How Many Seats in House of Representatives Per State

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall exist apportioned among the several States which may be included inside this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of gratis Persons, including those jump to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be fabricated within three Years subsequently the start Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and inside every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Fashion as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed i for every thirty Thousand, simply each State shall have at Least one Representative…"
— U.S. Constitution, Commodity I, section two, clause 3

"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States co-ordinate to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each Land, 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 Us, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male person inhabitants of such Country, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the U.s.a., or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the ground of representation therein shall exist reduced in the proportion which the number of such male person citizens shall bear to the whole number of male person citizens 20-one years of age in such State."
— U.S. Constitution, Amendment Xiv, section two

The Constitution provides for proportional representation in the U.Southward. Firm of Representatives and the seats in the Business firm are apportioned based on state population according to the constitutionally mandated Census. Representation based on population in the House was one of the near of import components of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Origins

The American Revolution was, in office, a competition almost the very definition of representation. In England, the Business firm of Commons represented every British subject regardless of whether the subject could actually vote for its membership. In this sense, most people living in areas under British rule—including Northward America—were merely "virtually 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 revenue enhancement without representation!"

Afterwards the war, the founders struggled to pattern a system of government to better represent the inhabitants of the new country than did the British model which once governed them. The Manufactures of Confederation created the first national congress to represent the interests of united states of america: each country would appoint betwixt 2 and seven delegates to the congress, and each state delegation would have one vote.

Ramble 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 Administration The 14th Amendment declared that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. were citizens and that any country that denied or abridged the voting rights of males over the age of 21 would exist subject to proportional reductions in its representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Approved by the 39th Congress (1865–1867) every bit H.J. Res. 127; ratified by united states of america on July 9, 1868.

The Ramble Convention addressed multiple concerns in the process of designing the new Congress. The first was the relationship of the least populous states to the most populous. The battle betwixt big and minor states colored virtually of the Convention and virtually concluded hopes of creating a national regime. Pennsylvania Delegate Benjamin Franklin summed up the disagreement: "If a proportional representation takes identify, the small States argue that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the big 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 lilliputian from both, and makes a good joint." The "expert joint" that emerged from weeks of stalemate was called the "Corking Compromise" and created a bicameral legislature with a Firm, where membership was determined past state population, and a Senate, where each state had 2 seats regardless of population. The compromise enabled the Convention, teetering on the brink of dissolution, to proceed.

The Convention determined that a Demography of the population conducted every 10 years would enable the House to adjust the distribution of its Membership on a regular ground. The method, still, proved controversial. Southern delegates argued that their slaves counted in the population, yielding them more Representatives. Northern delegates countered that slaves were property and should not be counted at all. The consequence was the notorious "Iii-Fifths Compromise," where slaves were counted as three-fifths of a complimentary person. Having originated in tax policy, this rule was defended during the Convention every bit a necessary compromise given the "peculiar" country of slaves equally both property and "moral" individuals bailiwick to criminal police. Virginia'south James Madison wrote in Federalist 54 that the reasoning appeared "to be a picayune strained in some points" only "fully reconciles me to the calibration of representation, which the Convention accept established."

Representation was also linked to taxation. Before federal income taxes or tariffs, u.s.a. contributed to the national government with local taxes, often flat poll taxes on each citizen. Since constitutional framers had to provide for the funding of the new regime, they debated the proper relationship between representation and tax. Several delegates argued that geographic size or useable farmland were improve measures of state wealth than mere population. Delegates, however, settled on proportional contributions based on population and, by extension, the number of Members in the House of Representatives. Large states, with more than human capital, should contribute more revenue to the national government and also have more seats in the legislature as a result. This fulfilled the hope of the American Revolution: taxation with representation.

14th Amendment

The 14th Subpoena to the Constitution, ratified subsequently the Ceremonious War, began to remedy the "original sin" of the Constitution, and ordered the Census to fully count every individual regardless of skin color. While it was a step in the correct management, information technology did little to ease the country's racial tensions. Moreover, instead of directly providing for the enfranchisement of African Americans, the amendment stipulated that only males over the historic period of 21 could not be discriminated confronting when voting unless they had participated in rebellion against the Spousal relationship or "other crime." Women were non enfranchised until 1920, when the 19th Amendment stipulated that "the correct of citizens of the United States to vote shall non be denied or abridged . . . on account of sexual practice." In 1971, the 26th Amendment enfranchised those xviii years of age and older. The latter amendments, withal, did not alter 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 equally states in 1959. As a outcome, over the terminal century, congressional districts have more than tripled in size—from an average of roughly 212,000 inhabitants after the 1910 Census to about 710,000 inhabitants post-obit the 2010 Census. Each land'southward congressional delegation changes as a result of population shifts, with states either gaining or losing seats based on population. While the number of House Members for each state is determined according to a statistical formula in federal law, each land is then responsible for designing the shape of its districts so long as information technology accords with various provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which seeks to protect racial minorities' voting and representation rights.

For Further Reading

U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. Department of Commerce. "Most Congressional Apportionment." http://www.census.gov/population/apportionment/near/.

Eagles, Charles West. Democracy Delayed: Congressional Reapportionment and Urban–Rural Disharmonize in the 1920s. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Printing, 2010.

Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. 4 vols. (New Haven and London: Yale Academy 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 1000 Convention. (New York: Macmillan, 1966)(.

Tate, Katherine. Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives in the U.S. Congress. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

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Source: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Proportional-Representation/

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