What are the Census, Reapportionment, and Redistricting? In Shaw v. Reno and Miller v. Reapportionment and redistricting mean essentially the same thing. Found insidePublisher Description Found insideThis book considers the political and constitutional consequences of Vieth v. However, even well-known or popular representatives might fear for their jobs, not because of elections, but owing to population changes. Reapportionment and Redistricting. In the meantime, we have other newsletters that you might enjoy.
Find more at www. Census Block-level projections, which are more granular, can be used to measure the impact of a proposed redistricting plan over a ten-year period. Reapportionment vs. Recognizing that reapportionment always involves political motives, the courts have been reluctant to decide the legality of redistricting that favors one political party at the expense of another.
The most significant changes will occur before the election, but the maps are worth watching through the entire decade for subsequent changes. So, what exactly is redistricting and why is it important? Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, In , in Karcher v. Daggett, a five-justice majority rejected the reapportionment of New Jersey into districts, the largest and smallest of which were separated by less than four thousand votes.
The Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14 th Amendment dictate that in any given state, congressional districts and state legislative districts must have equal populations. The Census. Found insideA concise and provocative introduction to state legislative politics, State Legislatures Today is designed as a supplement for state and local government courses and upper level courses on legislative politics.
Reapportionment and redistricting occurs every 10 years after the census, with states with the fastest-growing populations gaining seats in Congress at the expense of those with slower-growing or. State-level projections can be used to predict the reapportionment of House of Representatives seats. This division was clearest in Lucas v. Forty-Fourth General Assembly of Colorado, involving an apportionment plan that became a state constitutional amendment after adoption, by referendum, by a majority of the voters in every county of the state.
What is reapportionment? In , the U. Found insideErik J. Engstrom offers a historical perspective on the effects of gerrymandering on elections and party control of the U. Redistricting happens every 10 years, after each U. In this case, however, the Court found that an Indiana state legislative apportionment plan did not dilute the votes of Democrats.
Yet, it is unclear what this means for the law and politics of reapportionment. The continuing importance of honest representation has led the Court to hold that partisan gerrymandering is a justiciable issue—Davis v.
In reapportionment cases, the Supreme Court has had a longstanding affinity for the protection of the civil liberties of individuals rather than community interests. Redistricting, Reapportionment Overdue in Chestertown December 11, by Daniel Menefee State law gives no redistricting guidance to municipalities; so local jurisdictions like Chestertown are governed by the Voting Rights Act, court rulings and the U.
There were 12 seats that shifted after the and censuses and 19 seats after the census. Reapportionment is the redistribution of seats in the U. House of Representatives based on changes in population. Congressional redistricting starts with reapportionment. As used in this analysis, reapportionment refers to the process of distributing the House seats among the states after every census. For a recent summary of reapportionment and redistricting, view the publication Reapportionment and Redistricting in Nevada: An Overview that explains the process, history, and current status of Redistricting in Nevada.
Assessing the Impact of Reapportionment and Redistricting… Apportionment. As a consequence, most incumbents ran in newly numbered districts, yet these remained favorable to their re-election. Moncrief brings together some of the best-known scholars in American state and electoral politics to explore the unique processes and problems of redistricting in the western United States.
See Iowa Code ch. Prior to the start of the Regular Session the Legislature will hold interim committee meetings, at which time the committees that conduct the redistricting and reapportionment processes may meet. Such resistance eventually produced some very bad results. Fair redistricting affects our ability to address every other issue. Reapportionment is the process by which the seats in the United States House of Representatives are Hawaii lawmakers were considering changes to the state reapportionment law to clarify who counts as a permanent resident and require public disclosure of reapportionment … In addition to who leads the congressional redistricting process, state and federal authorities set legal requirements and guidelines to reduce partisan redistricting and protect racial minorities, ethnic groups, and other communities of interest.
Reapportionment and redistricting occurs every 10 years after the census, with states with the fastest-growing populations gaining seats in Congress at … by Bruce Walker December 24, Arizona gains a seat through reapportionment, and accomplishes redistricting via an independent commission. Districts determine which voters participate in which elections. This brief presents an analysis of population change at the state, county and congressional district levels to illustrate the changes to come in the process of congressional reapportionment and redistricting as it affects federal political representation in New York State.
The most recent Census concluded in October and though the data has not been finalized and made available by the U. Census Bureau, planning for the redistricting of Maryland is now underway. So, redistricting generally deals with state-level politics, while reapportionment usually has to do with our representation in the federal government.
Since populations change over time, redistricting and reapportionment must … 3. But no issue is Reapportionment is the process of reassigning congressional seats among the states after the Census. How does redistricting differ from reapportionment? Redrawing precinct lines to conform to South Carolina House and Senate district lines after each redistricting, with a state-mandated minimum and maximum number of voters per precinct.
Members of the Commission must act to ensure equal and fair representation to the persons of Dutchess County. Part 1 … Some functions of this site are disabled for browsers blocking jQuery. The National Redistricting Action Fund also has litigation in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Minnesota, based on foresight that these states will be unable to reach redistricting measures in time. Hawaii's Reapportionment Commission consists of eight appointees of the state legislative party leaders, and these appointees select a ninth member to chair the commission.
O'Connor The General Assembly will face many tough issues: education reform, tax increases, economic issues, prison construction and correc-tion alternatives, environmental dilemmas, and the like. The Committee unanimously recommended this change at its November 1, , meeting. In Connecticut, responsibility for redrawing legislative and congressional district lines generally rests with the General Assembly. Under the reapportionment plan approved Thursday, the board remains divided into 11 districts with newly created boundaries and two members elected from each.
More About Redistricting. Technically, yes, but as a … - Thursday, April 29, - … The Iowa Constitution gives the primary responsibility for reapportionment of legislative districts to the general assembly. The state was divided into forty-two senatorial districts each entitled to elect one senator.
This process is designed to be detached from Legislative authority or influence. Given that the Democrats only won a edge in the House last year, Republicans only need to net five seats to win the House. Maptitude for Redistricting includes everything you need to build and analyze reapportionment plans. Altogether, seven seats moved between 13 states. At the conclusion of each decennial census, the results are used to calculate the number of House memberships to which each state is entitled.
As reapportionment and redistricting are part of the same process, they are often used interchangeably, despite the fact that they are two distinct terms. Every 10 years, following the census, states are required to redraw district lines.
Legislative Reapportionment Commission. Such individuals must be counted for reapportionment and redistricting purposes at the individual's last known residence before incarceration. Congressional apportionment or reapportionment is the National Government process of dividing seats for the … Apportionment is the process of dividing the memberships, or seats, in the U.
House of Representatives among the 50 states. As reapportionment and redistricting plans across the 50 states are finalized and candidate recruitment begins in earnest, the contours of the election are coming into focus. The federal constitution calls for reapportionment of congressional seats according to population from a decennial census Section 2, Article I.
April 26, Redistrict. Redistricting, or reapportionment, is the process by which state legislatures redraw political boundaries every 10 years following the decennial U. In the House, federal law requires that there is always a total of … On Jan. Reapportionment ensures each political district has been created equally using census data. Creating a nonpartisan and independent reapportionment commission to reapportion the South Carolina House, Senate, and Congressional districts.
Census Bureau in , 9 which helped establish a recurring decennial census process and timeline. Other legislation established the current number of House seats; 10 this number was first used following the census and subsequently became fixed under the Permanent Apportionment Act of The timeline for congressional reapportionment and current method for allocating seats among states were contained in the Apportionment Act of , which would then apply to every reapportionment cycle, beginning with the one following the census.
The apportionment steps detailed below are also summarized by the timeline in Figure 1. Under federal law, April 1 in any year ending in "0" marks the official decennial census date and the beginning of the population counting process. Census Bureau calculates the apportionment population for the United States from the information it collects in the decennial census and certain administrative records.
Under requirements in the Constitution, each state must receive at least one House Representative, and under statute, the current House size is set at seats. The priority list rankings are calculated by taking each state's apportionment population from the most recent census, and multiplying it by a series of values.
The multipliers used are the reciprocals of the geometric means between every pair of consecutive whole numbers, with those whole numbers representing House seats to be apportioned. See the Appendix for additional information on the method of equal proportions and other methods proposed or used in previous apportionments. The President then transmits a statement to Congress showing 1 "the whole number of persons in each State," as determined by the decennial census and certain administrative records; and 2 the resulting number of Representatives each state would be entitled to under an apportionment, given the existing number of Representatives and using the method of equal proportions.
The President submits this statement to Congress within the first week of the first regular session of the next Congress typically, early January of a year ending in "1".
Each state receives the number of Representatives noted in the President's statement for its House delegation, beginning at the start of the next session of Congress typically, early January of a year ending in "3".
States may then engage in their own redistricting processes, which vary based on state laws. Federal law contains requirements for how apportionment changes will apply to states in the event that any congressional elections occur between a reapportionment and the completion of a state's redistricting process.
In these instances, states with the same number of House seats would use the existing congressional districts to elect Representatives; states with more seats than districts would elect a Representative for the "new" seat through an at-large election and use existing districts for the other seats; and states with fewer seats than districts would elect all Representatives through an at-large election. Congressional redistricting involves creating or redrawing geographic boundaries for U.
House districts within a state. Redistricting procedures are largely determined by state law and vary across states, but states must comply with certain parameters established by federal statute and court decisions. In general, there is variation among states regarding the practice of drawing districts and which decisionmakers are involved in the process. Across states, there are some common standards and criteria for districts, some of which reflect values that are commonly thought of as traditional districting practices.
Districting criteria may result either from shared expectations and precedent regarding what districts should be like, or they may result from certain standards established by current federal statute and court decisions. These criteria typically reflect a goal of enabling "fair" representation for all residents, rather than allowing arbitrary, or discriminatory, map lines.
Redistricting efforts intended to unfairly favor one group's interests over another's are commonly referred to as gerrymandering. Packing describes district boundaries that are drawn to concentrate individuals who are thought to share similar voting behaviors into certain districts.
Concentrating prospective voters with shared preferences can result in a large number of "wasted votes" for these districts, as their Representatives will often be elected by a supermajority that far exceeds the number of votes required for a candidate to win. Cracking may be thought of as the opposite of packing, and occurs when individuals who are thought to share similar voting preferences are deliberately dispersed across a number of districts.
This approach dilutes the voting strength of a group and can prevent its preferred candidates from receiving a majority of the vote in any district. For some states, redistricting following an apportionment may be necessary to account for House seats gained or lost based on the most recent census population count.
Some states might make additional changes to district boundaries in the years following an initial redistricting; in some instances, such changes are required by legal decisions finding that the initial districts were improperly drawn. From time to time, Congress considers legislation that would affect apportionment and redistricting processes. The Constitution requires the apportionment of House seats across states based on population size, but it does not specify how those seats are to be distributed within each state.
Most redistricting practices are determined by state constitutions or statutes, although some parts of the redistricting process are affected by federal statute or judicial interpretations. The current system of single-member districts rather than a general ticket system, where voters could select a slate of Representatives for an entire state is provided by 2 U. For example, in the s and early s, some federal apportionment statutes included other standards for congressional districts, such as population equality or geographic compactness.
Many of the other federal parameters for congressional redistricting have resulted from judicial decisions. One area of redistricting addressed by federal standards is population equality across districts. Legislative provisions, requiring that congressional districts "[contain] as nearly as practicable an equal number of inhabitants," were found in federal apportionment acts between and Supreme Court has also addressed population size variance among congressional districts within a state, or malapportionment.
Under what is known as the "equality standard" or "one person, one vote" principle, the Court has found congressional districts within a state should be drawn to approximately equal population sizes. These equal population standards apply only to districts within a state, not to districts across states. To illustrate how district population sizes can vary across states, Table 3 provides Census Bureau estimates from to for the average district population size nationwide, as well as estimates for which states had the largest and smallest average district population sizes.
Wide variations in state populations and the U. Constitution's requirement of at least one House seat per state make it difficult to ensure equal district sizes across states, particularly if the size of the House is fixed.
Census, in order to account for the sizable population shifts that can occur within a year span. Table 3. Summary of Average U. House District Population Sizes, State had a single House district during the noted apportionment year. To assist states in drawing districts that have equal population sizes, the Census Bureau provides population tabulations for certain geographic areas identified by state officials, if requested, under the Census Redistricting Data Program, created by P. Under the program, the Census Bureau is required to provide total population counts for small geographic areas; in practice, the Bureau also typically provides additional demographic information, such as race, ethnicity, and voting age population, to states.
One key statutory requirement for congressional districts comes from Section 2 of the VRA, as amended, which prohibits states or their political subdivisions from imposing any voting qualification, practice, or procedure that results in denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race, color, or membership in a language minority.
In addition to requirements of population equality and compliance with the VRA, several other redistricting criteria are common across many states today, including compactness, contiguity, and observing political boundaries.
These factors are sometimes referred to as traditional districting principles and are often related to geography. The placement of district boundaries, for example, might reflect natural features of the state's land; how the population is distributed across a certain land area; and efforts to preserve existing subdivisions or communities such as town boundaries or neighborhood areas. Redistricting laws in many states currently include such criteria, but they are not explicitly addressed in current federal statute.
Previous federal apportionment statutes, however, sometimes contained similar provisions. Table 4. Additional information may be available from individual states. See the following text sections for an explanation of the criteria used as column headings in this table.
Notes: States excluded from this table do not specify any of these criteria for congressional redistricting. As a districting criterion, compactness reflects the idea that a congressional district should represent a geographically consolidated area. In some conceptualizations, a compact district would have an identifiable "center" that seems reasonably equidistant from any of its boundaries.
Federal apportionment acts between and contained a provision requiring that congressional districts be of "contiguous territory," 49 and most states have included similar language in their current redistricting laws. For a district to be contiguous, it generally must be possible to travel from any point in the district to any other place in the district without crossing into a different district. Most states require that redistricting practitioners take into account existing political boundaries, such as towns, cities, or counties.
In many instances, districts may not be able to be drawn in ways that encompass entire political subdivisions, given other districting standards, like population equality, that could take precedence. Maintaining political subdivisions can also help simplify election administration by ensuring that a local election jurisdiction is not split among multiple congressional districts.
Some state laws direct redistricting authorities to preserve the "core" of existing congressional districts; other states prohibit drawing district boundaries that would create electoral contests between incumbent House Members. Some states include the preservation of communities of interest as a criterion in their redistricting laws. People within a community of interest generally have a shared background or common interests that may be relevant to their legislative representation.
These recognized similarities may be due to shared social, cultural, historical, racial, ethnic, partisan, or economic factors. In some instances, communities of interest may naturally be preserved by following other redistricting criteria, such as compactness or preserving political subdivisions. Some states include measures providing that districts cannot be drawn to unduly favor a particular candidate or political party.
The term gerrymander originated to describe districts drawn to favor a particular political party, 53 and it is often used in this context today. Redistricting has traditionally been viewed as an inherently political process, where authorities have used partisan considerations in drawing district boundaries.
Districts generally may be drawn in a way that is politically advantageous to certain candidates or political parties, unless prohibited by state law. Redistricting processes are fundamentally the responsibility of state governments under current law and practice. Among the 43 states with multiple House districts, a variety of approaches are taken, but generally, states either allow their state legislatures or a separate redistricting commission to determine congressional district boundaries.
The map in Figure 3 displays the redistricting methods currently used across states. Figure 3. State Redistricting Methods. Notes: Iowa has nonpartisan legislative staff create its redistricting maps but requires legislative approval to enact them.
Montana would use a redistricting commission if it receives an additional House seat. Historically, and in the majority of states today, congressional district boundaries are primarily determined by state legislatures. Currently, 37 states authorize their state legislatures to establish congressional district boundaries.
Most of these states enable the governor to veto a redistricting plan created by the legislature; Connecticut and North Carolina do not allow a gubernatorial veto. Other states, in recent years, have begun to use redistricting commissions, which may be more removed from state legislative politics.
In five other states Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, and Virginia , a commission serves in an advisory capacity during the redistricting process. Commissions may also be used as a "backup" or alternate means of redistricting if the legislature's plan is not enacted, such as in Connecticut, Indiana, and Ohio.
The composition of congressional redistricting commissions can also vary; many include members of the public selected by a method intended to be nonpartisan or bipartisan, whereas other commissions may include political appointees or elected officials, such as in Hawaii and New Jersey.
A commission's membership, the authority granted to it, its relationship to other state government entities, and other features may affect whether a commission is perceived to be undertaking an objective process or a more politicized one.
Some proponents of redistricting commissions believe that using independent redistricting commissions can prevent opportunities for partisan gerrymandering and may create more competitive and representative districts.
The timeline for redistricting also varies across states, and can be affected by state or federal requirements regarding the redistricting process; the efficiency of the legislature, commission, or other entities involved in drawing a state's districts; and, potentially, by legal or political challenges made to a drafted or enacted redistricting plan. Many states complete the process within the next year. After the reapportionment, for example, Iowa was the first state to complete its initial congressional redistricting plan on March 31, , and 31 other states completed their initial plans by the end of The remaining 11 states with multiple congressional districts completed their initial redistricting plans by the middle of , with Kansas becoming the final state to complete its initial plan on June 7, Although redistricting processes in practice today are largely governed by state law, Congress has, at times, considered an expanded federal government role, which could serve to standardize certain elements of the redistricting process across states.
Given the historically limited role the federal government has played in the redistricting process, concerns about federalism may arise in the context of certain congressional efforts addressing redistricting. The types of legislative proposals briefly introduced in this section reflect some common examples of redistricting bills introduced in recent Congresses; they are not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the options Congress has considered or could consider related to redistricting.
Some legislative proposals in recent Congresses would establish criteria for districts, such as population equality, compactness, contiguity, or preservation of existing political subdivisions. Most of these bills have been referred to committee but not passed by either chamber. In the th Congress, H. Apportionment and redistricting address fundamental elements of representational democracy. Determining how many elected representatives should serve in the House, and how many people should be in each congressional district, are central questions for those who are concerned with how responsive the House can be to the interests of the American public.
During earlier eras in the United States, the number of seats in the House of Representatives generally increased as the American population increased, and district sizes could be kept more equal over time and across states. The House size, however, has been set at seats throughout the last century, while the national population has continued to grow and concentrate in certain geographic areas, leading to larger constituencies across all House districts over time and disparate district sizes across states.
Certain elements of the apportionment process are established by the U. This includes the requirement for representation in the House based on state population size; the reallocation of House seats every 10 years upon the completion of a national population count; and the requirements that each state receives at least one Representative and that there can be no more than one Representative for every 30, persons. Other elements of the process are addressed through congressional legislation, such as the overall number of House seats or method of distributing seats among the states.
Congress more regularly legislated in this area prior to the mid th century, passing decennial acts to address upcoming censuses and apportionments, rather than creating bills intended to apply for all future reapportionment cycles. Whereas apportionment is a process largely governed by federal statute, redistricting is a process, in practice, largely governed by state law. Certain federal standards apply to House districts, generally in the interest of preserving equal access to representation, but the method and timeline by which those districts are created is largely determined by state law.
In states with multiple congressional districts, there are a multitude of ways in which district boundaries can be drawn, depending upon the criteria used to create the districts. There is often an expectation that congressional districts will be drawn in a way that ensures "fair" representation, but "fairness" can be a somewhat subjective determination.
Many lawmakers and members of the public may agree on some of the more basic representational principles embedded in apportionment and redistricting law, but can find it difficult to apply those principles in practice.
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