Pick a Number, Any Number: State Representation in Congress After the 2000 Census

Abstract

The Y2K bug was not the year 2000's only claim to fame. The United States Constitution requires a census, and subsequent reapportionment of Congress, every ten years,' and thus we are once again faced with the apportionment follies. The most well-known act in this decennial struggle between law and mathematics is the battle that begins in every state legislature and ultimately spills over into the federal courts: drawing up districts in each state that are consistent not only with the one-person-one-vote principle of Reynolds v. Sims,2 but also with the perceived needs of interest groups and incumbents. That the state of North Carolina has made four trips to the Supreme Court as a result of the 1990 round of reapportionment shows both the complexity and the staying power of this particular problem.3 The requirement of a decennial reapportionment also raises another issue, less well-known but perhaps even more interesting. Although the Constitution says that the seats in the House of Representatives must be apportioned among the states according to population, it does not specify the method of apportionment except to command that each state have at least one representative.4 Figuring out how to allocate the 435 seats among the states, however, is not a trivial matter. Over the past two centuries Congress has used four different methods to allocate representation among the states, and each method produces quite different results. As is to be expected, the size of a state's representation in Congress can be a contentious issue. Utah has already filed a federal lawsuit