Attached
is an Excel spreadsheet in which I compute the House
apportionments using the 2010 census and the 5 standard
apportionment methods. Some tidbits:
The Hill method
(the one currently enshrined in law) agrees with the
Hamilton/Vincent method for all of the states.
Webster's method
agrees with those except with respect to NC and RI: under
Webster NC would gain a seat and RI would lose one.
Poor Montana.
Montana is the only state whose challenge to the method of
apportionment made it to the Supreme Court (in Dep't of
Commerce v Montana (1992)) In that case they argued that
the Dean method should have been used which have led to
their getting one more representative at the expense of
Washington. They lost (although to some extent the
Court's reasoning rested on an egregious mathematical
blunder.) This year Montana would, again, have benefited
from using Dean's method, which rewards them an extra seat
at the expense of California.
Lastly, if one computes the gap between the
most over-represented district and the most
under-represented district (measured by the percent
deviation from the ideal district size), what the Court
refers to as "total deviation" then the Adams method is by
far the best, with a total deviation of 47% versus 65% of
the Hamilton/Hill apportionment.
Paul H Edelman
Vanderbilt
University
615-322-0990