Reapportionment’s History and Political Impact
Since 1790, and the first federal census of the United States, the number of representatives that each state is entitled to send to the U.S. House of Representatives has been determined by the total population of each state, with few exceptions. The process that is used to allot a state this number is known as reapportionment. Dividing the state up into congressional districts was left up to whatever process each state opted to use, and is usually referred to as redistricting.
The drawing of these districts can often ultimately contribute to which party wins a specific congressional seat, and as such can be a highly contentious process. In addition to its effect upon the makeup of the U.S. House, reapportionment can add or subtract the number of electoral votes to which a state is entitled to cast in a presidential election. And federal census data is also used in the creation of new legislative districts in the states. Reapportionment has no direct effect upon the Senate today, as each state’s two senators are elected in a statewide vote, but before the passage of the 17th Amendment, when state legislatures chose the U.S. senators who would represent their state, it had a more direct impact.
After the federal census determines the population of the United States, that number is then divided by the number of congressional districts (435) to arrive at the approximate number each member of the House will represent. For example, if this number was one million, and a state’s population was four million, the state would have four representatives. Of course, states might have a few thousand less than that, or a few thousand more than that, requiring mathematical formulas be used to solve this situation. However, every state is entitled to at least one representative, regardless of the state’s population. This lone representative is then known as the “at-large” representative, as that congressional district is the same as the boundary of the entire state. Seven states — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming — have only one member in the House of Representatives.
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