reapportionment

[calimac]

"2010 marks the first year since 1920 that California did not gain House seats and electoral votes," says the newspaper.

Actually, it's even more historic than that, because the reason California gained nothing in 1920 is that there was no reapportionment that year. Congress never got around to passing a bill that decade, so no states either gained or lost anything. It's the exception that proves the rule, a phenomenon I'm always on the lookout for. (The reason commonly given for the lack of action is that the 1920 census marked the changeover from the US as a primarily rural to a primarily urban nation, and powerful rural-state congressmen didn't want to lose their clout.) California has in fact gained seats in every apportionment back to 1860, up until this one. Considering that we have 53 seats, it's amazing that we should remain balanced so carefully. Because the population of the US is growing and the size of the House is fixed, to lose seats means not necessarily that the state is losing population, only that it's growing less fast than the country as a whole.

Looking at the map of the changes - five states in the west and southwest, from WA to TX, and three in the southeast, have gained seats, while LA, and others north and northeast of it, have lost them - this is no different from the pattern every decade since 1970. The last time any "rust belt" states gained seats was in 1960 (MI, OH, and NJ), and NC in the southeast lost one at that time. Ever since, though, it's been the same pattern: take LA, MS, and AL as a fulcrum, draw lines radiating northeast to the Mason-Dixon line and northwest to the Idaho panhandle, and every state that's lost seats has been within the fan, and every state that's gained seats has been outside it, with only the semi-exception of TN, which regained a seat in 1980 after losing it in 1970. Even the 1940-60 apportionments roughly keep to that pattern, with only the states I already mentioned being exceptions. If CA lost a seat, that'd be a pattern-breaker.

Marking big losers and winners is of course a factor of the states' size. The Dakotas once had three seats each, if you can believe it, and now they're down to one each and can't lose any more. The biggest losers since 1940 are NY, which has lost 18 seats from 45 to 27, and PA, which has lost 16 seats from 34 to 18. Meanwhile, CA has gained 33 seats, FL 22, and TX 15. The U.S. is full of loose nuts, and they keep rolling down to the bottom of the map.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There were other reasons for a turn against Prohibition. A primary impetus towards public support of Prohibition in the first place was the obvious social pathology of widespread alcoholism. (Classic artistic depiction of this.) What was obvious by 1930 that wasn't yet obvious in 1920 was that the prohibition of alcohol led to even greater social pathologies, i.e. smuggling and all the criminal activity that arose from it.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That's a plausible theory, but a lot of Americans don't seem to reason that way. Note, for example, the widespread resistance to ending drug prohibition, even for so relatively harmless a drug as marijuana, despite the obvious social pathologies that keeping drugs illegal gives rise to. The recurrent sticking place seems to be "but if government doesn't actively forbid and punish this, it's telling people that it's morally acceptable." I'm not sure that Americans in 1930 were any less moralistic than Americans are now.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

They did think it in this case. I'm not presuming, but reporting historical fact. Differences with the marijuana case include the much greater social pathology of alcohol prohibition and the much lesser and more recent standing of the prohibition itself. Any adult in 1933 could remember before Prohibition was nationally imposed; none today remember before marijuana. Also, even under Prohibition, alcohol was a preferred libation of the upper, influential, and chattering classes. As marijuana-users seep into those realms, the stigma against it is breaking down.