The House Needs to be Reapportioned

[Keith Broaders]

Congress froze the number of mrmbers in the House of Representatives to 435 with the Perrmanent Aportionment Act of 1929. 

This statute clearly violates the principle of "one Person One Vote"

In the 1960's there were three cases submitted to the Supreme Court that dealt with legislative Apportionment.

In order ro be properly apportioned every person's vote in every single district in everystate needs to be counted equally. 

The 1930 census allocated an average of  one representative for every 285,000 inhabitants. As of thr 2020 census the ratio was one reprentative for every 761,169 people.

The discrepancy between the populatioms in Congressional Districts is staggering, Wyoming has just one Comgressional District with a population of 576,000 and Delaware has s single District with a population of 989,000.

Over 400,000 people in Delaware are not being counted for the purpose of apportionment in the House of Representatives which clearly violates the principle of "One Person One Vote"

If Califirnia nd Wyoming were eqully apportioned, California would have 16 more Congressional Districts.

Over 200,000 people in  each of California's 52 Congressional Districts are not being counted for the purpose of apportionamne. In other words there are over 10 million Californians twjo's votes are not bring counted.

In each of these Supreme Court cases the Court ruled that legislative districts needed to be as nearly equal as is practible. 

In the Westberry v Sanders Case  the Court ruled that all Congressional Districts within a state must be equally apportioned.

In Baker v Carr and Reynolds v Sims the Courtreaffirmed that everyones's vote  should county equally.

While the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the principle of "One Person One Vote" within the boundaries of a single state, the Court did not apply the same principle to Congressional Districts  in different states.

In order for there to be proper apportionment  all Congresional Disticts in all of the states must be as nearly equal as is practible.

Wyoming has just one Congressioanl District with a population of 576,000, while Florifa has 28 Congressional Districts  with an average population of 769,000. If both states were being treated equallyFlorida would have 8 more Congressional Districts and 8 more electoral votes.

Congress should not have froaen the number of seats in the House of Representatives, they should have frozen the size of Congressional Districts to the size of the smallest Congressional District.

it was the original intent of the men who wrote the Constitution to allow the number of Representatives in the House to grow as the population of the states grew. . T

The Apportionmant in the House of Representatives violates the the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. 

Congress can fix the problem by adding shinking the size of Congressional Districts to match the population of Wyoming's Congresional District.

The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 cculd be and should be repealed and 141 new Comgressional Districts added in order to guarantee that every statebe equally represented in the House of Representatives.