Census Counts and Apportionment: The Politics of Representation in the United States

Census counts are used in the United States as the basis for a derived ‘apportionment count’, which is employed by the President to allocate seats in the House of Representatives across the 50 States. This apportionment count includes not only those individuals recorded by the census (either by direct count or by imputation) as usually resident in each State but in addition federal employees, including military personnel, and their dependents. This practice has been challenged on several occasions in the courts, most recently by the State of Utah, which claimed that it was denied a fourth seat in the House for the period 2002 – 12 as a consequence. Its claim was denied, for reasons which are discussed here and which throw further light (following Hannah, 2001 Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19 515 – 534) on the social constructions involved in the conduct and use of censuses.