The Apportionment Problem - Essay Example

The Apportionment Problem John Jones As the census officer of our new nation, I have extensively studied the United s and their founding fathers, especially in the way they achieved equal representation of their states in attempting to recreate it for us and have decided apportionment is the best approach. The method supported by Alexander Hamilton is shown applied to us in Table 1, where LQ stands for Lower Quota and AVG CON means average constituency. As we have decided that there will be 100 congressional seats, I used his formula to come to an equitable number.

Using the LQ total of 96, I thereby allocated the remaining four seats to the three states with the lowest population (States One, Five and Ten) (Alabama). This is so that they could have more than one representative, as Five would technically have .07! Changes in population would cause this apportionment to be revisited occasionally and again, the US method of a census every decade determining representation would be the best bet. The biggest problem with this is the method is absolutely unfair in that four states (3, 4, 6 and 8) will control 65% of the votes.

However the method seems to work quite well in the US where states like California and New York likewise have a large representation. Yet the country’s multiple party method seems to work quite well, for Congressional votes are generally along party lines and seldom do all members from one particular state band together (Theriault). Of course appeasing State Five by adding seats so that it could have equality in Congress could very well result in what is known as an Alabama Paradox. This occurred for that state in 1880, whereby adding seats to Congress so that Alabama could gain actually caused it to actually lose a seat, due to the mathematical statistics (Janson).

Another methodology would be the Huntington-Hill, a more complex formula that utilizes square roots but which is also more equitable (See Table 2) (US Census). Based upon the calculations I have listed, apportionment is the best answer for fair and equal representation of each state. No matter how else it is drawn smaller states such as Five will always face having less representation (Much as Montana and Wyoming only also have one vote whereas minute Rhode Island has 2). The only other way would be to divide the 100 seats by the number of states (10 each), just like the US Senate has a standard of two per state, no matter the population.

TABLE 1: HAMILTON METHODOLOGY STATEPOPAVGLQAVG CON1154752.91232356446.706639875618.56181848834616.60161653690.071368566316.1016167434278.168888431115.84151595473010.28101010254674.7945TOT53218896100SP `5321.9TABLE 2: Huntington-Hill METHODOLOGYSTATEPOPAVGRDACHH1154752.912332356446.7067639875618.5618191848834616.6016171653690.0701268566316.101616167434278.1688888431115.8415161695473010.2810101010254674.79455TOT53218895102100SP `5321.88ReferencesUniversity of Alabama Center for Academic Success, “Apportionment Methods”, Web, accessed July 22, 2012, http://www.ctl.ua.

edu/math103/apportionment/appmeth.htm.Theriault, Sean M., The University of Texas at Austin, “Party Polarization in Congress”, Web, September 30, 2005, accessed July 22, 2012, http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lmartin/Speakers/Theriault.pdf.Janson, Svante, Cornell University, “The probability of the Alabama paradox”, Web, accessed July 22, 2012, http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2137.United States Census, “Methods of Apportionment” ”, Web, accessed July 22, 2012, http://www.census.gov/history/www/reference/apportionment/methods_of_apportionment.html.