Monday, May 3, 2021

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