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OPINION

2021 Reapportionment: Pint-Sized Populated States Get Too Many Seats

map of the united states made up of people
(Dreamstime)

Mark Schulte By Monday, 17 May 2021 08:56 AM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

The 2020 Census counted 331,108,000 people in the 50 states, who, when divided by the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, yield 761,000 per seat.

To further document how egregiously flawed the Census Bureau's 2021 Congressional reapportionment is, let's take Rhode Island, Montana and Delaware, which rank 43rd, 44th and 45th in population among the 50 states.

Rhode Island, with a population of 1,098,000 on April 1, 2020, was awarded two seats, or 549,000 residents per seat.

Montana, with 1,085,000 residents, was also given two seats, or 543,000 per seat.

But Delaware, with 991,000 residents, who are only 107,000 fewer than Rhode Island's count, and 94,000 fewer than Montana's, received only one seat.

Delaware, at 991,000, has the most people per congressional seat.

Interestingly, President Joe Biden's secretary of Commerce is Gina Raimondo, who was confirmed by the Senate in early March, almost two months before the Census Bureau belatedly released the seat allotments.

Secretary Raimondo was Rhode Island's Democratic governor for six years before assuming her current job, and the Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau.

Other states with larger populations per Congressional seat than the national average of 761,000 include: Idaho, two seats, 921,000 per seat; West Virginia, two seats, 898,000 per seat; Utah, four seats, 819,000 per seat; and Arizona, nine seats, 795,000 per seat.

However, Arizona's 2020 population of 7,159,000 is obviously an undercount, because between April 1, 2010 and July 1, 2019, the state added roughly 100,000 residents annually. But between July 1, 2019 and April 1, 2020 (Census Day), the Census Department is preposterously claiming Arizona's population declined by 120,000 residents, from 7,279,000 to 7,159,000.

Instead, if an extrapolated 75,000 residents are added to Arizona's total, for the nine months between July 2019 and April 2020, its population would be 7,354,000, or an unacceptable 817,000 per Congressional seat.

Thus, Arizona deserves 10 seats, instead of 9, and each seat would represent a non-controversial 735,000 persons per seat.

At the opposite end of the population spectrum, from pint-sized Rhode Island, Montana and Delaware, are California, with 39,577,000 residents; Texas, with 29,183,000; and Florida, with 21,571,000.

California has received 52 seats in the House of Representatives, or 761,000 per seat.

Texas was awarded 38 seats, or 768,000 per seat.

Florida was given 28 seats, or 770,000 per seat.

Therefore, the average number of residents per seat, for Rhode Island and Montana, is 546,000.

But for the mega-populated states of California, Texas and Florida, the average is 766,000 residents, or 40% more than that of two Lilliputian-populated states.

Moreover, as I documented in a Newsmax article on May 12, the official Census totals for Republican-run Texas and Florida are, like the count for Arizona, blatant undercounts, based on their robust population growths between April 2010 and July 2019, as compared to the miniscule increases, over the next nine months until April 1, 2020.

Texas's population should be 29,315,000, and Florida's 21,697,000. Each would then have received one more seat: Texas, 39, and Florida, 29.

Let's take this more-realistic total for Texas and divide by 761,000 people per seat, which yields 38.5, which should have been rounded-up to 39 seats, and not the 38 allotted by the Census Bureau.

Since 23 states have an average number of residents per congressional seat of fewer than 750,000, let's calculate how many seats the Lone Star State would receive if we decrease, by increments of 10,000 residents, from the current national average of 761,000 per seat.

At 751,000 per seat, Texas would have been awarded 39.0 seats.

At 741,000 residents per seat, it would have 39.6 seats, rounded-up to 40 seats.

At 731,000 per seat, it would have 40.1 seats.

Finally, at 721,000 per seat, it would have 40.7 seats, which rounds-up to 41 seats.

By contrast, Democratic-dysfunctional Oregon was unacceptably increased from five to six seats, but its population of 4,242,000, yields only 707,000 residents per seat.

Similarly, Democratic-dominated Colorado, with a population of 5,782,000, received eight seats last month, one more than in 2010, but it has an unacceptably low 723,000 people per seat.

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court mandated, in Wesberry v. Sanders, population parity in the reapportionment of congressional seats within a state.

But the nation's highest court has not ruled on the constitutionality of the colossal disparities in the number of residents per seat among the 50 states, which flagrantly discriminates against the mega-populated states.

Moreover, America's most populous states are already monumentally underrepresented by the constitutional mandate that every state has two seats in the U.S. Senate.

Wyoming, whose 578,000 residents are the nation's smallest population, has 289,000 per U.S. Senate seat. California, with 39,577,000 people, has 19,789,000 per Senate seat, or 68 times that of Wyoming.

Indeed, the 26 states with the smallest populations, which range from Wyoming's 578,000 to Louisiana's 4,661,000, have a total population of only 58 million, or just 17.5% of the nation's 331 million people.

Yet these 26 states have 52 seats in the Senate, or a majority.

In conclusion, the 40 states with fewer than 10 million residents each, with a few exceptions, should be required to have at least 731,000 residents for each allotted seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, or at least 96% of the national average of 761,000.

One exception is Maine, which with a population of 1,364,000, is entitled to two seats, or 682,000 per seat. Otherwise, it would have nearly 1.4 million in one seat, which unacceptably exceeds the national average.

Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Reports — More Here.

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MarkSchulte
The nation's highest court has not ruled on the constitutionality of the colossal disparities in the number of residents per seat among the 50 states, which flagrantly discriminates against the mega-populated states.
reapportionment, census, congress
949
2021-56-17
Monday, 17 May 2021 08:56 AM
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