Apportionment (politics)
Encyclopedia
Apportionment is the process of allocating
political power among a set of principles (or defined constituencies). In most representative governments, political power has most recently been apportioned among constituencies based on population, but there is a long history of different approaches.
The United States Constitution
, however, apportions political power
differently between its upper house
, the Senate
, and its lower house
, the House of Representatives
. Within the Senate, each state is represented by two seats, the result of compromise when the constitution was written. Seats in the US House of Representatives (the House) are apportioned among the states based on the relative population of each state in the total population of the union. The states then create districts from which representatives will be elected to serve in the US House of Representatives. The ideal is that each district would have an equal amount of population. States can lose or gain seats at each decennial census. Districts must be redrawn within each state after each census to reflect population changes.
Apportionment is also applied in party-list proportional representation
elections to distribute seats between different parties once they have won a particular percentage of the vote. Current philosophy is that each person's vote should carry the same weight in legislative bodies that are derived from population.
There are many different mathematical schemes for calculating apportionment, which can produce different results in terms of seats for the relevant party or sector. Additionally, all methods are subject to one or more anomalies
.
With the Hamilton method
, party A with vote total P(A) is entitled to its mth seat before party B with vote total P(B) is entitled to its nth seat if and only if P(A)/Q − m > P(B)/Q − n, where Q is a fixed amount called a quota.
A popular alternative is a family of methods where the condition can be represented as P(A)/f(m − 1) > P(B)/f(n − 1) where f(x) is a function that, for practical applications, yields a number between x and x + 1. Five choices for f(x) have received support over the years:
and the Netherlands
cannot be malapportioned.
There is no single agreed upon way of measuring malapportionment. Using the ratio of the largest district to the smallest district may seem like an obvious way, but it does not tell us the overall degree of malapportionment.
When this ratio is low, malapportionment is absent. For example, in the US, congressional districts of the same state must be as equal in populations as possible. But even with no malapportionment, there may be gerrymandering
involved.
But when the ratio is high, it only says something about the two extreme districts and nothing more. For example, in India, every district is assigned one member in the national lower chamber. The largest district, Thane, had a population of 1,744,592 in 1991. That same year the smallest district Lakeshadweep had a population of 31,665. Even though Lakeshadweep was outnumbered nearly 50:1, it received equal representation. However, this information does not tell us the overall degree of malapportionment nationwide. If the smallest and highest populated districts are outliers, they could represent extreme cases although the overall country has a very low degree of malapportionment.
An additional result of malapportionment occurs when reviewing the majority threshold of the different systems.
Reaching majority in district elections occurs at a percentage-wise lower level of minimally required number of votes than in proportional elections. The exact difference is, ceteris paribus, 3/5ths the number of votes needed to reach the majority threshold in district elections to the number of votes needed to reach that threshold in proportional elections. Naturally, specific circumstances are always different, but the explanation as provided by LocalParty.Org shows that this 3/5ths level does point to the bare minimum to achieve the threshold to become the party or parties with the majority. As an example, when 60% of the eligible voters come out to vote, 30% of all eligible voters is the bare minimum to achieve the majority in proportional elections. Due to the specific nature of district elections, the bare minimum is only 18% of all eligible voters to become the majority party.
This specific difference of when a party or parties achieve the majority
threshold is also found when considering the heat of the elections. In district elections, a specific district can become a battlegrounds for two parties that have a 50-50 chance of winning that seat, while such kind of battleground does not occur in proportional elections. Still, what both have in common is that local strongholds can occur. Yet where political strongholds in proportional elections often still contain a few representatives of other political colors as well, the result in district elections often translates into a local political monopoly
.
Because of the specific results of district elections, that party that had the most votes may still not be the majority party. In the United States, the Republican Party had fewer votes cast for its representatives in the Senate in 2004 than the Democratic representatives, yet had the majority in number of representatives nevertheless. This is only partially explained by the States electing a representative based on geography and not on number of eligible voters.
constituencies in Scotland
and Wales
for the Westminster parliament deliberately had smaller electorates than those in England
. The UK retains some malapportionment, due to rules which favour geographically 'natural' districts and which continue to give proportionally greater representation to Wales
. Population movements between boundary reviews have tended to decrease the number of electors in inner-city districts, a trend that usually favours the Labour Party
.
specifies that this cannot be changed by amendment except with the consent of all affected states. Each state was given equal power. Until passage of the 17th Amendment
, this made sense because the state legislatures appointed senators.
As the people of each state elected their state legislators, they could be said to indirectly elect the Senators.
The amendment provided for direct election of senators by voters of each state. Due in part to the huge sizes of senatorial constituencies and the changes in political campaigns, the cost of candidacy is approximately $12M. This cost of candidacy has increased a candidate's need for fundraising to run a competitive campaign.
Due to the small number of seats in the US House of Representatives (435) Title 2 United States Code section 2 is currently repealed / omitted, opening redistricting to a greater number of US House seats relative to the nation's population of roughly 300 million. The political power of the House of Representatives for several states is malapportioned. The representation was defined by the US Constitution to be based on population, The maximum of 1 US House representative for every 30,000 people, Article I section 2 clause 3, The first census,
when completed, the States used the maximum, sending 106 elected in 1792 to Represent the Thirteen States for the third Congress. The malapportionment occurs because of discrepancies created with rounding. For example, the per capita influence of the state of Wyoming is almost twice that of Montana because the states have the same number of seats, but the population of Wyoming is smaller. The only cure within the Constitution is to dramatically increase the number of members/seats in the House of Representatives. (See Article The First
, Alabama paradox.)
s were historically the bodies that drew the boundaries, and or set the rules for drawing, the districts in a state. As elected representatives, legislators have a self-interest in preserving their own power, and often did not reapportion for fear of losing political power as changes came to states.
Among the most egregious examples in malapportionment was the Alabama state legislature's refusal to reapportion either the state House or Senate from 1901 until 1972. The result was that by 1960, 25% of the population of the state controlled the majority of the seats in the white, rural-dominated legislature. This rural v. urban split went beyond the related fact of racial and class disfranchisement. In 1901, like most southern states about the turn of the century, white Democratic state legislators had ratified a new constitution with provisions that effectively disfranchised African Americans and poor whites. This was a reversal of the state's having extended universal white suffrage at its establishment in 1819. By 1940, 600,000 poor whites and 520,000 African Americans had been disfranchised. The disfranchised had no representation in the state legislature. The failure of the legislature to reapportion meant also that the hundreds of thousands of industrialized and urbanized populations of the state were underrepresented for most of the 20th century.
In many states in the US, malapportionment was related to racial and class issues. For example, during much of the 20th century in Southern States, the Democratic
rural areas dominated urban areas by refusing to redistrict although populations changed considerably. While most African Americans were disfranchised in the South, most voters were Democrats, but the urban populations suffered from inadequate representation. The result was that, in some cases, rural districts would have drastically less population than an urban counterpart and still hold an equal or greater number of representatives or senators, thereby diluting the voice in the legislature
of the latter compared to that of the former.
Several notable lawsuits brought to the Supreme Court in the early 1960s challenged state apportionment systems, with Baker v. Carr
and Reynolds v. Sims
among the most important of these. The plaintiffs claimed that malapportionment was discriminatory and illegal under the Fourteenth Amendment
. The US Supreme Court agreed, citing the doctrine of "One Man, One Vote" .
An example of how “One Man, One Vote” has helped to minimize malapportionment is that it requires congressional redistricting
every ten years, following the census. One Pennsylvania plan was rejected by courts because the districts were nineteen voters apart, in districts of half a million people. The use of computers allows the states to virtually eliminate malapportionment every ten years with the census data. However, the ruling does allow for gerrymandering
. During congressional redistricting, districts may each be assigned an equal population, but the use of gerrymandering may lead to similarly unequal representation along political party lines, with the party in power trying to ensure its re-election.
Following the 1990 census, for example, the state house of Tennessee's first attempt to redistrict was rejected by the courts for systematically over-representing rural West Tennessee, then predominantly Democratic, at the expense of rural East Tennessee, then predominantly Republican. . Following the 2000 census, Georgia's first attempt at redistricting the state senate was thrown out for systematically under-populating then Democratic-held districts and systematically overpopulating then Republican-held districts throughout the state. .
is elected on a basis of equality among the states: all states elect 12 Senators, regardless of population. This leads to Tasmania, with a population of 502,000 people electing the same number of Senators as New South Wales, which has a population of almost 7.1 million. The senate is designed to ensure that the smaller states are not neglected.
The distribution of seats in both the federal and state legislatures have been subject to malapportionment, often resulting in rural constituencies containing far fewer voters than urban ones, in turn often maintaining in power parties with rural support bases despite polling far fewer popular votes. Well-known examples include the differences between urban and rural constituency sizes in many Australia
n states. Past apportionments in Queensland
, Western Australia
and the 'Playmander
' in South Australia
were notorious examples. The effects of malapportionment vary with time: deliberate over-representation of rural Queensland changed from favouring Labor to favouring the National Party . There were well-meaning supporters of such arrangements due to Australia's unique demographics where the city population completely dominates the sparsely populated countryside. Therefore, it was argued that these practices were necessary to give country people fair representation. See: Australian electoral system#Gerrymandering and malapportionment
. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party
thus wins more seats in the Japanese parliament because its voters are concentrated in more rural prefectures.
consists of 350 members. Each Spanish province is a constituency entitled to an initial minimum of two seats for a total of 100 seats, while the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are allocated one member each. The remaining 248 seats are allocated among the fifty provinces in proportion to their populations. The result is that the smaller provinces are virtually guaranteed a minimum of three seats and have a disproportionate share of seats relative to their electorate. In 2004 for example, Spain had 34,571,831 voters giving an average of 98,777 voters per deputy. However the number of voters per deputy varied from 129,269 in Barcelona and 127,377 in Madrid to 38,714 and 26,177 respectively in the smallest provinces of Teruel and Soria.
In the Spanish Senate each of the forty-seven mainland provinces are assigned four seats, while the three largest islands are allocated three seats each, and the seven smaller islands one each. The North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are allocated two seats each. Additionally, the legislative assemblies of the seventeen autonomous communities into which the provinces of Spain are grouped are entitled to appoint at least one Senator each, as well as one Senator for every million voters. The result is a bias in favour of mainly rural areas. For example the community of Madrid with 4,458,540 voters in 2004 has 9 senators while Castilla y León with 2,179,521 voters has a total of 39 senators.
, South Africa's constituency boundaries meant that sparsely populated rural constituencies in the Afrikaner heartland had relatively few eligible voters compared to the urban constituencies in Cape Town. The rural electorates often strongly supported the Herenigde Nasionale Party
, led by Daniel Malan and the urban electorates often supported Jan Christiaan Smuts' United Party
(the incumbent prime minister and his party, 90% of whose seats were urban). Come the 1948 General Election, Jan Smuts' party was unpopular on account of many factors. Ultimately, Jan Smuts won the popular vote, but Daniel Malan won more seats, meaning that his party was able to form a government bilaterally with the Afrikaner Party
and gain an absolute majority in parliament. Malapportionment was a key tool that allowed the National Party to implement its Apartheid program within the notionally democratic parliament.
, which required urban districts to contain more people than rural ones but did not give them any equivalent increase in representation.
Allocation
Allocation may refer to:* Computers** Delayed allocation** Block allocation map** FAT** IP address allocation** Memory allocation** C++ allocators** No-write allocation ** Register allocation* Economics** Economic system** Asset allocation...
political power among a set of principles (or defined constituencies). In most representative governments, political power has most recently been apportioned among constituencies based on population, but there is a long history of different approaches.
The United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
, however, apportions political power
Political power
Political power is a type of power held by a group in a society which allows administration of some or all of public resources, including labour, and wealth. There are many ways to obtain possession of such power. At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by the...
differently between its upper house
Upper house
An upper house, often called a senate, is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house; a legislature composed of only one house is described as unicameral.- Possible specific characteristics :...
, the Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
, and its lower house
Lower house
A lower house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house.Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide the lower house has come to wield more power...
, the House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
. Within the Senate, each state is represented by two seats, the result of compromise when the constitution was written. Seats in the US House of Representatives (the House) are apportioned among the states based on the relative population of each state in the total population of the union. The states then create districts from which representatives will be elected to serve in the US House of Representatives. The ideal is that each district would have an equal amount of population. States can lose or gain seats at each decennial census. Districts must be redrawn within each state after each census to reflect population changes.
Apportionment is also applied in party-list proportional representation
Party-list proportional representation
Party-list proportional representation systems are a family of voting systems emphasizing proportional representation in elections in which multiple candidates are elected...
elections to distribute seats between different parties once they have won a particular percentage of the vote. Current philosophy is that each person's vote should carry the same weight in legislative bodies that are derived from population.
There are many different mathematical schemes for calculating apportionment, which can produce different results in terms of seats for the relevant party or sector. Additionally, all methods are subject to one or more anomalies
Apportionment paradox
An apportionment paradox exists when the rules for apportionment in a political system produce results which are unexpected or seem to violate common sense.To apportion is to divide into parts according to some rule, the rule typically being one of proportion...
.
With the Hamilton method
Largest remainder method
The largest remainder method is one way of allocating seats proportionally for representative assemblies with party list voting systems...
, party A with vote total P(A) is entitled to its mth seat before party B with vote total P(B) is entitled to its nth seat if and only if P(A)/Q − m > P(B)/Q − n, where Q is a fixed amount called a quota.
A popular alternative is a family of methods where the condition can be represented as P(A)/f(m − 1) > P(B)/f(n − 1) where f(x) is a function that, for practical applications, yields a number between x and x + 1. Five choices for f(x) have received support over the years:
- f(x) = x (the Adams method or method of smallest divisors)
- f(x) set to the harmonic meanHarmonic meanIn mathematics, the harmonic mean is one of several kinds of average. Typically, it is appropriate for situations when the average of rates is desired....
of x and x + 1 (the Dean method) - f(x) set to the geometric meanGeometric meanThe geometric mean, in mathematics, is a type of mean or average, which indicates the central tendency or typical value of a set of numbers. It is similar to the arithmetic mean, except that the numbers are multiplied and then the nth root of the resulting product is taken.For instance, the...
of x and x + 1 (the Huntington-Hill methodHuntington-Hill methodThe Huntington–Hill method of apportionment assigns seats by finding a modified divisor D such that each constituency's priority quotient , using the geometric mean of the lower and upper quota for the divisor, yields the correct number of seats that minimizes the percentage differences in the size...
or method of equal proportions) - f(x) set to the arithmetic meanArithmetic meanIn mathematics and statistics, the arithmetic mean, often referred to as simply the mean or average when the context is clear, is a method to derive the central tendency of a sample space...
of x and x + 1 (the Webster methodSainte-Laguë methodThe Sainte-Laguë method is one way of allocating seats approximately proportional to the number of votes of a party to a party list used in many voting systems. It is named after the French mathematician André Sainte-Laguë. The Sainte-Laguë method is quite similar to the D'Hondt method, but uses...
or method of major fractions) - f(x) = x + 1 (the Jefferson methodD'Hondt methodThe d'Hondt method is a highest averages method for allocating seats in party-list proportional representation. The method described is named after Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt who described it in 1878...
or method of greatest divisors)
Malapportionment
Malapportionment, or unequal representation, is broad and systematic variance in the size of electoral constituencies resulting in disproportionate representation for a given voter. Malapportionment is only possible within electoral systems that have districted constituencies - an electoral system with only one national constituency such as those in IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
cannot be malapportioned.
There is no single agreed upon way of measuring malapportionment. Using the ratio of the largest district to the smallest district may seem like an obvious way, but it does not tell us the overall degree of malapportionment.
When this ratio is low, malapportionment is absent. For example, in the US, congressional districts of the same state must be as equal in populations as possible. But even with no malapportionment, there may be gerrymandering
Gerrymandering
In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts...
involved.
But when the ratio is high, it only says something about the two extreme districts and nothing more. For example, in India, every district is assigned one member in the national lower chamber. The largest district, Thane, had a population of 1,744,592 in 1991. That same year the smallest district Lakeshadweep had a population of 31,665. Even though Lakeshadweep was outnumbered nearly 50:1, it received equal representation. However, this information does not tell us the overall degree of malapportionment nationwide. If the smallest and highest populated districts are outliers, they could represent extreme cases although the overall country has a very low degree of malapportionment.
An additional result of malapportionment occurs when reviewing the majority threshold of the different systems.
Reaching majority in district elections occurs at a percentage-wise lower level of minimally required number of votes than in proportional elections. The exact difference is, ceteris paribus, 3/5ths the number of votes needed to reach the majority threshold in district elections to the number of votes needed to reach that threshold in proportional elections. Naturally, specific circumstances are always different, but the explanation as provided by LocalParty.Org shows that this 3/5ths level does point to the bare minimum to achieve the threshold to become the party or parties with the majority. As an example, when 60% of the eligible voters come out to vote, 30% of all eligible voters is the bare minimum to achieve the majority in proportional elections. Due to the specific nature of district elections, the bare minimum is only 18% of all eligible voters to become the majority party.
This specific difference of when a party or parties achieve the majority
Majority
A majority is a subset of a group consisting of more than half of its members. This can be compared to a plurality, which is a subset larger than any other subset; i.e. a plurality is not necessarily a majority as the largest subset may consist of less than half the group's population...
threshold is also found when considering the heat of the elections. In district elections, a specific district can become a battlegrounds for two parties that have a 50-50 chance of winning that seat, while such kind of battleground does not occur in proportional elections. Still, what both have in common is that local strongholds can occur. Yet where political strongholds in proportional elections often still contain a few representatives of other political colors as well, the result in district elections often translates into a local political monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
.
Because of the specific results of district elections, that party that had the most votes may still not be the majority party. In the United States, the Republican Party had fewer votes cast for its representatives in the Senate in 2004 than the Democratic representatives, yet had the majority in number of representatives nevertheless. This is only partially explained by the States electing a representative based on geography and not on number of eligible voters.
United Kingdom
Constituencies tend to vary according to some factor such as geographic location. In the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
constituencies in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
for the Westminster parliament deliberately had smaller electorates than those in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The UK retains some malapportionment, due to rules which favour geographically 'natural' districts and which continue to give proportionally greater representation to Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. Population movements between boundary reviews have tended to decrease the number of electors in inner-city districts, a trend that usually favours the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
.
Congress
The US Constitution apportions political power in the Senate equally among the states of the union regardless of population or geography. Article VArticle Five of the United States Constitution
Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process whereby the Constitution may be altered. Altering the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment and subsequent ratification....
specifies that this cannot be changed by amendment except with the consent of all affected states. Each state was given equal power. Until passage of the 17th Amendment
Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established direct election of United States Senators by popular vote. The amendment supersedes Article I, § 3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures...
, this made sense because the state legislatures appointed senators.
As the people of each state elected their state legislators, they could be said to indirectly elect the Senators.
The amendment provided for direct election of senators by voters of each state. Due in part to the huge sizes of senatorial constituencies and the changes in political campaigns, the cost of candidacy is approximately $12M. This cost of candidacy has increased a candidate's need for fundraising to run a competitive campaign.
Due to the small number of seats in the US House of Representatives (435) Title 2 United States Code section 2 is currently repealed / omitted, opening redistricting to a greater number of US House seats relative to the nation's population of roughly 300 million. The political power of the House of Representatives for several states is malapportioned. The representation was defined by the US Constitution to be based on population, The maximum of 1 US House representative for every 30,000 people, Article I section 2 clause 3, The first census,
when completed, the States used the maximum, sending 106 elected in 1792 to Represent the Thirteen States for the third Congress. The malapportionment occurs because of discrepancies created with rounding. For example, the per capita influence of the state of Wyoming is almost twice that of Montana because the states have the same number of seats, but the population of Wyoming is smaller. The only cure within the Constitution is to dramatically increase the number of members/seats in the House of Representatives. (See Article The First
Article The First
Article the First is the first proposed amendment to the United States Constitution though it has not yet been ratified...
, Alabama paradox.)
State legislatures
Many states suffered through periods of extended malapportionment, which were created by failures of state legislators to reapportion after significant population shifts across established (often urban) districts or into the state. State legislatureLegislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
s were historically the bodies that drew the boundaries, and or set the rules for drawing, the districts in a state. As elected representatives, legislators have a self-interest in preserving their own power, and often did not reapportion for fear of losing political power as changes came to states.
Among the most egregious examples in malapportionment was the Alabama state legislature's refusal to reapportion either the state House or Senate from 1901 until 1972. The result was that by 1960, 25% of the population of the state controlled the majority of the seats in the white, rural-dominated legislature. This rural v. urban split went beyond the related fact of racial and class disfranchisement. In 1901, like most southern states about the turn of the century, white Democratic state legislators had ratified a new constitution with provisions that effectively disfranchised African Americans and poor whites. This was a reversal of the state's having extended universal white suffrage at its establishment in 1819. By 1940, 600,000 poor whites and 520,000 African Americans had been disfranchised. The disfranchised had no representation in the state legislature. The failure of the legislature to reapportion meant also that the hundreds of thousands of industrialized and urbanized populations of the state were underrepresented for most of the 20th century.
In many states in the US, malapportionment was related to racial and class issues. For example, during much of the 20th century in Southern States, the Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
rural areas dominated urban areas by refusing to redistrict although populations changed considerably. While most African Americans were disfranchised in the South, most voters were Democrats, but the urban populations suffered from inadequate representation. The result was that, in some cases, rural districts would have drastically less population than an urban counterpart and still hold an equal or greater number of representatives or senators, thereby diluting the voice in the legislature
Legislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
of the latter compared to that of the former.
Several notable lawsuits brought to the Supreme Court in the early 1960s challenged state apportionment systems, with Baker v. Carr
Baker v. Carr
Baker v. Carr, , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that retreated from the Court's political question doctrine, deciding that redistricting issues present justiciable questions, thus enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide reapportionment cases...
and Reynolds v. Sims
Reynolds v. Sims
Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 was a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that state legislature districts had to be roughly equal in population.-Facts:...
among the most important of these. The plaintiffs claimed that malapportionment was discriminatory and illegal under the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
. The US Supreme Court agreed, citing the doctrine of "One Man, One Vote" .
An example of how “One Man, One Vote” has helped to minimize malapportionment is that it requires congressional redistricting
Redistricting
Redistricting is the process of drawing United States electoral district boundaries, often in response to population changes determined by the results of the decennial census. In 36 states, the state legislature has primary responsibility for creating a redistricting plan, in many cases subject to...
every ten years, following the census. One Pennsylvania plan was rejected by courts because the districts were nineteen voters apart, in districts of half a million people. The use of computers allows the states to virtually eliminate malapportionment every ten years with the census data. However, the ruling does allow for gerrymandering
Gerrymandering
In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts...
. During congressional redistricting, districts may each be assigned an equal population, but the use of gerrymandering may lead to similarly unequal representation along political party lines, with the party in power trying to ensure its re-election.
Following the 1990 census, for example, the state house of Tennessee's first attempt to redistrict was rejected by the courts for systematically over-representing rural West Tennessee, then predominantly Democratic, at the expense of rural East Tennessee, then predominantly Republican. . Following the 2000 census, Georgia's first attempt at redistricting the state senate was thrown out for systematically under-populating then Democratic-held districts and systematically overpopulating then Republican-held districts throughout the state. .
Australia
The Australian SenateAustralian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...
is elected on a basis of equality among the states: all states elect 12 Senators, regardless of population. This leads to Tasmania, with a population of 502,000 people electing the same number of Senators as New South Wales, which has a population of almost 7.1 million. The senate is designed to ensure that the smaller states are not neglected.
The distribution of seats in both the federal and state legislatures have been subject to malapportionment, often resulting in rural constituencies containing far fewer voters than urban ones, in turn often maintaining in power parties with rural support bases despite polling far fewer popular votes. Well-known examples include the differences between urban and rural constituency sizes in many Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n states. Past apportionments in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
and the 'Playmander
Playmander
The Playmander was a form of electoral malapportionment in the Australian state of South Australia, in place from 1936 to 1968. It consisted of rural districts enjoying a 2-to-1 advantage in the state parliament, even though they contained less than half of the population, as well as a change from...
' in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
were notorious examples. The effects of malapportionment vary with time: deliberate over-representation of rural Queensland changed from favouring Labor to favouring the National Party . There were well-meaning supporters of such arrangements due to Australia's unique demographics where the city population completely dominates the sparsely populated countryside. Therefore, it was argued that these practices were necessary to give country people fair representation. See: Australian electoral system#Gerrymandering and malapportionment
Japan
Another example is the systematic over-representation of voters in more rural prefectures and under-representation of voters in more urban prefectures in elections to the Japanese parliamentDiet of Japan
The is Japan's bicameral legislature. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, called the House of Councillors. Both houses of the Diet are directly elected under a parallel voting system. In addition to passing laws, the Diet is formally...
. The conservative Liberal Democratic Party
Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)
The , frequently abbreviated to LDP or , is a centre-right political party in Japan. It is one of the most consistently successful political parties in the democratic world. The LDP ruled almost continuously for nearly 54 years from its founding in 1955 until its defeat in the 2009 election...
thus wins more seats in the Japanese parliament because its voters are concentrated in more rural prefectures.
Spain
The Spanish Congress of DeputiesSpanish Congress of Deputies
The Spanish Congress of Deputies is the lower house of the Cortes Generales, Spain's legislative branch. It has 350 members, elected by popular vote on block lists by proportional representation in constituencies matching the Spanish provinces using the D'Hondt method. Deputies serve four-year terms...
consists of 350 members. Each Spanish province is a constituency entitled to an initial minimum of two seats for a total of 100 seats, while the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are allocated one member each. The remaining 248 seats are allocated among the fifty provinces in proportion to their populations. The result is that the smaller provinces are virtually guaranteed a minimum of three seats and have a disproportionate share of seats relative to their electorate. In 2004 for example, Spain had 34,571,831 voters giving an average of 98,777 voters per deputy. However the number of voters per deputy varied from 129,269 in Barcelona and 127,377 in Madrid to 38,714 and 26,177 respectively in the smallest provinces of Teruel and Soria.
In the Spanish Senate each of the forty-seven mainland provinces are assigned four seats, while the three largest islands are allocated three seats each, and the seven smaller islands one each. The North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are allocated two seats each. Additionally, the legislative assemblies of the seventeen autonomous communities into which the provinces of Spain are grouped are entitled to appoint at least one Senator each, as well as one Senator for every million voters. The result is a bias in favour of mainly rural areas. For example the community of Madrid with 4,458,540 voters in 2004 has 9 senators while Castilla y León with 2,179,521 voters has a total of 39 senators.
Canada
In Canada, there are 308 federal electoral districts, each represented by one member of parliament. While all districts in the 10 provinces of Canada are theoretically based on population, each territory is also given a member of parliament, and certain special clauses in the Constitution and law (the "grandfather clause" and the "senatorial clause") guarantee that provinces cannot have fewer members that they had in 1982. The apportionment method is to grant 1 member to each territory, and allocate 279 other seats according to population among the 10 provinces. After doing so, the provinces with slower historical population growth since joining Confederation are granted extra seats so as not to lose MPs. After the 1991 Census, 19 such extra members across all provinces were needed for a total of 301 MPs. (All provinces except Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia received additional MPs.) After the 2001 Census, Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia gained 7 seats, necessitating 7 extra "grandfathered" seats for the provinces with slower population growth, for a total of 308 ridings. However, this creates huge disproportion between ridings of the different provinces but as well as between the provinces and territories. As ridings are rarely eliminated, only newly created or manipulated to attend to population shifts, this exacerberate the problem. For example; in 2006, the Alberta riding of Peace River had a population of 138,009 persons, whilst the Prince Edward Island riding of Charlottetown had a population of 32,174 respectively; both ridings receive equal representation in the House of Commons. The territory of Nunavut, along with all other Canadian territories also receives one member of parliament, while in 2006, it had a population of 29,474. Rural ridings even in populous provinces also tend to have constituents for every MP than urban ridings.South Africa
In the South African General Election of 1948South African general election, 1948
The parliamentary election in South Africa on 26 May 1948 represented a turning point in the country's history. The United Party, which had led the government since its foundation in 1933 and its leader, incumbent Prime Minister Jan Smuts was ousted by the Reunited National Party , led by Daniel...
, South Africa's constituency boundaries meant that sparsely populated rural constituencies in the Afrikaner heartland had relatively few eligible voters compared to the urban constituencies in Cape Town. The rural electorates often strongly supported the Herenigde Nasionale Party
Herenigde Nasionale Party
The Herenigde Nasionale Party was a political party in South Africa during the 1940s. It was the product of the reunion of Daniel François Malan's Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party and J.B.M. Hertzog's breakaway Afrikaner nationalist faction of the United Party in 1940.In 1934, J.B.M...
, led by Daniel Malan and the urban electorates often supported Jan Christiaan Smuts' United Party
United Party (South Africa)
The United Party was South Africa's ruling political party between 1934 and 1948. It was formed by a merger of most of Prime Minister Barry Hertzog's National Party with the rival South African Party of Jan Smuts, plus the remnants of the Unionist Party...
(the incumbent prime minister and his party, 90% of whose seats were urban). Come the 1948 General Election, Jan Smuts' party was unpopular on account of many factors. Ultimately, Jan Smuts won the popular vote, but Daniel Malan won more seats, meaning that his party was able to form a government bilaterally with the Afrikaner Party
Afrikaner Party
The Afrikaner Party was a South African political party from 1941 to 1951.-Origins:The roots of the party can be traced back September 1939, when South Africa declared war on Germany at the start of World War II. General J.B.M...
and gain an absolute majority in parliament. Malapportionment was a key tool that allowed the National Party to implement its Apartheid program within the notionally democratic parliament.
New Zealand
Between 1881 and 1945, New Zealand applied a system of malapportionment called the country quotaCountry quota
The country quota was a part of the New Zealand electoral system from 1881 until 1945. Its effect was to make urban constituencies more populous than those in rural areas, thus making rural votes worth more in general elections....
, which required urban districts to contain more people than rural ones but did not give them any equivalent increase in representation.
See also
- United States congressional apportionmentUnited States congressional apportionmentUnited States congressional apportionment is the process by which seats in the United States House of Representatives are redistributed amongst the 50 states following each constitutionally mandated decennial census. Each state is apportioned a number of seats which approximately corresponds to its...
- Apportionment in the European ParliamentApportionment in the European ParliamentApportionment in the European Parliament relates to the distribution of legislative seats in the European Parliament among the states of the European Union...
- Rotten and pocket boroughs
- GerrymanderingGerrymanderingIn the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts...
- History of 19th century congressional redistricting in OhioHistory of 19th Century congressional redistricting in OhioThe redistricting of United States congressional districts is made by the legislatures of the states every 10 years, immediately following the official announcement of the federal census that serves as the basis of the apportionment...
External links
- P.A. Madison's excellent historical review of the 14th amendment's apportionment clause.
- Reapportionment and Redistricting in the US an article from the ACE Project
- Index of articles relating to Boundary Delimitation from the ACE Project
- Explanation of the 1991 and 1992 US Supreme Court cases challenging the use of the method of equal proportions
- A guide to the various formulae for apportionment, and statistical differences between them
- The House of Representatives Apportionment Formula: An Analysis of Proposals for Change and Their Impact on States