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The Congressional Apportionment Amendment has been waiting on enough states to sign it for the past 220 years.
We'd just need 27 additional states to ratify the amendment -- heck, getting one state to ratify it in the modern era could kickstart the process, just like the 27th Amendment got kickstarted by Maine ratifying it.
I feel like for somewhere that's underrepresented like California it would be a positive thing, but I've not heard anything about state legislatures talking about it. Thoughts?
Are there any plans for this to be added to the game?
Context, I've been North Carolina governor, as a Democrat, for 2 terms, winning handily both times, by 16 points and 20 points respectively.
The balance of power in the state legislature has been exactly the same throughout, not a single seat has changed hands. Strong Republican majorities throughout, so I've got very little done.
I know this is realistic, NC is a pink state, and said republican legislature has drawn itself favourable districts, hence my question, is there scope for adding this dimension to the game, where:
A) congressional apportionment changes with population changes?
B) States redistrict based on whatever rules they have in place?
C) Based on the demographics, income, poverty levels etc states might drift in terms of partisan lean over time?
The US Census Bureau recently announced they would count overseas military personnel as residents of the bases from which they were deployed, rather than the states they listed as their home when they enlisted.
It doesn't seem like this would have a very big impact at first glance; there are only 150,000 people deployed overseas, and while four of the five most populous bases are located in "red" states, there are many bases scattered around "blue" states like CA, MD and VA. However, they wouldn't have made the change if it wasn't going to have material consequences.
Does anyone have any insight into the census or military deployments that could help shed some light on this? Are certain bases more often used as staging grounds for deployments?
Specifically, were new seats added or were seats, and by extension, congressional districts reworked?
There are currently 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Historically, this number used to increase as the population of the country grew. Since 1913, however, it has remained static (with the temporary exceptions of adding one Representative each for Alaska and Hawaii), despite the fact that the population of the US has grown from 92 million in 1910 to 310 million in in 2010.
In the early history of the US, one House Representative had an average of 34,000 constituents. That has grown to about 700,000 constituents per Representative. The smallest state is Wyoming, which has a population of 585,000. California, the largest state, has a population of 39 million.
Because of disparities in state populations affecting representation, some people have proposed changing the current rules limiting the House of Representatives to 435 members with what is called the Wyoming rule, which would set the "the standard representative-to-population ratio would be that of the smallest entitled unit, which is currently Wyoming."
You can check out the links to see how many seats each state would gain. Out of curiosity, I wonder how this would affect the party distribution in the House and the results of the 2016 election. (The number of electoral votes each state has is equal to the number of House Representatives and Senators each state can have.) I also assumed that the open Utah House seat goes to the Republicans.
Under the Wyoming rule, there would be 110 new House seats. I used two methods to figure out which parties would win those 110 seats. First, I apportioned each new seat according to the two-party Trump/Clinton vote. In this method, Alabama, with a gain of one seat, gains one more Republican. California, with a gain of 13 seats, gains 9 Democrats and 4 Republicans.
Results using first method:
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Republicans gain 55 seats.
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Democrats gain 55 seats.
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The Republican majority is slightly reduced from 55.4% to 54.3%.
A second method I used which I think is more likely is assuming that the new seats for each state would match the current Republican/Democrat ratio of the states' seats. For example, since Republicans have 59% of Florida seats currently, they would pick up 4 seats in Florida compared to 2 seats for the Democrats.
Results using second method:
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Republicans gain 61 seats.
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Democrats gain 49 seats.
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The Republic
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment was one of the proposed amendments for the bill of rights, which would have set the HoR size to one rep per 50,000 constituents. The amendment was sent to the states for ratification, but fell one state short, and no state has ratified it since 1792
As there was no sunset in the proposal, it can still be approved if ratified by the requisite number of states. 11 have ratified, 27 more would be required.
With the current population, the size of the house would be over 6000 under the terms of the amendment, which is completely nonviable. The current size of 435 was set by the Apportionment Act of 1911 and hasn't been changed in over a century.
Since it can still technically be ratified, could some larger states with complaints over disproportionate representation use the pending amendment to push the issue into a more prominent discussion? Could a few more states ratifying, or seriously considering it, be a catalyst to drive apportionment reform, even though the chance of hitting 38 states is slim to none, and implementation would be unrealistic anyway?
The plain text of the Amendment would cap district size at 1:50,000. However, the legislative history and drafting of the Amendment point to an open-ended reading; each time the size of the House increases by 100 members, max district size increases by 10,000. Which is the more common interpretation on this sub?
I've long been a fan of "Article the First" but have just discovered the sub, so I'm curious.
Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Al Green [D-TX9]
This bill is in the first stage of the legislative process. It was introduced into Congress on July 19, 2013. It will typically be considered by committee next.
According to 1 U.S. Code § 1:
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise—
the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
According to the 14th Amendment:
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.
Has this ever come up?
Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Jim Cooper [D-TN5]
This bill was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary which will consider it before sending it to the House floor for consideration.
Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Al Green [D-TX9]
This bill is in the first stage of the legislative process. It was introduced into Congress on July 19, 2013. It will typically be considered by committee next.
Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Zoe Lofgren [D-CA19]
This bill is in the first stage of the legislative process. It was introduced into Congress on July 19, 2013. It will typically be considered by committee next.
