After the 2010 census has been held, the number of seats held by each state in the U.S. House of Representatives will change. The National Conference of State Legislatures recently estimated what the 2010 reapportionment will mean for each state.
Eight states are expected to lose one seat each, in the U.S. House and in the Electoral College. They are Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
States that will gain will be Texas (3 seats), and one each for Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Utah.
If the bill now pending in Congress to expand the House from 435 seats to 437 seats is signed into law, then one more state would gain a seat, and the District of Columbia would get its first voting seat.
So the districts grow in size with each census?
The latest and greatest de facto minority rule regimes after the 2012 election.
Half the votes in half the gerrymander areas = 25 percent minority rule.
Much worse for the U.S.A. gerrymander Senate.
REAL Democracy NOW.
P.R. and A.V. — putting the gerrymander census into the political history junk yard along with divine right of kings, slavery, etc.
Sorry – D.C. continues NOT to be a STATE. See 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 (1868) for the S-T-A-T-E-S in the U.S.A.
HOW E-V-I-L corrupt are the New Age Donkeys who claim that D.C. somehow has any ability whatever to elect U.S.A. Reps. ???
I didn’t find anything like this on the NCSL site. It doesn’t appear to very accurate.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives the legislative branch control over the District of Columbia, provides the main argument (though there are others) for giving D.C. a vote in the House. The 14th amendment has nothing to do with whether or not the seat of government is entitled to a vote and does not preclude the federal district from having one. The point of the 2nd section of that amendment was to make it clear that all male citizens 21 and over have the right to vote, thus eliminating the heinous “three-fifths of a person” clause in the original Constitution, and if that right is interfered with, representation in Congress will suffer proportionately.
Re: #1 — If the total population grows, and the total numbers of Congressional districts stays the same, the number of people per district must increase.
Re: #3 — I also can’t seem to find anything on the NCSL Website about this. NCSL may have some very new report not yet posted on its Website . . . but could someone say what the source/authority for this report is?
# 4 — So why did it magically take a constitutional amendment to permit the party hacks in D.C. to be able to elect 12th Amdt Prez/VP electors — i.e. the 23rd Amdt ???
What’s next — some party hack U.S.A. Senators from D.C. — regardless of the STATE mention in the 17th Amdt ???
What is in the brain dead heads of New Age election law MORONS ??? Autism, political correctness, etc. ???
As usual – the PROPER remedy –
A constitutional amendment defining Elector in ALL of the U.S.A. — States, D.C., any Territories and even perhaps colonies (to repeal all of the accumulated *negative* type language).
(1) The House 435 came down from 437 after it figured out Jefferson/Madison were right…much over 300 and the chamber becomes a mob without deliberation. So reapportionment is proportional now (see #5).
(2) Arlington, VA is the “10 mile square” (not 10 sq.mi.) federal district south of the Potomac. People there vote. If DC residents were ceded back to MD, they could vote too. But Reps from Baltimore were on the House committee in the 60’s and they killed the move.
(3) To avoid most gerrymandering, how about Congressional Districts organized by census tracts aligning along non-partisan water sheds?
#4 What are these other arguments?
If Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the authority to provide a representative from the District of Columbia, then it gives Congress the authority to have 1000 representatives from the District of Columbia, and to have them appointed by Congress rather than elected by persons (citizen or not) residing within the district.
The 3/5 clause was made moot by the 13th Amendment. And if the 14th Amendment made it clear that all male citizens over the age of 21 had the right to vote, then there would have been no need for the 15th Amendment.
1. The 14th Amendment was not especially well written, but its major points are; equal government treatment, most of the federal bill of rights apply to the States and some personal privacy.
2. The 15th Amendment was one of the biggest screws up Congress has done. Original drafts spoke broadly of the right of adult (21+) men to vote and (hold office) be a candidate, but it got really watered down.
3. The idea of giving or selling DC back to a State is not a bad one, but its a bit tricky. Congress may be uneasy about giving up the control, D.C. voters may not want to become part of the most likely State in question.
I Have no problem with giving DC voting rights…this is a technicality that needs to be long gone.
#9. I think you misunderstood my question. David Gaines had stated that Article I, Section 8 gave Congress authority to provide for members of the House of Representatives without regard to the composition, electorate, qualification, and apportionment provisions of Article I, Section 2 (as amended by the apportionment provisions of the 14th Amendment).
He then intimated that there were other arguments other than the Power of Congress to “exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases, whatsoever, over such District …”; perhaps based on the Constitution, perhaps not. I was asking him what these other arguments might be; I was not asking what the other provisions of the 14th Amendment were.
As I understand his argument, he is not claiming that Congress is treating the district as a State, and therefore is not restricted by these provisions of Article I, Section 2:
(1) Composed of members elected every 2nd year by the People of the several States. That is the district Representative(s) need not be elected, and need not serve a two-year term.
(2) That the electorate be composed of those qualified to vote for the most numerous branch of the legislature. If Congress does choose to provide for elected representatives, they would of course be required to comply with the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments, since these deal with elections in general. The 24th Amendment might or might not apply, depending on whether the type of “Representative in Congress” that district residents would be electing is the same as those contemplated by the 24th Amendment.
(3) That the district Representative(s) be an inhabitant of the district, 25 years old, and a citizen of the United States for seven years. Congress could set less restrictive or more restrictive qualifications. They could provide for term limits.
(4) That the number of Representative(s) for the district be based on the population of the district. Since the representative is not apportioned. There is no minimum or maximum number of representatives for the district.
(5) That the district representation is based on a right to representation under the Constitution, a compact among the several States. Congress can grant representation legislatively, and they can take it away (just as they at one time did away with the Washington city council). While citizens of a State have a right to elected Representatives in Congress, citizens of the district would only be extended a discretionary privilege to participate in elections.
====
Yours is a modern interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and you completely ignore the 3rd and 4th sections, for example.
====
Congress could simply recognize citizens resident in the district as being citizens of Maryland (or perhaps the State of their last residence, including derivative residence through their parents).
Surely the intent of the 14th Amendment was that when a citizen of one State moves to another State that they acquire the citizenship of the new State, not that when they move outside the limits of any State that they forfeit their State citizenship.
July 2008 Census estimates –
http://www.census.gov/popest/states/states.html
http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html
http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2008-01.csv