2020 Census Apportionment Results

Yeah this is such a cluster. Makes you think that maybe we should not be doing point in time counts every ten years. That can have a huge impact on entire generations of people. American Community Surveys run far more often, showing that we can potentially change our ways.

Even in California when we saw folks moving away I had a census worker on foot knocking door to door trying to ask about who lived in the various apartments - and at the time I know a lot of folks had moved away even if temporarily.

Households received their census cards March 12-20 and "Census Day" -- when there was a big marketing push to get folks to respond -- was April 1. That was right when NYC was getting slammed, which happened before the rest of the country. Census workers then sent folks physically out to try and reach non-responding households, but that's super hard to do.

NY was certainly hit harder earlier than other states, and during the census window.

Well, the absolute easiest way to gain 89 residents would have been to let the YIMBYs build one more highrise in Brooklyn.

If you keep in mind that those seats are for the current term only, then it makes it a bit easier. For the purpose of the 2022 election, there is no one in those seats since the election process has not started.

The state legislators of each state will redistrict based on the census numbers (having the same number of seats doesn't mean the district doesn't change). Then the primary / election process starts with candidates declaring their intention to run for one of those seats. It is possible that two sitting Representatives will run for the same seat due to redistricting.

This is where you are going to see the preferences of the majority party and what Representatives they like. A nationally popular Representative might have their district removed and absorbed into two or more adjoining districts. This is often done when the Representative is more trouble to the local party then useful.

The states will draw new district maps based on the new census data for each state, as well as accounting for any seat gains or loses. The rules for drawing those maps differ from state to state.

In the states that lose a seat, it depends. Sometimes two current members will face off for the new district that most closely resembles their two prior districts. Sometimes one of the members will just decide to retire.

State governments re-draw the lines. Sometimes they try to preserve existing districts and existing constituents for existing congresspeople, and sometimes they intentionally obliterate them (based on where the congressperson's house is). Precisely how they do so varies by state.

Yes, this would impact the next election cycle, occurring in 2022, and the effects would first be seen in the congress sworn in in January of 2023.

The states with changes in seats are responsible for the redistricting. What this means in practice is that in a state losing one seat, one district will disappear and the map gets redrawn. Then you'll typically have a primary or a general election where both candidates are incumbents. If both incumbents are in the same party, they'll face off in the primary for that party, if they're in different parties they'll face off in the general election. Alternatively, one incumbent may choose to retire.

The changes will come into play as of 2023's Congress.

Wait is that true? Is a democratic president ever going to be elected again?

It's not such an easy decision. Sure if you have more reps, each constituent arguably has more access. The flip side is that they have more access to a less powerful rep. If you had 10,000 people in congress, sure it'd be a lot easier to get in touch with one of them, but 1 person in a group of 10,000 doesn't have much influence, so how much is that interaction really worth?

Even at 435, unless your rep is a senior member with some important committee assignments and they happen to be in the majority party, getting the ear of your rep isn't worth all that much.

This is a terrible idea and let me tell you why.

First, it puts the balance in the house in the hands of the campaign managers for president (or whichever "vote totals" you would prefer to go by) second, it entrenches the 2 party system as a de jure institution. Third, while districts are drawn very much arbitrarily (and in many cases against the interests of the people in them a la gerrymandering) people do have more in common with neighbors than simple party members from the other side of the country. A republican and a democrat in the 6th district have more in common than two republicans, one from Maine and one from Louisiana. Your proposal eliminates representation of community interests and elevates party interest above all else. It also severely damages the check the house can have on the president since whichever party wins the presidency also wins the house.

A better solution is this solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am... thankfully it has already been passed by congress and is awaiting state ratification. It would ensure that each representative represents the same number of people but it would still preserve community interest representation and probably strengthen it and make party interest an afterthought in the house.

This would violate one of the central promises of the union which was that the large populous areas would not be able to dictate to the smaller regions and would instead be forced to compromise with them. We seem poised to start expanding the union again in the coming decades. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to get smaller Mexican states or central American countries to agree to join the union if they believed they would have no say in running their local after doing so.

I understand where you are coming from as the US is so homogenous now thanks to 250 years of interstate population movement that the delineations seem arbitrary and unfair, but they were very distinct separate regions once upon a time and looking forward the regions we hope to bring into our union are more different than the average American than similar so these same protections will be critical to the effort.

I don't think I agree with this. Suppose there were 1 million representatives, each with ~330 constituents. This is untenable, sure, but imagine this were the case. Would a body like that even be capable of having votes on party lines? Would a body like that even be capable of operating as a two party system?

Then, the academic cases, wouldn't a body like that make it more likely to have other parties have a larger role in national politics?

I'd say since the house is supposed to be a democratic institution, the only one in the federal government, making individual members less powerful is a good thing. If the body is supposed to represent the population directly, the less powerful each individual is in the body the less oligarchic that body will be.

Unlike the senate where all the power rests in Joe Manchins hands

Your link says there would be >6000 reps. That's nothing. Just build a very small stadium, with "Yes" and "No" buttons wired to every seat.

The number of representatives makes it hard to fairly apportion the seats. Montana went from 1 representative for 1M people to 2 for 1M, meaning each should represent about 500k people. Meanwhile in my district in NJ over 700k people are represented by one person. It was unfair before, when Montanans had too few representatives, and it is just as unfair now, when they have too many (compared to NJ). More representatives would improve the granularity and make the system (somewhat) fairer.

To be clear, one does not need an amendment to increase the size of the House.

Changing the size of the House can be done through normal legislation after a Census.

Another one of Trump's short sighted policy backfires. In his effort to paint Puerto Rico as a failed and corrupt liberal state, he denied them aid, causing half a million American citizens to move from a place where they couldn't vote in federal elections to places where they could.

Democrats are committed to the idea that politicians shouldn't choose their voters. They have fought in court over it and the SCOTUS decided gerrymandering is fine, even many egregious examples.

The GOP has always been on board with this. Why I'll never understand. The only excuse you ever get is "Dems do it too!"

As if Democrats should just lay down arms and not participate in the practice and let the GOP gerrymander every state to oblivion out of principle or something.

Do you mean in terms of granting DC and Puerto Rico statehood, or reallocating representatives based on population?

That perspective is not compatible with what we know about birthrates in other developed nations. More highly educated societies exhibit lower birthrates, more or less universally. Even within the US, people with more education have children later and fewer children, even though they also have higher incomes and better insurance, etc.

In many European countries, families are given considerable support and incentives far beyond what American families receive, yet birthrates still continue to drop.

And if you increase immigration, you increase labour supply, and demand for housing - reducing wages and increasing cost of living, which negatively impacts fertility.

The fundamental problem in the USA is the broken healthcare and pension system, which allocates too many resources to baby boomers and unfairly burdens younger workers.

There's more to it, I had a census worker knocking on my door mid pandemic and nobody answered as they went door to door.

The pandemic itself impacted the ability to DO the survey, while also happening when certain areas experienced great movements of their populations.

I am explicitly concerned about the point in time nature. I am glad you pointed out all of the migration anomalies, as well as the future possibility for more.

Edit: also I would not balk at 500k deaths. There will be more to come as well. That is a significant portion of the voting age and likely voter populations.

At least it is better than the UK. IIRC they completely stopped updating their seats.