In today's class, we discussed and went over what exactly Apportionment is. Basically, it means splitting up anything or distribution of something. An example of this would be the seats of Congress. We talked about how it can be among different parties. It can also usually be based on proportionality. One big problem with it though as we discussed is how to round off when dealing with apportionment.
We talked and explained an example of how if two people had to split up a car between seven days. But since seven is an uneven distribution between two people it would not work out. This is because someone would get the car extra days than the other person depending on who paid more for it. So there for you would not know how to choose. A big question also asked is which one is always least unfair?
We also learned and discussed a certain method called Hamilton's Method of Apportionment. For this basically, there is five different steps when trying to figure it out. You have to find the Total Population of the people and say there is five hundred people for fifteen seats. Secondly you have to divide total population by the number of seats. You would get a number and then have to divide the population of each place by the district size. One you get another number you next have to round down and if there is not enough you have to add extra seat with place with largest decimal part until you have desired size you would need.
This was a pretty good explanation of apportionment; however, it might be somewhat confusing to someone who wasn't in the class. The explanation of what a district size is was left out.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Ben Steines. I personally understand the explanation because I was in class that day it was explained. But besides that I think apportionment makes you think and look at problems like the one that we talked about in class differently.
ReplyDeleteI also agree, apportionment can be confusing. It is hard to be equally fair so in most cases not everyone will be satisfied with the end results. Such as the example with sharing the car because even the person who paid more might need to use it on a day they are not suppose to drive. Which leads to more issues. Although it was a good summary of the class.
ReplyDeleteMathematically speaking, it is ridiculously hard to figure out how to do apportionment in a fair way. Luckily (and I hate to admit this), politicians are smart enough to figure out how to make it work. While this may include gerrymandering (look it up, quite an interesting back-story to the name) and backroom dealings every 10 years (due to the census, they make it work rather well.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you bring up Gerrymandering, Andrew - we will discuss that in our last unit, which is on districting (and redistricting, which is usually the problem). You're right that it is intimately related to the issue of apportionment. Anyone who wants to read ahead should look at Baker v. Carr, a major Supreme Court decision that deals with the relationship between apportionment and redistricting, albeit at the state level.
DeleteI feel the way we determine apportionment for The House of Representatives is pretty fair. The higher the population of people the more need for making sure the people are being represented and heard more efficiently. It does mean states with more HOR could have a higher influence on voting then other states, but suck it up and move to state or vote for someone who can best represent your views and well being.
ReplyDeleteTo add to this, but the reason for 2 houses in the first place was to help balance things out. The House was for large states to show their influence, but so the little guys didn't get stepped on, the Senate was made so they all had equal say. Without both houses working together, nothing gets done, so that's one of the checks of power in place. Granted, the founding fathers thought we could at least compromise on issues when this was made, which is why it's starting to bite us on the butt now.
DeleteI agree that it is not easy to be fair when doing apportionment. As for the summary itself, I would suggest showing the numbers involved in the Hamilton method example. What you would do is say what the step is then press enter twice and then type up the number you are using, adding any descriptive words if necessary.
ReplyDeleteFor example:
Step 1: find total population
500 people for 15 seats
Step 2: divide total population by number of seats
500/15 = 33.333333333333333333333333333333
And so on…
I don't find it possible to come up with a picture perfect way for determining HORs whether it be by size of state or amount of people on the state.
ReplyDeleteGood discussion, everyone. As you are all intuiting, there is no perfect way to apportion, although we will look at several that are better than Hamilton's Method. Unfortunately, as they become more accurate, they also become considerably more complicated!
ReplyDelete