Apportionment II

 I'm A Loser

I'm a loser
And I lost someone who's near to me.
I'm A loser
And I'm not what I appear to be

There is a way to apportion congressional seats such that no state is a loser.

The Founding Fathers carefully drafted the US Constitution to prevent a Tyranny of Majority.  They did not want a majority to control the government such that the values of that majority could be imposed on a minority.  To this end they carefully split powers among three branches of government and required certain actions to only be possible by a super majority of the voters: 3/4 of the states to amend the constitution, 2/3 vote of Congress to override an executive veto, 2/3 vote of the Senate to enter into a treaty, etc.  The Bill of Rights were amendments to the Constitution to ensure that the majority could never remove those rights.  The Framers of the Constitution would be disappointed if an apportionment resulted in a Tyranny of a Minority.

The number of seats in the House of Representatives was not capped at 435 in the Constitution.  The only requirement in the Constitution is that each state have at least one seat in the House of Representatives.  The capping of the number of seats at 435,  the method of apportionment, and the making it automatic, are due to acts of Congress.  Congress set the current cap at 435 in 1911 (in anticipation of the admission of New Mexico and Arizona as states) and there was a temporary increase to 437 when Alaska and Hawaii became states prior to the 1960 Census.  Congress made the process automatic in 1941.  It is the cap of 435, the requirement that each state have at least one seat, and an integer number of seats per state that results in the current situation of winners and losers.  If the cap did not exist, a simple way to apportion seats to meet the at least one representative per state constitutional mandate would be to allocate seats according to the “Wyoming” rule, so named because the seats would be allocated based on the  population of each state divided by the population of the least populous state, currently Wyoming.  On this basis California would have 68.54 representatives to Wyoming’s one representative, because the population of California in 2020 was 68.54 times the population of Wyoming.  This does require fractional seats and a total of 573.39 seats for the United States.  If the fractional seats were converted to integers, using conventional rounding rules, this would mean that California would receive 69 seats and the total would be 573.  This number does exceed the 435-seat cap on the number of seats.  However the vote per seat does not have to be equal to one.  There is a precedent in the Constitution for fractional amounts. Each of the previously enslaved population was counted as 3/5 of a person for purposes of apportionment.  It the number of seats is reduced from 573.39 to 435 and each seat was given 1.32 votes, four states, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming, would have less than one seat.

It is therefore proposed that the current number of representatives, which totals 435, be retained but that the voting power of each representative be the seats allocated by the Wyoming rule divided by the current allocation of seats.  In this case it retains the constitutional mandate of one representative per state, a cap of 435, and there is a whole number of representatives per state.  However the voting power of those representatives would change such that each of California’s current 53 representatives would have a vote of 1.29, which is 68.54 divided by 53, while Wyoming’s one representative would have 1 vote.  This would recognize that the most populous state should have the voting power that is a multiple of its population to the least populous state. No state would ever lose a seat, but states would gain voting power as their population increased. It is suggested that the size of the electoral college should also be adjusted, by law or amendment, to recognize this change.  There would be no losers, but the current voting power of the least populous states would be adjusted proportionally.  Then the apportionment of seats would not be biased toward the least populous states, which can be considered to be a Tyranny of the Minority of those least populous states.

State	2020 Population	Seats by Wyoming Rule	Integer seats by Wyoming Rule	Current seats	Proposed votes per current seat
California	39,538,223	68.541483	69	53	1.2932
Texas	29,145,505	50.525188	51	36	1.4035
Florida	21,538,187	37.337522	37	27	1.3829
New York	20,201,249	35.019873	35	27	1.2970
Pennsylvania	13,002,700	22.540829	23	18	1.2523
Illinois	12,812,508	22.211122	22	18	1.2340
Ohio	11,799,448	20.454932	20	16	1.2784
Georgia	10,711,908	18.569627	19	14	1.3264
North Carolina	10,439,388	18.097200	18	13	1.3921
Michigan	10,077,331	17.469556	17	14	1.2478
New Jersey	9,288,994	16.102935	16	12	1.3419
Virginia	8,631,393	14.962951	15	11	1.3603
Washington	7,705,281	13.357489	13	10	1.3357
Arizona	7,151,502	12.397486	12	9	1.3775
Massachusetts	7,029,917	12.186712	12	9	1.3541
Tennessee	6,910,840	11.980286	12	9	1.3311
Indiana	6,785,528	11.763051	12	9	1.3070
Maryland	6,177,224	10.708526	11	8	1.3386
Missouri	6,154,913	10.669849	11	8	1.3337
Wisconsin	5,893,718	10.217054	10	8	1.2771
Colorado	5,773,714	10.009021	10	7	1.4299
Minnesota	5,706,494	9.8924922	10	8	1.2366
South Carolina	5,118,425	8.8730452	9	7	1.2676
Alabama	5,024,279	8.7098384	9	7	1.2443
Louisiana	4,657,757	8.0744542	8	6	1.3457
Kentucky	4,505,836	7.8110916	8	6	1.3018
Oregon	4,237,256	7.3454948	7	5	1.4691
Oklahoma	3,959,353	6.8637360	7	5	1.3727
Connecticut	3,605,944	6.2510839	6	5	1.2502
Utah	3,271,616	5.6715096	6	4	1.4179
Iowa	3,190,369	5.5306639	6	4	1.3827
Nevada	3,104,614	5.3820033	5	4	1.3455
Arkansas	3,011,524	5.2206272	5	4	1.3052
Mississippi	2,961,279	5.1335249	5	4	1.2834
Kansas	2,937,880	5.0929616	5	4	1.2732
New Mexico	2,117,522	3.6708301	4	3	1.2236
Nebraska	1,961,504	3.4003651	3	3	1.1335
Idaho	1,839,106	3.1881820	3	2	1.5941
West Virginia	1,793,716	3.1094962	3	3	1.0365
Hawaii	1,455,271	2.5227849	3	2	1.2614
New Hampshire	1,377,529	2.3880153	2	2	1.1940
Maine	1,362,359	2.3617173	2	2	1.1809
Rhode Island	1,097,379	1.9023613	2	2	0.9512
Montana	1,084,225	1.8795582	2	1	1.8796
Delaware	989,948	1.7161243	2	1	1.7161
South Dakota	886,667	1.5370815	2	1	1.5371
North Dakota	779,094	1.3505983	1	1	1.3506
Alaska	733,391	1.2713699	1	1	1.2714
Vermont	643,077	1.1148061	1	1	1.1148
Wyoming	576,851	1.0000000	1	1	1.0000
Total/Avg	330,759,736	573.3885093	573	435	1.3181