Congress votes vary in weight, study says

STORRS, Conn. – The weight that one person’s vote carries in Congress varies significantly from state to state, according to a new report from the Connecticut State Data Center at the University of Connecticut.

The study, released Thursday, found that congressional apportionment based on a state’s total population results in unequal levels of representation across the country because of blocks of nonvoting residents.

But if representation in the U.S. House of Representatives were based on how many people vote, three New England states, including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, could each pick up a seat, according to the report.

“Vote-count methodology is based on those who vote – not on a questionable census population count,” the Data Center’s report reads. “Consequently, vote-count apportionment will provide greater assurance of fairness, transparency and accuracy when allocating seats to individual states.”

The study of U.S. Census data found that large numbers of undocumented immigrants help some states acquire additional seats in Congress because they are part of the overall population. For example, undocumented populations in Arizona and Texas are expected to lead to additional congressional seats in 2010.

Also, the report found that the “one man, one vote” system favors states with young, ethnic populations, such as California, at the expense of predominantly white states with older populations, such as Maine, where the median age is 40.7.

“Herein lies the potential for population-based apportionment to polarize the United States along ethnic and generational divides,” the report reads.