RandomVariable
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- Jan 7, 2014
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- #21
South Dakota is one of 6ish states where each citizen's vote counts for more than the rest of the country. They get 3 electoral votes. 2 for their 2 senators and 1 for their congressman. But the rules that determine the number of congressman per state do not apply to those states because they don't have enough people to support a single full fledged congressman.
Anyways... fun fact.
VA population as of 2010 - 8.1 million
VA # of congressman at 2010 - 11
That means 737,000 per electoral vote
Wyoming population as of 2010 - 563,000
That means 563,000 per electoral vote
Which is why we need an HOR of at least 1,000 and we need to use the Wyoming rule.
In other words, a CD would have be be at least as small as the population of Wyoming, or smaller.
317 million citizens / 1000 reps = ca. 317,000 constituents per rep.
in 1800, it was 30,000 constituents per rep.
I would be a start to fairer representation.
I don't like this idea for a reason that occurred to me while looking at South Dakota and Idaho, which have 1 and 2 Representatives respectively. 7 states have 1 Representative. California has 53, Texas 36, Florida and New York 27 each. While I understand the 2 Senators person state and each Representative represents certain number of people I don't think the Founding Fathers ever contemplated such a concentration of people. I expect I will get a better feel for how this balance has real affects on the House over the next few months. From first appearances however I think South Dakota with more than 1 and California will less than 53 would be a more accurate representation of the nation.