Source: https://wiki2.org/en/United_States_Congressional_apportionment
Timestamp: 2020-07-02 23:43:51
Document Index: 516798

Matched Legal Cases: ['§\u20052', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2']

6 Changes following the 2010 censuses
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at least one Representative;…
Federal law requires the Clerk of the House of Representatives to notify each state government no later than January 25 of the year immediately following the census of the number of seats to which it is entitled. Whether or not the number of seats has changed, the state determines the boundaries of congressional districts—geographical areas within the state of approximately equal population—in a process called redistricting.[5]
The size of the U.S. 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,[6] and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico also elects a resident commissioner every four years.
1793 1790 Census 34,436
1803 1800 Census 34,609
1813 1810 Census 36,377
1823 1820 Census 42,124
1833 1830 Census 49,712
1843 1840 Census 71,338
1853 1850 Census 93,020
1863 1860 Census 122,614
1873 1870 Census 130,533
1883 1880 Census 151,912
1893 1890 Census 173,901
1903 1900 Census 193,167
1913 1910 Census 210,583
1923 1920 Census 243,728
1933 1930 Census 280,675
1943 1940 Census 301,164
1953 1950 Census 334,587
1963 1960 Census 410,481
1973 1970 Census 469,088
1983 1980 Census 510,818
1993 1990 Census 571,477
2003 2000 Census 646,946
2013 2010 Census 709,760
The ideal number of members has been a contentious issue since the country's founding. George Washington agreed that the original representation proposed during the Constitutional Convention (one representative for every 40,000) was inadequate and supported an alteration to reduce that number to 30,000.[7] This was the only time that Washington pronounced an opinion on any of the actual issues debated during the entire convention.[8]
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.[10][11] A reapportionment in 1921 in the traditional fashion would have increased the size of the House to 483 seats, but many members would have lost their seats due to the population shifts, and the House chamber did not have adequate seats for 483 members. By 1929, no reapportionment had been made since 1911, and there was vast representational inequity, measured by the average district size. By 1929 some states had districts twice as large as others due to population growth and demographic shift.[12]
In 1929 Congress (with Republican control of both houses of Congress and the presidency) passed the Reapportionment Act of 1929 which capped the size of the House at 435 (the then current number) and established a permanent method for apportioning a constant 435 seats. This cap has remained unchanged since then, except for a temporary increase to 437 members upon the 1959 admission of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union.[13]
Three states – Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota – have populations smaller than the average for a single district, although none of those states have fewer people than the least populous congressional districts (as of the 2010 census, Rhode Island's two districts). As of May 2016, there is approximately one representative for every 720,000 people in the country.
Another proposed expansion rule, the Cube Root rule,[15] calls for the membership of the legislature to be based on the cube root (rounded up) of the U.S. population at the last census; this can be split between the House and the Senate, if desired. For example, such a rule would call for 676 members of the legislature based on the 2010 United States Census; this could be 676 members of House, 576 (676 - 100 Senators), or 575 (676 - 100 Senators - 1 Vice President). An additional House member would be added each time the national population exceeds the next cube; in this case, the next House member would be added when the census population reached 308,915,777, and the one after that at 310,288,734.
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.[16]
In 2007, during the 110th Congress, Representative Tom Davis introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would add two seats to the House, one for Utah and one for the District of Columbia. It was passed by the House, but was tripped up by procedural hurdles in the Senate and withdrawn from consideration. An identical bill was reintroduced during the 111th Congress. In February 2009 the Senate adopted the measure 61-37. In April 2010, however, House leaders decided to shelve the proposal.[17]
The first apportionment was contained in Art. I, § 2, cl. 3 of the Constitution. After the first Census in 1790, Congress passed the Apportionment Act of 1792 and adopted the Jefferson method to apportion U.S. Representatives to the states based on population.[18] The Jefferson method required fractional remainders to be discarded when calculating each state's total number of U.S. Representatives and was used until the 1830 census.[19][20][21][22] The Webster method, proposed in 1832 by Daniel Webster and adopted for the 1840 Census, allocated an additional Representative to states with a fractional remainder greater than 0.5.[23] The Hamilton/Vinton (largest remainder) method was used from 1850[24][25][26][27][28][29] until 1900. The Vinton or Hamilton method was shown to be susceptible to an apportionment paradox.[30] The Apportionment Act of 1911, in addition to setting the number of U.S. Representatives at 435, returned to the Webster method, which was used following the 1910 and 1930 censuses (no reapportionment was done after the 1920 census). The current method, known as the Huntington–Hill method or method of equal proportions, was adopted in 1941 for reapportionment based on the 1940 census and beyond.[1][31][32][33] The revised method was necessary in the context of the cap on the number of Representatives set in the Reapportionment Act of 1929.
The Census 2010 Ranking of Priority Values[36] shows the order in which seats 51–435 were apportioned after the 2010 Census, with additional listings for the next five priorities. Minnesota was allocated the final (435th) seat. North Carolina missed its 14th seat by 15,754 residents as the 436th seat to be allocated; ten years earlier it had gained its 13th seat as the 435th seat to be allocated based on the 2000 census.[37]
On December 21, 2010 the U.S. Census Bureau released its official apportionment results for congressional representation. The changes were in effect for the U.S. elections in 2012.[39]
The size of the U.S. House of Representatives has increased and decreased as follows[40]
2 U.S.C. § 2a Apportionment following the Eighteenth Census[d]
January 3, 1973 435 2 U.S.C. § 2a Apportionment following the Nineteenth Census
January 3, 1983 435 2 U.S.C. § 2a Apportionment following the Twentieth Census
January 3, 1993 435 2 U.S.C. § 2a Apportionment following the Twenty-First Census
January 3, 2003 435 2 U.S.C. § 2a Apportionment following the Twenty-Second Census
January 3, 2013 435 2 U.S.C. § 2a Apportionment following the Twenty-Third Census
^ The Reapportionment Act of 1929 stated that the "then existing number of Representatives" would be apportioned after each census, which would have dictated an apportionment of 437 seats, but the Alaska Statehood Act and Hawaii Admission Act explicitly stated that the new seats were temporary increases. Both acts included the phrasing "That such temporary increase in the membership shall not operate to either increase or decrease the permanent membership of the House of Representatives as prescribed in the Act of August 8, 1911 (37 Stat. 13) nor shall such temporary increase affect the basis of apportionment established by the Act of November 15, 1941 (55 Stat. 761; 2 U.S.C. § 2a), for the Eighty-third Congress and each Congress thereafter."[41]
^ Bush signs federalization bill Archived February 13, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, Agnes E. Donato, Saipan Tribune, May 10, 2008.
^ a b "The Federalist #55". constitution.org. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
^ "FairVote - Hastings Letter". web.archive.org. June 2, 2006. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
This page was last edited on 23 June 2020, at 21:27