The federal government has now obtained a second extension of time in which to respond to the people who filed the lawsuit Clemons v U.S. Department of Commerce, 10-291. The case is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court and concerns the size of the U.S. House of Representatives. The government brief is now due November 17. It had originally been due on September 29, and then the government had won an extension to file by October 29.
The lawsuit argues that the 14th amendment requires “one person, one vote” for representation in the U.S. House. But because U.S. House districts never include part of one state and part of another state, the voters of some states have almost twice as much representation in the U.S. House as other states. For example, Montana and Wyoming each have one representative, but Montana has almost twice as many people as Wyoming. Therefore, the case argues that the only way to cure the problem is to increase the size of the U.S. House.
The apportionment process begins by assigning 1 seat to each state, and then adding extra seats to the least-well-represented states (based on a simple mathematical formula) until 435 seats have been assigned.
If the same process were used, but started with 0 seats assigned instead of 1, California would get a 68th representative (versus the 53 it has now), and some 569 seats would have to have been assigned, before Wyoming got their first.
How early would this case have to win in order to affect the 2012 maps?
Some marginal State ALWAYS has some fraction near 0.5 that does NOT get the last marginal seat.
Each State population / Total Seats is almost never a whole number.
Case is totally frivolous — deserving major sanctions on the plaintiff’s lawyer.
Const. Amdt remedy —
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — before it is too late.
There is no reason to consider the representation of Wyoming, since it is an exception specified in the Constitution that representatives be apportioned on the basis of population.
The lawsuit pretends that the fact that the number of representatives has been fixed since 1910 has anything to do with the level of malapportionment. They know that any objective standard that might be imposed is going to blow up, and require 100s more or 100s less representatives after each Census. They cherry-picked their data to avoid making this evident. And then they suggest that the whole thing be dumped in the lap of Congress, while the courts retain jurisdiction. When Congress finds that it can be fixed, the plaintiffs will then demand the courts impose their solution – which if they had proposed in the first place would have been found laughable.
We should greatly increase the size of the House and lower the pay of its members.
How about we greatly increase the size of the House (to at least 600), lower the pay, and at the same time dramatically shorten the length of congressional sessions?
I vote for a 10 week session in the fall, and another 10 week session in the spring (kind of like college semesters). That might allow the Senators and Representatives to actually live in the state they are supposed to represent.
Then why not just have 90 day sessions with term limits. Just a quick thought.
# 6, 7
Wannabee tyrant executives always love to have total control while legislative bodies are NOT in session — to impeach or harass such wannabee tyrants.
See England – 1629-1640 NO meeting of the Parliament.
Result – English Civil WAR in 1642-1649 — King Charles I beheaded in 1649 — part of the destruction of the tyrant -monarchy in 1603-1689 in England (while many of the British-American colonies got formed in North America) — serving as a model for the destruction of tyrant monarchy regimes in much of Europe later.
How many juveniles who are brain dead ignorant of world political-legal history are on this list ???