{"id":12960,"date":"2010-12-21T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-12-21T19:01:29","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T19:01:29","slug":"2010-census-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/21\/2010-census-results\/","title":{"rendered":"2010 Census Results"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning the US Census Bureau released its official population count for the nation, the 50 states, and the reapportionment of seats in the US House. For the first time ever, California will not gain a seat in the House – our growth rate of 10% wasn’t nearly enough to keep up with states like Texas (+4), Florida (+2) or Nevada, Arizona and Washington (+1 each). That means California will still have 55 electoral votes in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections.<\/p>\n

The overall US population is 308,745,538. California’s population is 37,253,956, still the most populous state by far – Texas is in second place at 25,145,561. <\/p>\n

California needs to keep pace and hold off Texas in the coming years – single-payer health care, free child care, and greater urban density would all help us preserve our lead, which is important if we are to avoid Texas becoming dominant in the US House (although if Texas swung to the left, it would be more acceptable).<\/p>\n

With a population of 308 million, that means a Congressional district now represents about 708,000 people. By contrast, after the 1790 Census a Congressional district represented about 34,000 people. Since 1913 the size of the House was capped at 435. It’s an absurd situation, and the House needs to be expanded so that each district represents around 100,000 people (though I’m willing to go even smaller than that). In that scenario, the House would have 3,080 members, of which 370 would come from California.<\/p>\n

Sound far-fetched? A new lawsuit<\/a> seeks to force the House to expand, claiming the current cap of 435 is a violation of the “one man, one vote” doctrine:<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court could decide as soon as today if justices will hear a case on whether those disparities violate the principle of “one man, one vote.” Justices were scheduled to discuss the case behind closed doors Friday.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, Clemons v. U.S. Department of Commerce, seeks a court order to force Congress to add more members so that the sizes of congressional districts would be more equal.<\/p>\n

Last July, in a decision that quoted liberally from the Founding Fathers, a special three-judge panel ruled against changing the current system. “We see no reason to believe that the Constitution as originally understood or long applied imposes the requirements of close equality among districts in different states,” it ruled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although the lawsuit is brought by two right-wing activists, it is something progressives should very strongly support. It would massively increase the number of progressives in Congress, both as an absolute number and as a proportion of the overall total. And it’s the right thing to do – huge Congressional districts distort power and, with the Electoral College capped at 538, it distorts the presidential vote as well.<\/p>\n

Let’s hope this lawsuit succeeds. It would certainly make life much more interesting for the new redistricting commission!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning the US Census Bureau released its official population count for the nation, the 50 states, and the reapportionment of seats in the US House. For the first time ever, California will not gain a seat in the House – our growth rate of 10% wasn’t nearly enough to keep up with states like Texas (+4), Florida (+2) or Nevada, Arizona and Washington (+1 each). That means California will still have 55 electoral votes in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections.<\/p>\n

The overall US population is 308,745,538. California’s population is 37,253,956, still the most populous state by far – Texas is in second place at 25,145,561. <\/p>\n

California needs to keep pace and hold off Texas in the coming years – single-payer health care, free child care, and greater urban density would all help us preserve our lead, which is important if we are to avoid Texas becoming dominant in the US House (although if Texas swung to the left, it would be more acceptable).<\/p>\n

With a population of 308 million, that means a Congressional district now represents about 708,000 people. By contrast, after the 1790 Census a Congressional district represented about 34,000 people. Since 1913 the size of the House was capped at 435. It’s an absurd situation, and the House needs to be expanded so that each district represents around 100,000 people (though I’m willing to go even smaller than that). In that scenario, the House would have 3,080 members, of which 370 would come from California.<\/p>\n

Sound far-fetched? A new lawsuit<\/a> seeks to force the House to expand, claiming the current cap of 435 is a violation of the “one man, one vote” doctrine:<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court could decide as soon as today if justices will hear a case on whether those disparities violate the principle of “one man, one vote.” Justices were scheduled to discuss the case behind closed doors Friday.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, Clemons v. U.S. Department of Commerce, seeks a court order to force Congress to add more members so that the sizes of congressional districts would be more equal.<\/p>\n

Last July, in a decision that quoted liberally from the Founding Fathers, a special three-judge panel ruled against changing the current system. “We see no reason to believe that the Constitution as originally understood or long applied imposes the requirements of close equality among districts in different states,” it ruled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although the lawsuit is brought by two right-wing activists, it is something progressives should very strongly support. It would massively increase the number of progressives in Congress, both as an absolute number and as a proportion of the overall total. And it’s the right thing to do – huge Congressional districts distort power and, with the Electoral College capped at 538, it distorts the presidential vote as well.<\/p>\n

Let’s hope this lawsuit succeeds. It would certainly make life much more interesting for the new redistricting commission!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-87"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3n2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}