Apportionment in the United States

Count and Increase

State Seat Changes in the House of Representatives

This visualization shows which states gained or lost House seats in each year and which held steady. Looking at the years preceding 1920, the Count and Increase tradition manifests itself in the sea of up-arrows and dashes (indicating increases or no change). Looking at the years after 1920, the sudden cascade of down arrows announces the capping of the House’s membership, the creation of the automated apportionment system, and the advent of the Announce and Transmit era.

Key Findings of Count and Increase:

1. As the population of the United States increased, so too did the size of the House of Representatives. (As illustrated on the USapportionment.org home page.) This general rule held true for 10 of the first 13 censuses.
• Some of the growth in the House stemmed from admitting new states to the union (See Expansionary Expansions, below). But even taking those additions into the account, the general rule held.
2. Congress decided the size of the House of Representatives at each apportionment, basing that decision on a variety of factors. But over time the answers to a few questions proved particularly important decade to decade:
• At what size House do no states lose a representative? At what size House do only one or two states lose a representative?
• At what size House do the various accepted methods for apportionment agree (or mostly agree) on the number of representatives allocated to each state?
• How confident was Congress in the quality of the census count?
• What size House could attract enough votes to become a law? (This was always the final, fundamental question.)
3. The exceptions prove the rules.
   • In a few cases, Congress made special accommodations, adding a few seats in extraordinary circumstances. (See Anomalous Additions.)
   • The Count and Increase tradition broke down from 1840-1860 and in 1920.
4. Even with the Count and Increase tradition, the number of people per representative tended to increase. But since the end of the Count and Increase tradition, the growth in that ratio has been staggering.

Anomalous Additions

After the Count was completed, special methodological issues or geographic changes could cause unique arguments to boil in Congress over how apportionment would occur. Increasing the size of the House was sometimes used as an elegant tool to solve these complicated problems.

Breakdowns in the Count and Increase Tradition

1840-1860:
The three censuses leading up to the Civil War constitute a series of exceptions to the Count and Increase tradition. In 1840, Congress---after long debates that contemplated larger Houses---settled on a smaller House for the first time. It would have been the last time too, had the Civil War not caused a very drastic decrease in the size of the House as the entire South seceded. After the Civil War, though, the Count and Increase tradition took hold once again.

1920:
Congress failed to reapportion itself repeatedly in the 1920s. That failure owes to many intersecting causes, but the most significant was this: the House leadership and many of its members decided to keep the size of the House steady, at 435 seats. Bills for larger Houses at 460 and 483 seats nearly made it through, but were resisted by those intent on capping the House. In 1929, Congress finally succeeded in passing a bill---for the 1930 census apportionment. Originally pitched as an insurance policy, in case Congress failed again to apportion itself, the new automatic apportionment law (revised in 1940 and 1941) became the default option, removing any expectation of Congressional action apportionment, and ensuring the House would stay at 435 seats. The Count and Increase tradition gave way to the era of Announce and Transmit.