Subject: Re: [EL] Apportionment and population
From: Rob Richie
Date: 12/21/2010, 12:15 PM
To: Mike Conlow <mconlow@gmail.com>, "election-law@mailman.lls.edu" <election-law@mailman.lls.edu>

Good numbers to see.

Montana must be frustrated that all those tourists visiting Glacier and Yellowstone can't count on any given day -- with just 11,000 more people, they get two seats, rather than only one seat despite having a population just shy of a million people (twice Wyoming's population, which also gets one seat).

Increasing the House by this number of 11 seats would mean: 1) no state house lose more than one seat; 2) Montana would get its reasonable number of two seats rather than one; 3) six states would lose seats rather than ten states; 4) we would avoid the risk of the presidential election being thrown into the House because of an Electoral College tie (as would have happened with a shift of fewer than 21,000 votes in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico in 2004).

You'd think more Members of Congress might want to say this is at least worth a conversation. House size changed every ten years up until 1910, when it grew by more than 40 seat from 1900. Since then, our population -- and thus our average House district population -- has more than tripled (and the average electorate has grown more than six times, given that women and more racial minorities can now vote). Hats off to Congressman Alcee Hastings for introducing legislation to create a commission to study this question and the question of whether we should consider multi-seat district systems with proportional voting.

Our timidity when it comes to being open to rethinking voting methods and structure lies in stark contrast to other nations -- the United Kingdom, for example, is in the final stages of passing legislation that will reduce its number of House of Commons seats from 650 to 600 (still far more than in the US House, of course) and establish a May 2011 national referendum on adoption of instant runoff voting ("the alternative vote") for electing the House of Commons.

- Rob Richie, FairVote



On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Mike Conlow <mconlow@gmail.com> wrote:
Here is a first look at which states missed seats, and by how much; and by how much states kept their last allocated seat.

Above 435 is population they would have needed to have to be in spot 435.  Below 435 is how much population they would have had to lose to be in spot 436.

 

Seat

State

Population

426

Texas

808,318

427

Pennsylvania

331,371

428

California

826,973

429

Georgia

161,785

430

South Carolina

50,722

431

Florida

113,952

432

Washington

26,608

433

Texas

99,183

434

California

117,877

435

Minnesota

8,738

436

North Carolina

15,753

437

Missouri

15,028

438

New York

107,057

439

New Jersey

63,276

440

Montana

10,002

441

Louisiana

48,858

442

Oregon

41,487

443

Ohio

144,928

444

Virginia

122,192

445

California

653,688

446

Illinois

270,086


(This is not for attribution to me.  If you are looking for someone to go on the record on this, email me off-list and I can recommend some people.)

Mike Conlow

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