Apportionment

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

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The process by which legislative seats are distributed among units entitled to representation; determination of the number of representatives that a state, county, or other subdivision may send to a legislative body. The U.S. Constitution provides for a census every ten years, on the basis of which Congress apportions representatives according to population; each state, however, must have at least one representative. Districting is the establishment of the precise geographical boundaries of each such unit or constituency. Apportionment by state statute that denies the rule of ONE-PERSON, ONE-VOTE is violative of EQUAL PROTECTION OF LAWS.

Also, the allocation of a charge or cost such as real estate taxes between two parties, often in the same ratio as the respective times that the parties are in possession or ownership of property during the fiscal period for which the charge is made or assessed.

Who are to be the electors of the Federal Representatives? Not the rich more than the poor; not the learned more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscurity and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States (JAMES MADISON, The Federalist No. 57).

The difference most relied upon, between American and other republics, consists in the principle of representation (James Madison, The Federalist No. 63).

James Madison and his fellow founders of the United States of America sought many objectives as they framed the U.S. Constitution. Among the goals these champions of democracy fought for was the notion of equal representation in government, by congresspeople, for citizens of the United States. To ensure that equal representation occurred, the founders proposed that the U.S. population be counted at regular intervals with a census. They later agreed, in the Great Compromise of 1787, that congressional representation should be assigned?in other words, apportioned?to various regions of the country based on a total population standard.

Both Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, and Amendment 14, Section 2, of the Constitution provide that representatives shall be apportioned among the states according to their respective numbers and that a population count will be taken by census every ten years. Apportionment requires that each state's total population be divided by the population of "the ideal district" to determine the appropriate number of representatives. The population of an ideal district, for purposes of federal apportionment, is defined as the total population of the state (as determined by census) divided by one hundred (for the House of Representatives), or by 50 (for the Senate).

In the centuries that followed the United States's adoption of the Constitution, apportionment for the federal Congress has been based on total population?with the exception that a slave, until the Civil War, was considered property and thus counted only as three-fifths of a white person. Efforts to limit federal congressional apportionment to only people who are citizens or voters have been defeated, because the exclusion of groups such as illegal ALIENS, nonvoters, and children could significantly affect some areas of the country, since some states have large populations of these groups. Shifting political power away from an area means fewer legislators to demand a fair share of government resources for that area.

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One such effort to exclude these groups, which occurred during the 1866 debates over the passage of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, ultimately led to Congress's voting to continue basing apportionment on total population and to count the "whole number of persons in each state." In contrast, state legislatures have only been required to be based substantially on population since 1964 (REYNOLDS V. SIMS, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S. Ct. 1362, 12 L. Ed. 2d 506). In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court extended this requirement to municipal governments as well (Avery v. Midland County, 390 U.S. 474, 88 S. Ct. 1114, 20L. Ed. 2d 45).

Apportionment is related to, but is not the same as, the electoral system and the districting process: apportionment is the manner in which...