In principle, your weighted voting scheme is a way to get to fair and equal representation. In the current allocation, Ohio with 11,808,848 population and 15 seats has 787,256.53 population per seat, whereas Montana with 1,085,407 population and 2 seats has 542,703.50 population per seat. In your proposal, Montana representatives would have about 69% = 542703.5 / 787256.53 the House voting weight of Ohio representatives. This could even be used to equalize congressional districts within states after redistricting. As you say, it would be a political hard sell and would probably require a constitutional amendment.
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Robert Agnew
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-16-2021 21:38
From: Dave Olsen
Subject: 2021 Congressional Apportionment
I also agree that it may make sense to increase the US House size although I am sure it will result in a political battle since there will be winners and losers. I am starting to think that the simplest way to accomplish the goal of having the house representation proportional to the state population is to allocate state representatives total voting weight based on population. Let's say the total US population is 370 millon. One state may have 10MM, another state may have 20MM, and a third state may have 30MM. However many representatives they have, the state with 10MM will only have a total vote of 10/370 and similar for the other states. So each representitive of the state may get a voting allocation of 0.75, 1.0, 1.25 or whatever so that the total voting percentage for the state is completely proportional to the population. There may have to be an exclusion for states that would only have 1 representative with a voting proportion less then 1.0 but then bump them up and reallocate.
I am not advocating this and I doubt it would ever pass legislature. But if the intent of the founders is to have the house representation proportional to the population of each state this would be achieved without complex algorithms. Just and idea but, again I am not advocating change.
Original Message:
Sent: 6/16/2021 7:34:00 PM
From: Robert Agnew
Subject: RE: 2021 Congressional Apportionment
It may make sense to increase House size, given population increase and unwieldy districts. But I disagree with the author's statement regarding the current apportionment method, that "The problem isn't the math." As far as I'm concerned, for a specified House size, the problem with the current apportionment method is the math.
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Robert Agnew
Original Message:
Sent: 06-16-2021 11:38
From: Monnie McGee
Subject: 2021 Congressional Apportionment
Here's another thought on this: https://time.com/5423623/house-representatives-number-seats/
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Monnie McGee
Associate Professor
Southern Methodist University
Dallas,TX United States
Original Message:
Sent: 06-15-2021 18:29
From: Dave Olsen
Subject: 2021 Congressional Apportionment
I look forward to reading your paper in detail. I suspect that the COVID-19 virus limited the ability of census workers to accurately count and/or allocate the House seats to the same accuracy level as previous censuses.
Original Message:
Sent: 6/15/2021 6:13:00 PM
From: Robert Agnew
Subject: RE: 2021 Congressional Apportionment
From Montana and Rhode Island. They should each get one seat each. The current method is biased toward smaller states, particularly in this Census cycle.
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Robert Agnew
Original Message:
Sent: 06-15-2021 16:11
From: Dave Olsen
Subject: 2021 Congressional Apportionment
Hello Robert,
I glanced at your paper but did not read it. It looks very interesting. That said, I live in Texas and the population grew by almost 4 million people from 2010 to 2020. Florida also grew by 2.7 million. Other states lost population. Those house seats have to come from somewhere. Where should they have come from?
Regards,
Dave
| State |
2020 Population |
2010 Population |
+ People |
+ % |
| Utah |
3,271,616 |
2,763,885 |
507,731 |
18.4 |
| Idaho |
1,839,106 |
1,567,582 |
271,524 |
17.3 |
| Texas |
29,145,505 |
25,145,561 |
3,999,944 |
15.9 |
| North Dakota |
779,094 |
672,591 |
106,503 |
15.8 |
| Nevada |
3,104,614 |
2,700,551 |
404,063 |
15 |
| Colorado |
5,773,714 |
5,029,196 |
744,518 |
14.8 |
| District of Columbia |
689,545 |
601,723 |
87,822 |
14.6 |
| Florida |
21,538,187 |
18,801,310 |
2,736,877 |
14.6 |
| Washington |
7,705,281 |
6,724,540 |
980,741 |
14.6 |
| Arizona |
7,151,502 |
6,392,017 |
759,485 |
11.9 |
| South Carolina |
5,118,425 |
4,625,364 |
493,061 |
10.7 |
| Georgia |
10,711,908 |
9,687,653 |
1,024,255 |
10.6 |
| Oregon |
4,237,256 |
3,831,074 |
406,182 |
10.6 |
| Delaware |
989,948 |
897,934 |
92,014 |
10.2 |
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Dave Olsen
Original Message:
Sent: 06-14-2021 08:07
From: Robert Agnew
Subject: 2021 Congressional Apportionment
2020 congressional apportionment is out of whack. New York and Ohio should not lose seats in the House. This is not a partisan issue. This is a math issue.
US Congressional Apportionments
https://github.com/raagnew/CongressionalApportionment
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Robert Agnew
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