How Is the Number of House of Representatives Determined
Article 1, Section 2, of the U.s. Constitution states:
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Marriage, according to their respective Numbers...The actual Enumeration shall be made within 3 Years subsequently the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of 10 Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."
Therein lies the main mandate of the U.Due south. demography, apportionment of the Business firm of Representatives. Since that kickoff census in 1790, 5 methods of apportionment have been used. The current method used, the Method of Equal Proportions, was adopted by congress in 1941 post-obit the demography of 1940. This method assigns seats in the Business firm of Representatives according to a "priority" value. The priority value is determined by multiplying the population of a country past a "multiplier."
Each of the fifty states is given one seat out of the current total of 435. The next, or 51st seat, goes to the state with the highest priority value and becomes that state'due south 2d seat. This continues until all 435 seats have been assigned to a state. This is how information technology is washed.
Equal Proportions Method
P - represents a state'due south total population
n - represents the number of seats a state would have if information technology gained a seat (because all states automatically received one seat the next seat gained is "seat two," and the next "seat three," and the next "seat iv," and so on.)
The multiplier equals:
[which is called the reciprocal of the geometric mean]. Calculating these values is quite piece of cake using a computer with spreadsheet software (such as Excel).
Thus the formula for calculating the multiplier for the second seat is:
or one/ane.414213562 or 0.70710678
the multiplier for the tertiary seat is:
1/2.449489743 or 0.40824829
the multiplier for the fourth seat is:
1/3.464101615 or 0.288675134
Keep until an appropriate number of multipliers take been calculated.
Once the "multipliers" have been calculated, the next footstep is to multiply this figure past the population total for each of the l states (the District of Columbia is not included in these calculations). The resulting numbers are the priority values. Brand sure yous compute enough multipliers and priority values to encompass the largest number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that whatever one state stands to gain. For example, if the largest number of seats currently assigned to a state is 60, multipliers and priority values must be calculated for at to the lowest degree the 60th seat. If yous are using a computer, you should compute multipliers for seats ii through 70. This will assure you have enough multipliers and priority values for apportionment.
Once you've calculated priority values for the total number of potential seats for each state, the side by side step is to rank and assign seat numbers to the resulting priority values starting with seat 51, until all 435 seats take been assigned (retrieve, each land automatically received 1 seat). Next, tally the number of seats for each state to get in at the full number of seats in the Firm of Representatives apportioned to each country.
Source: https://www.census.gov/topics/public-sector/congressional-apportionment/about/computing.html
0 Response to "How Is the Number of House of Representatives Determined"
Post a Comment