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

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that was interesting. I realise now that I'd never really bothered to wonder how House seats were divvied up, by whom, or how often. Do I take it it's usually a 10-yearly event?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes. US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2 (abridged): "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States, according to their respective Numbers. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years."

Thus we have a census each decade, in the year ending in zero, and its principal legal purpose is to generate the figures needed for congressional reapportionment (and to the allocation of presidential electoral votes, which are calculated upon it).

The UK also has a census every ten years, but the schedule of parliamentary reapportionment is much more irregular.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think the purpose of the UK census is much more diffuse, and is used for all sorts of purposes of interest to administrators and others. The Boundary Commission, which shifts constituency boundaries roughly, but not exclusively, according to population, relies (at least, as I've always assumed) on the Electoral Roll, which is updated annually.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

Daniel Okrent's book on Prohibition (Last Call) says the prohibitionists were largely behind skipping the 1920 reapportionment. "Urban" in this case was a code word for "immigrants", and the fear was increased representation of Those People would result in the repeal of Prohibition. A well placed fear; there was a reapportionment after the 1930 census, and Prohibition was gone in 1933.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I couldn't find any definitive statement on this, but from the figures at the English Boundary Commission's website, it does appear that the calculation is based on the Roll of eligible voters, not on the total population.

This is not the case in the US. For one thing, the voter registration lists here are purely voluntary. Only about half the eligible voters bother to sign up, and of those, only about half bother to vote, and it only gets that high at presidential elections.

Gerrymandering around pockets of population ineligible to vote (prisons, mental institutions) is also known here.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That may not have been due solely or even primarily to reapportionment. The federal government was hurting for money in 1933; revenue from income tax had fallen off drastically, starting in late 1929. And excise taxes on alcohol had been a longstanding source of added revenue, made unavailable by Prohibition. Priorities shift under financial pressure.

[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.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That may have been part of it. But the stiff rearguard battle against urban representation in still-rural but rapidly-urbanizing states like TN and FL, and even in the CA state senate, which continued long after 1933 until Baker v. Carr blew the whistle in 1962, suggests there was much more to it than that.

[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.