Expanded House of Representatives

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Based on the 2008 population estimate, I favor a House of 672 members (cube root of the population) The cube root is a good compromise between small district size and small house.

Applying that same formula to the States, their lower houses would range in size from 81 in Wyoming (6,576 people per legislator) and California with 332 (110,713 people per legislator).

If you use a power of .311 you get 435 members for HoR and using the same power for the states would get you between a range of 60 members for Wyoming to 225 for California.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

How did you calculate this?

I used the population data for 2008, and divided each state by 532,688 (Wyoming), and rounded to the nearest whole number.  I then added 2 for Senators, and there you have it.

I'm wondering if it would be the same if you used the formula that is actually used to determine house allocation.

I think Deeds for Gov gave DC a Representative by accident.

Anyway for 568 Representatives plus 1 delegate for DC I get basically the same map except Maine and New Hampshire gain a Representative each while New York and Texas lose a Representative each.

If you use the same target divisor, the population of the smallest state, with Huntington-Hill (the current U.S. method) as Deeds did with Webster, you have 571 Representatives, with Texas getting the 569^th Representative, New York the 570^th, and Ohio the 571^st.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

How did you calculate this?

I used the population data for 2008, and divided each state by 532,688 (Wyoming), and rounded to the nearest whole number.  I then added 2 for Senators, and there you have it.

I'm wondering if it would be the same if you used the formula that is actually used to determine house allocation.

You would have to 1) be a statistics major and 2) have an essentially unlimited amount of time to do that, so I'm guessing he didn't, for which I don't blame him at all.

Took me about 15 minutes with a spreadsheet to do it, and I'm no statistics major.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Montana, with nearly 1 million people should have at least 2 representatives in the House.

Based on the 2008 Estimates, Montana gets the 446th seat.

I also think that any state whose delegation constitutes more than 10% of the total House membership should be strongly encouraged to split into multiple states.

There is also something to be said about discouraging small states.  If instead of an automatic representative, we used Hamilton-Hill with a divisor of 1 to see if a state is eligible for a first representative, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Vermont would not get even their first Representative using the 2008 estimates. (A more generous divisor of 1/√2 would see all those states keep their Representatives, a less generous divisor of √2 would mean a state wouldn't get representatives until it had a large enough population to support 2 representative, except in the extraordinary case where the formula would give it the 435th and 436th Representatives.)

Incidentally, based on the 2008 estimates, if Puerto Rico became state and the House remains at 435 members, Ohio, Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois, California, and Texas would be the states that lose out on a representative each.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Wrote in a different H, my bad.

BTW, fixing the desired average at P/435, determining, then calculate v as you did and round each state to nearest, you end up with only 432 representatives.  Still, it does give a good first approximation to the result of Huntington-Hill.

BTW, my own preferred system for determining the quota ∛P², has its own oddities.  In theory, with the 2008 pop. est. that would give 672 Representatives (∛P rounded to nearest integer), but it ends up giving only 670.

Also if Puerto Rico became a state, that would affect the population only enough to bring the target up 675, while Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington would each lose a Representative while Puerto Rico gained 9, bringing the House to only 671.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Do a map of 2000.

Map of 2008, using my preferred apportionment using the 2000 census data.

Every state except for Rhode Island and Wyoming picks up extra representatives.
655 Representatives total, quota population of 429,445.

Can't say what the effects would be if DC and PR were treated as States, since the Census Bureau did not calculate the apportionment population for either.  Technically, it should have done so for DC at the very least.  In theory, DC can have more than 3 EV's, tho with the 2000 Census data it would have required a House of 806 members, at which point Wyoming gets a second seat and DC gets a fourth EV.