United States Congressional Apportionment

The membership of the United States House of Representatives changes each decade following the decennial United States Census. Each state receives a number of delegates to Congress based upon its population. In 1911, the membership of the U.S. House was set at 433; with the subsequent admission of Arizona and New Mexico as states, membership increased to 435, where it has remained (except for a brief period from 1959 to 1963 following the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, during which House membership was 437).

Table of contents

1 Apportionment Methods

1.1 North Carolina and Utah, 2000 Apportionment

2 State Congressional Delegation Size

2.2 1920-present

3 Notes
4 See also

Apportionment Methods

The number of delegates is not strictly proportional to population, but is determined by the Method of Equal Proportions, a procedure intended to equalize the size of congressional districts nationwide. The method first assigns one seat to each state, as required by the Constitution, and then assigns additional seats based upon a "priority ranking," calculated by dividing the population of each state by the geometric mean of its current and next seats. The Equal Proportions method has been the fifth distinct method of determining congressional apportionment since the adoption of the United States Constitution. The size of the Congressional delegations from the thirteen original states were assigned by the Constitution for use until the completion of the first U.S. Census. Legislation admitting new states into the union has also designated the number of representatives of states until the time of the next census.

North Carolina and Utah, 2000 Apportionment

Under this method, the 435th seat in Congress granted as a result of the 2000 Census was the 13th granted to North Carolina; the state of Utah failed to obtain a 4th seat by only 857 residents. Utah officials took legal action in an attempt to have this seat reassigned; they contended that the population of Utah was undercounted and that the population of North Carolina was overcounted in several ways:\n* The relatively high number of Mormon residents in Utah included over 11,000 who were left uncounted because they were performing missionary work outside the U.S.; North Carolina's figures included a number of overseas military personnel, but they were accurately counted through military channels. Federal law, however only allows for military or government personnel stationed overseas to be counted in the census.\n* A higher number of vacation homes in North Carolina meant that census officials who could not contact a home's residents or owners "imputed" more residents than actually existed. The United States Supreme Court ruled (Utah v. Evans) in 2002 that the procedure of imputation was properly applied.\n* The Census Bureau admitted to overcounting the student population of a dormitory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by over 2,000 students; although this was not a large enough error to tip the seat to the Utah delegation, it meant that Utah was, according to revised figures, only about 80 residents short of earning an additional Congressional seat. A compromise measure was introduced to Congress by Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, but did not reach a floor vote; it would have temporarily increased the size of Congress to 437 seats until 2010, granting an additional seat to Utah and a voting seat to the District of Columbia.