Apportionment Article 1, Section 2 of the United States constitution requires the federal government to conduct a census of its population every ten years for the purpose of apportioning U. House of Representatives seats among the states. Each state is given a number of seats roughly equal to their population, with every state guaranteed at least one seat. Since the number of U. House seats is fixed at , a new apportionment results in some states gaining congressional seats and some states losing congressional seats.
Since all states today have single-member congressional districts, changing the number of seats a state has forces a state to redraw their districts. Balancing District Populations When districts have unequal populations, this is known as malapportionment. For example, persons living in a district with 1, persons would have ten times more representation than a district with 10, persons. In the , the U. Supreme Court made two landmark rulings, Wesberry v.
Sanders and Reynolds v. Sims , requiring congressional and state legislative districts to be redrawn in a timely manner following the census so that their populations would be roughly equal. Some states had failed to draw new districts for as many as sixty years, which had provided slow growing rural areas with more representation than fast growing urban areas. At the time of the so-called reapportionment revolution, balancing district populations was predicted to shift government policies towards those favored by urban interests and even to limit gerrymandering.
These rulings and many others effectively nullified state practices of apportioning their state legislative seats among their counties or towns; for example, providing every county one seat and apportioning the remainder among the larger population counties ironically, a process similar to the apportionment of congressional seats to the states.
Many states amended their constitutions to revise their redistricting processes, so that the federal courts would not nullify this section of their state constitution. How Often Can a State Redistrict? In , the nation was captivated by a group of Democratic Texas state legislators who fled the state to prevent Republicans from gerrymandering the state's congressional districts.
At stake was Democratic-favored redistricting plan adopted by a court for the congressional elections, adopted after the state legislature failed to enact a redistricting plan. Eventually, Democrats relented and returned to Texas and Republicans were able to put their map in place. Democrats later challenged the legality of drawing districts mid-decade, without a new census prompting the necessity of drawing new districts. Some states have prohibitions on mid-decade redistricting written into their constitutions, statutes, or their state courts have ruled the practice is illegal.
Texas is not one of these states, so the U. Supreme Court let the Texas districts stand, at least on these grounds a Voting Rights challenge to the Texas congressional plan was successful. Presumably, this means a state without a mid-decade prohibition can redistrict before each election if they so desired. How Do We Do Redistricting? Article 1, Section 4 of the U.
Constitution states, "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.
However, Congress is the ultimate authority, and may supersede state laws. Congress has exercised this authority, for example, to require single-member districts and to enhance racial and ethnic minority groups' representation. The federal courts have interpreted the federal constitution to require equal population districts.
This peculiar method, first adopted in , violates the principle of one person, one vote by systematically giving more representation to residents of small states than to residents of large states. Fortunately, the situation is easy to fix: a simpler formula, first proposed by Senator Daniel Webster in the s and currently used in other representative democracies, treats small and large states even-handedly.
Every ten years, a new census leads to a constitutionally mandated reapportionment of the House of Representatives. Inevitably, this process has major political consequences, and the census is no exception. The new apportionment will cost the Northeastern states ten seats and give a substantial boost to the political fortunes of the South and the Southwest, as shown in figure 1.
Unfortunately, the process that governs reapportionment is fundamentally flawed. Through a strange combination of historical accident and political and mathematical intrigue, Congress is presently saddled with one of the most peculiar apportionment methods used anywhere in the world.
Not only is it unnecessarily complex—involving square root formulas—it demonstrably favors small states at the expense of large states. Fortunately, there is an easy way to remedy the problem, as I will explain here.
A number of political factors have converged to make the issue of equal representation particularly potent this year. There was extensive debate in the executive and legislative branches leading up to the census about how to correct for errors that tend to undercount minorities.
Then there was the contested presidential election, which made Americans keenly aware that every vote really does count. Finally, there are questions of fairness in how district lines are being redrawn within the states. These issues have fed public concern that the right to equal representation is perhaps being compromised. Given these perceptions, Congress would do well to reform the inequitable process by which seats are distributed among the states in the first place.
Although Congress can take up this matter at any time, this seems like a particularly propitious moment, since it could correct a long-term problem in the system with no short-term political consequences, because no seats would shift this time around. How could such a seemingly straightforward problem turn into such a quagmire?
Grebner said the party in power — which has long been the Democrats — usually refrains from creating mayhem by pitting sitting elected officials against each other. Byrum said the current district configuration has commissioners each representing 20, people based on the census — up from 20, in A move to 11 commission seats would mean commissioners would be elected to represent 25, people.
The change would proportionately increase representation from Meridian Township to two seats, while reducing seats in Lansing through consolidation of all of south Lansing into a single commission seat. The increased size of the districts is also a concern for Grebner, a longtime political consultant who makes his living mining voter lists to create targeted political campaign activity locally.
He said larger districts would make it more difficult for in-person political campaigns — meaning that candidates would be forced to spend more cash on mailers to reach a wider audience. For Byrum, the apportionment process is about democracy at its core.
Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope, also proposed a consolidation of precincts but it would not change the number of Council seats. The proposed changes would ultimately shift three neighborhoods into a different ward in order to put voters closer to a bigger polling place and reduce the difference in the number of voters between the four wards of the city, Swope said in a Facebook post on Monday afternoon. Additionally, city ward boundaries may change in the near future depending on the outcome of final census data in Lansing.
They surgically carved his house out of the district he had represented, and placed it in the district of his year colleague, Democrat Chip Woodrum. Rather than run against the hometown favorite in an unfamiliar district, Cranwell decided not to run for reelection.
Speaker Sheldon Silver was allegedly having an affair with a member of the Assembly, and apparently discovered that Burling was also having an affair, with the same representative. Despite circumstantial evidence produced in court, there have been some heated denials from the parties involved. When it came time for redistricting, the district Burling had represented was shifted substantially west, to include a popular up-and-coming Republican mayor; Burling retired rather than face the primary challenge.
Four years later, Silver was convicted on federal corruption charges. Though Obama lost, his campaign set the stage for a stronger showing in a potential rematch. When Illinois redrew its districts, the state legislators deferred to incumbent members of Congress, including the incumbent whom Obama challenged.
Obama would have been forced to sell his home and move in order to live in the district where he had run 2 years before. North Carolina is a deeply divided purple state: in , the Presidential race split ; in , it split ; in , it split In Maryland in , Democrats aimed in the opposite direction.
After Democrats controlled Texas redistricting in the s, Republicans took charge in
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