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Redistricting, Congressional Districts

Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution calls for representation to the House of Representatives to be apportioned among the states according to the respective number of individuals residing in each state. The initial apportionment, or assigning of seats to individual states, gave 10 districts to Virginia, 8 to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, 6 to Maryland and New York, 5 to Connecticut, North Carolina, and South Carolina, 4 to New Jersey, 3 to New Hampshire and Georgia, and 1 each to Rhode Island and Delaware. For subsequent Congresses after 1790 and then repeated every 10 years, the enumeration has relied on a census of the population. The census is an actual count, rather than a sample, of every person—citizen and noncitizen alike—residing in each of the states. As such, the danger exists of some groups of people undercounted or others overcounted.

The Constitution as originally written called for one district for roughly every 30,000 residents and a guarantee of at least one representative per state. Elections were to be held every 2 years in the districts to elect members who would then serve in the House of Representatives. Unlike the Senate, vacancies due to death or resignation must be filled by a special election, not by appointment.

Apportionment

Over time, the number of districts increased as the population grew and new states entered the Union. In 1911, Congress arbitrarily set the total number of congressional districts at 435, and states would thereafter gain or lose representation in the House based on relative population growth or decline. The House temporarily increased to 437 seats when Hawaii and Alaska entered the Union.

Once the census is complete, each state is initially assigned one representative irrespective of population. Then, since 1941, the rest of the 385 seats are distributed according to the “method of equal proportions.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, this system ranks the states by assigning a priority value calculated by dividing the population of each state by the geometric mean of its current and next seats. The 51st district is then assigned to the state with the highest priority value, and the process is repeated until all 435 districts have been distributed. Prior to 1941, different methods were used, and states stood to gain or lose seats depending on which method Congress employed to assign districts. When the size of the House was initially capped at 435 members, the average district size was 210,000 persons. As of the 2000 census, there were about 650,000 residents per congressional district.

Redistricting

The practice of drawing district lines for political (or other) gain has been around since Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts sketched the first gerrymander around 1810. However, most modern redistricting is shaped by a trio of Supreme Court cases from the 1960s. In 1962, the court ruled in Baker v. Carr that the drawing of districts was in fact open to judicial interpretation. Two years later, in Reynolds v. Sims, the resulting “one-man one-vote” doctrine required the populations of legislative districts to be as equal as practicable. This standard was then applied to congressional districts in the 1964 case Wesberry v. Sanders. Afterward, nearly every state with more than one district was forced to redistrict to comply with the new rulings.

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