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 |
