.S. states by population.
On May 21, 2001, Rep. Alcee Hastings sent a dear colleague letter pointing out that U.S. expansion of its legislature had not kept pace with other countries.
In 2007, the Utah delegation asked Congress to pass a bill that would add two seats to the House of Representatives, one for Utah and one for the District of Columbia. A bill doing so passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. In 2009, the bill passed the Senate, but has not been voted on in the House because of an unrelated amendment. President Obama has said he would sign it. Should full representation of DC be found constitutional by the courts, the number of Representatives in the House would expand by two.See also
