In response to the 1920 Census (AIR), Congress capped the HoR membership at 435. W/o this law, how many reps would we have today?
Estimated 300,000,000 people and 1 rep per 30,000.
Looks like about 10,000 members.
Ballpark figure: 8700. Now that would make joint sessions fun!
The 2000 census had about 280,000,000 people. I don’t know the details of the law you referred to but the 1910 census showed about 91,600,000 and 1920 was about 105,000,000. So I don’t know which census figure the 435 was based on.
Some adjustment made have to be made for the fact that some states made not deserve even one representative based on population but are guaranteed one.
Also, I think, the census figures are people not citizens, though the representation would likely be based on citizens.
www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-7.pdf
646,952 / 193,167 x 435 = 1457 Representatives
That is a ballpark figure which assumes we kept the same average size of a Congressional district between 1900 and 1920.
Another ballpark figure is
272,690,813 / 106,461,000 x 435 = 1114 Representatives
This is 1999 population estimated divided by that for 1920, times 435. Population estimates are from:
http://eire.census.gov/popest/archives/pre1980/popclockest.txt
This is an even less precise figure, for obvious reasons.
A more accurate figure would simply be, the total population from the 2000 census, divided by the average size of Congressional districts in 1920. If my luck improves, I’ll provide those figures in a bit.
Oops. I guess aahala provided pretty much what I want. 280,000,000 / (105,000,000 / 435) = 1160 Representatives. About as large as the United Kingdom’s House of Lords (at least before the recent reforms).
Isn’t the primary purpose of the Census to decide how to apportion House seats? I would think that they would be concerned with the same thing, whatever that is.