Tomorrow the Census Bureau will release the population table for the resident population of the states for the 2010 U.S. Census. From this data, the apportionment of Representatives "among the several States which may be included within this Union" can be calculated. It is the directive of the Constitution in Article I, Section 2 that "Representatives [...] shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers." The table being unveiled tomorrow, once transmitted to the new Congress by the President in accordance with 2 U.S.C. §2a early next year, will serve as the basis for doling out Representatives to the states for the next ten years.
In decades past, this process was very difficult and fraught with controversy over a number of different factors, particularly the size of the House and the mathematical method of aportioning the seats "according to their respective Numbers." However, since the 1940 Census, this process become more automatic. The size of the House has remained fix at 435 seats since the 1910 census and the method of apportionment has been fixed since the 1940 census with both the size and method automatically renewing for each subsequent census unless modified by Congress.
A Brief History of the Methods used in the past
I'll spare you an explaination of the math on the three prior methods and stick to a brief historical background.
The first method used to apportion the Congress was proposed by Thomas Jefferson (and hence known as the Jefferson Method). It was put forth after George Washington vetoed an apportionment bill sent to him by Congress that would have violated a constitutionally mandated quota of atleast 30,000 persons per Representative. Washington's veto of the bill was the first Presidential veto in American history. Jefferson was the one who pointed out Congress' error, but his ulterior motive was that the method of apportionment Congress had proposed in the bill (known as the Hamilton Method after its proponent Alexander Hamilton) was unfavorable to large states such as Virginia. The Jefferson Method mathematically favored larger states.
The Jefferson Method prevailed as the method used for the next four apportionments. In 1840, it was changed to a method proposed by Daniel Webster (the Webster Method). In 1850 however, supporters of the method originally proposed by Alexander Hamilton worked to install the Hamilton Method into law over the Webster Method, an argument that was only settled when the Census statistician foud a size of the House for which both methods reached the same result. The Hamilton Method however was the method codifed. The 1860 and 1870 approtionments were also calculated by the Hamilton Method, however a later haphazard modification of the 1870 approtionment violated all three previously used methods (Jefferson, Hamilton & Webster) and had enourmous ramifications on American history in the 1876 election. If any of the three methods had been faithfully followed, Samuel Tilden was elected President in 1876 (with a margin of 1 to 3 votes depending upon method used). Instead, after heated battles over disputed returns in several states, Rutherford Hayes was declared winner of the electoral college by a single vote.
Battles in Congress over the 1880 and 1890 approtionments were once again only settled by the Census Bureau finding a size of the House for which the Hamilton and Webster Methods would agree. After several paradoxes were discovered to exist with the Hamilton Method, support for its use eroded and by the 1900 Census, the Webster Method was adopted and used again in 1910. In 1920, Congress failed to pass an apportionment act as rural member of Congress blocked the legislation to prevent the fast growing urban areas of the U.S. from gaining clout. In 1930, a new method proposed by the Census Bureau's chief statistician Joseph Hill and Harvard Professor of Methematics Edward Huntington was adopted and in 1940 Congress formalized their Method of Equal Proportions as the method to be used automatically unless modified by Congress.
The Method of Equal Proportions
The method of apportionment that will be applied to numbers released tomorrow will by the Method of Equal Proportions. The way it works is that each state's potential seat in Congress has a priority number computed based upon the state's population and the number of the seat. The priority of a state's subsequent seats decreases, i.e. the priority number for California's 3rd seat is lower than its 2nd seat, etc. After each state has been given one Representative to fulfill the Constitutional requirement that each state have at least one seat, the remaining 385 seats are assigned by sorting the priority list. The priority number for a state's specific seat is calculated by dividing the state's population by the geometric mean of the seat number and the previous seat number. The geometric mean of two numbers is the square root of their product.
Thus, if a State's population is P and we are computing the priority number for their fourth seat, the priority number would be P / sqrt( 4 * 3 ).
For example, in the 2000 Census, here is a look at the cut off area for the table of seats to Congress:
Seat | State | State Seat | State Population | Seat Priority |
432 | Florida | 25 | 16,028,890 | 654,377 |
433 | Ohio | 18 | 11,374,540 | 650,239 |
434 | California | 53 | 33,930,798 | 646,330 |
435 | North Carolina | 13 | 8,067,673 | 645,931 |
436 | Utah | 4 | 2,236,714 | 645,684 |
437 | New York | 30 | 19,004,973 | 644,329 |
438 | Texas | 33 | 20,903,994 | 643,276 |
If you will recall, after the 2000 Census, Utah complained that the exclusion of its citizens away on religious missionary trips from its Resident Population count for 1 April 2000 depreived it of an additional seat in favor of North Carolina. Utah needed only 856 more persons for the priority number of Utah's 4th seat to exceed the priority of North Carolina's 13th seat. Utah subsequently filed a lawsuit over the Census Bureau's policy of imputation (claiming it to be tantamount to illegal sampling like an opinion poll) but the policy was upheld by the Supreme Court.
What the 2010 Numbers are Likely to Show
If estimates are correct, 18 states will see a change in the number of Representatives they send to Washington. The big winner will ne my native Texas, expected to gain 4 seats in the House. Florida is likely to see an increase of two seats while Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington State will each likely gain one seat. Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are all expected to lose a seat while New York and Ohio will likely see their delegations reduced by two seats.
Already the media is spinning stories of doom for Democrats because of a net increase in seats for states carried by John McCain in 2008 and the fact that Republicans were swept into control in more state houses in the 2010 midterm elections. But this is overstating matters considerably. One Huffington Post article debunks some of the AP story mentioned above.
First not all states' redistricting is handles by the legislature. More and more states are opting for nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw the lines to more accurately reflect communities of interest instead of manufactured districts that exists sole for the benefit of one party over the other. Second, even in states where the legislature does control the redistricting process, there are factors that will limit their ability to gerrymander the lines.
One of those factors has something to do with the Dept of Justice. What distinguishes the 2011 DOJ from the DOJ in say 2001, 1991, 1981 and 1971? What do the four previous reapportionments have in common that is not in place today? The answer is that for the first time since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Attorney General of the United States is an appointee of a Democratic President. In previous redistrictings under the VRA, Republicans have controlled a process known as pre-clearance, a procedure by which nine states (mostly in the south save Alaska and Arizona) must get their proposed redistricting maps approved by the DOJ before they can take affect. Additionally, five other states have counties for which the same procedure applies.
Under the VRA, changes in voting procedures, including district lines, cannot have the affect of discriminating on the basis of race or color or against any language minority group. This will limit several of the states whose delegation size will change from adversely affecting minority populations which tend to be the groups growing the fastest. In Texas, that likely means at least two and probably three of the four additional seats will have to be minority majority districts and likely pick ups for Democrats in a deep red but trending purple state.
My Opinion that the House Should be Increased in size
Two years ago in a diary here on Daily Kos I made the case that the size of the House of Representatives should be increased. The U.S. has one of the smallest lower chambers of the major Western Democracies and one of the absolute worsts in Population per Representative ratios.
Here is the relevant excerpt from that diary:
From the beginning of this country until 1910, the size of the House was, for the most part, increased in each apportionment to atleast partially keep up with increases in population and prevent existing states from losing representatives as newer states were added. However since 1910, the size of the House has remained fixed at 435 members. In the intervening time, the population of the United States has more than tripled, having a deteriorative effect on the ratio of population per representative. As more and more people are served by a single person, the ability of that person to in a sense be connected with his or her constituents diminishes. For a comparison, here is a look at the ratio over time:
The Least Square Regression slope of the pre-1910 part of the graph is 1570. The post-1910 slope is 5525! Maintaining a fixed House size has exploded the disparity as the population has increased.
Increasing the size of the House would help ameliorate this situation some, though the days when most people could know their member of Congress have probably long passed. Compared to most other large countries, including those democratic allies with whom the U.S. shares a sacred bond, the U.S. is woefully undemocratic in terms of how many people our Representatives represent. For comparison here is a look at other nation's ratio of population per elected representative in the lower chamber of their legislative body.
Only India has a worse ratio (and far worse at that) and we are just marginally better than Pakistan (though Pakistan's ratio is somewhat higher in the chart as I excluded seats not up for general election as about 70 are reserve for women and non-Muslims). Our allies in Europe, Canada and Australia has ratios one fifth or less that of the U.S. Granted, the U.S. is substantially more populous, however other large nations like China, Indonesia and Brazil have better ratios with large populations.
One idea that has been bounced around has been to index the size of the House to the size of the smallest state, the so called Wyoming Rule. Under the Constitution, each state is guaranteed at least one representative. In the last Apportionment, it was only because of this rule that Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming have a Representative and North Dakota barely made the cut coming in with the 434th seat if the rule weren't in place. If such a rule were in place for the 2000 reapportionment, the House would have been 570 members.
As I pointed out elsewhere in the diary having more members of the House has some benefits. It is more likely that minority and underrepresented populations will be able to elect members of Congress (ie. more African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTs, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, etc). Having more members also makes it more difficult for big business to buy off Congress. Right now with 435, they have to buy 218 to have a majority. with 570 members, it'd take 286. Dividing $X by 268 instead of 218 means less "influence" per member. It also reduces the impact of the U.S. Senate upon the electoral college, increasing the chances that the electoral college winner will be the winner of the popular vote, and unlike eliminating the Senate, increasing the size of the house merely requires amending the Reapportionment Act of 1929 (Public Law 62-5).