POLS 1113 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Mel Watt, Protestantism, 1960 United States Census
Document Summary
The constitution makes no claim about descriptive representation. Originally, each house member represented 30,000 people: the number of representatives shall not exceed on for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one representative. u. s. constitution, article i, section 2, clause 3. The number of representatives in the house is capped at 435: congress passed a law on june 18, 1929, limiting the number of representatives to 435. This number was exceeded in 1959 when alaska and hawaii were admitted as states, but was reinstituted after the 1960 census. After the 2000 census, each house member represented around 600,000 people: according the 2000 census, the u. s. population is 281,424,177. This means that each member of the house represents 646,952 people. Four states vermont, wyoming, north dakota, and. Alaska have populations lower than that figure, but each still has one representative.
