Number of Representatives in the House Per State
"Representatives and directly Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their corresponding Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians non taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be fabricated inside three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the Us, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Style every bit they shall by Law directly. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Chiliad, but each State shall have at To the lowest degree one Representative…"
— U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 2, clause iii
"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the The states, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to whatever of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-1 years of historic period, and citizens of the The states, or in any fashion abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other criminal offence, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall acquit to the whole number of male person citizens twenty-i years of age in such Country."
— U.Due south. Constitution, Amendment XIV, section 2
The Constitution provides for proportional representation in the U.South. House of Representatives and the seats in the House are apportioned based on state population according to the constitutionally mandated Census. Representation based on population in the Business firm was one of the most of import components of the Federal Ramble Convention of 1787.
Origins
The American Revolution was, in office, a contest nearly the very definition of representation. In England, the House of Commons represented every British bailiwick regardless of whether the subject could actually vote for its membership. In this sense, most people living in areas under British rule—including North America—were merely "near represented" in Parliament. American colonists, who were used to decision-making their local affairs in the directly-elected colonial legislatures, lacked a voice in Parliament and resented the British policies imposed on them. Thus, they rallied behind the now familiar motto: "No taxation without representation!"
Later on the war, the founders struggled to design a organization of government to improve correspond the inhabitants of the new state than did the British model which in one case governed them. The Articles of Confederation created the starting time national congress to stand for the interests of the states: each state would appoint between two and seven delegates to the congress, and each state delegation would have one vote.
Constitutional Framing
/tiles/not-drove/i/i_origins_proport_repres_hres_127_14_th_nara.xml 14th Amendment, Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records Assistants The 14th Subpoena declared that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. were citizens and that any state that denied or abridged the voting rights of males over the age of 21 would be subject to proportional reductions in its representation in the U.S. Business firm of Representatives. Canonical past the 39th Congress (1865–1867) as H.J. Res. 127; ratified by u.s.a. on July 9, 1868.
The Ramble Convention addressed multiple concerns in the procedure of designing the new Congress. The first was the human relationship of the least populous states to the most populous. The battle betwixt large and pocket-sized states colored near of the Convention and almost ended hopes of creating a national government. Pennsylvania Delegate Benjamin Franklin summed up the disagreement: "If a proportional representation takes identify, the small States contend that their liberties will exist in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks exercise not fit the artist takes a picayune from both, and makes a practiced joint." The "adept articulation" that emerged from weeks of stalemate was called the "Great Compromise" and created a bicameral legislature with a House, where membership was adamant by state population, and a Senate, where each state had two seats regardless of population. The compromise enabled the Convention, teetering on the brink of dissolution, to continue.
The Convention determined that a Census of the population conducted every ten years would enable the Firm to conform the distribution of its Membership on a regular ground. The method, nonetheless, proved controversial. Southern delegates argued that their slaves counted in the population, yielding them more than Representatives. Northern delegates countered that slaves were holding and should non be counted at all. The result was the notorious "Iii-Fifths Compromise," where slaves were counted as three-fifths of a gratuitous person. Having originated in tax policy, this dominion was defended during the Convention equally a necessary compromise given the "peculiar" state of slaves as both belongings and "moral" individuals bailiwick to criminal law. Virginia'southward James Madison wrote in Federalist 54 that the reasoning appeared "to be a little strained in some points" but "fully reconciles me to the calibration of representation, which the Convention accept established."
Representation was likewise linked to taxation. Earlier federal income taxes or tariffs, the states contributed to the national government with local taxes, oft flat poll taxes on each citizen. Since constitutional framers had to provide for the funding of the new government, they debated the proper relationship between representation and taxation. Several delegates argued that geographic size or useable farmland were better measures of state wealth than mere population. Delegates, yet, settled on proportional contributions based on population and, by extension, the number of Members in the Business firm of Representatives. Large states, with more human capital, should contribute more revenue to the national regime and also have more seats in the legislature as a result. This fulfilled the promise of the American Revolution: tax with representation.
14th Subpoena
The 14th Subpoena to the Constitution, ratified after the Ceremonious War, began to remedy the "original sin" of the Constitution, and ordered the Census to fully count every private regardless of skin color. While information technology was a step in the right direction, it did little to ease the country's racial tensions. Moreover, instead of straight providing for the enfranchisement of African Americans, the amendment stipulated that simply males over the historic period of 21 could not be discriminated against when voting unless they had participated in rebellion against the Union or "other criminal offense." Women were not enfranchised until 1920, when the 19th Amendment stipulated that "the right of citizens of the Us to vote shall non exist denied or abridged . . . on account of sexual activity." In 1971, the 26th Amendment enfranchised those 18 years of age and older. The latter amendments, however, did non change congressional circulation.
Current Practice
Congress has capped the number of Representatives at 435 since the Apportionment Deed of 1911 except for a temporary increase to 437 during the admission of Hawaii and Alaska every bit states in 1959. Every bit a result, over the last century, congressional districts have more tripled in size—from an average of roughly 212,000 inhabitants after the 1910 Census to well-nigh 710,000 inhabitants following the 2010 Census. Each state'due south congressional delegation changes as a result of population shifts, with states either gaining or losing seats based on population. While the number of Firm Members for each state is determined according to a statistical formula in federal constabulary, each state is and then responsible for designing the shape of its districts then long equally it accords with various provisions of the Voting Rights Deed of 1965, which seeks to protect racial minorities' voting and representation rights.
For Further Reading
U.S. Demography Bureau. U.S. Department of Commerce. "About Congressional Circulation." http://world wide web.census.gov/population/apportionment/about/.
Eagles, Charles West. Republic Delayed: Congressional Reapportionment and Urban–Rural Conflict in the 1920s. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Printing, 2010.
Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. iv vols. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1937).
Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay. The Federalist Papers. (New York: Penguin Books, 1987).
Reid, John Phillip. The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
Rossiter, Clinton. 1787: The Chiliad Convention. (New York: Macmillan, 1966)(.
Tate, Katherine. Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives in the U.Southward. Congress. (Princeton: Princeton University Printing, 2003).
Source: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Proportional-Representation/
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