A legislature is a deliberative assembly with the legal authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country, nation or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government. Legislatures can exist at different levels of government–national, state/provincial/regional, local, even supranational. Countries differ as to what extent they grant deliberative assemblies at the subnational law-making power, as opposed to purely administrative responsibilities.
The Delaware General Assembly is the legislature of the U.S. state of Delaware. It is a bicameral legislature composed of the Delaware Senate with 21 senators and the Delaware House of Representatives with 41 representatives. It meets at Legislative Hall in Dover, convening on the second Tuesday of January of odd-numbered years, with a second session of the same Assembly convening likewise in even-numbered years. Normally the sessions are required to adjourn by the last day of June of the same calendar year. However the Governor can call a special session of the legislature at any time.
The Ohio General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Ohio. It consists of the 99-member Ohio House of Representatives and the 33-member Ohio Senate. Both houses of the General Assembly meet at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus.
United States congressional apportionment is the process by which seats in the United States House of Representatives are distributed among the 50 states according to the most recent decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution. After each state is assigned one seat in the House, most states are then apportioned a number of additional seats which roughly corresponds to its share of the aggregate population of the 50 states. Every state is constitutionally guaranteed at least one seat in the House and two seats in the Senate, regardless of population.
The Wisconsin Senate is the upper house of the Wisconsin State Legislature. Together with the Wisconsin State Assembly they constitute the legislative branch of the state of Wisconsin. The powers of the Wisconsin Senate are modeled after those of the U.S. Senate.
The Wisconsin State Assembly is the lower house of the Wisconsin Legislature. Together with the smaller Wisconsin Senate, the two constitute the legislative branch of the U.S. state of Wisconsin.
Redistricting in the United States is the process of drawing electoral district boundaries. For the United States House of Representatives, and state legislatures, redistricting occurs after each decennial census.
An electoral district in Canada is a geographical constituency upon which Canada's representative democracy is based. It is officially known in Canadian French as a circonscription but frequently called a comté (county). In Canadian English it is also colloquially and more commonly known as a riding or constituency.
The Illinois General Assembly is the legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois. It has two chambers, the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate. The General Assembly was created by the first state constitution adopted in 1818. As of 2023, the current General Assembly is the 103rd; the term of an assembly lasts two years.
Congressional districts, also known as electoral districts in other nations, are divisions of a larger administrative region that represent the population of a region in the larger congressional body. Countries with congressional districts include the United States, the Philippines, and Japan.
Federalist No. 55 is an essay by James Madison, the fifty-fifth of The Federalist Papers. It was first published by The New York Packet on February 13, 1788 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. It is titled "The Total Number of House of Representatives". It is the first of four papers defending the number of members in the House of Representatives against the critics who believe the number of members to be inadequate. The critics presume that there aren't enough representatives to defend the country against the small group of legislators who are violating the rights of the people. In this paper, Madison examines the size of the United States House of Representatives.
The Penrose method is a method devised in 1946 by Professor Lionel Penrose for allocating the voting weights of delegations in decision-making bodies proportional to the square root of the population represented by this delegation. This is justified by the fact that, due to the square root law of Penrose, the a priori voting power of a member of a voting body is inversely proportional to the square root of its size. Under certain conditions, this allocation achieves equal voting powers for all people represented, independent of the size of their constituency. Proportional allocation would result in excessive voting powers for the electorates of larger constituencies.
The cube rule or cube law is an empirical observation regarding elections under the first-past-the-post system. The rule suggests that the party getting the most votes is over-represented. It was first formulated in a report on British elections in 1909, then extended to elections in other countries. Both in theory and in practice, the cube rule is only applicable in a two-party system. In a multi-party democracy operating under the first-past-the-post system, the cube law invariably fails, often leading to capricious results.
The Reapportionment Act of 1929, also known as the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, is a combined census and apportionment bill enacted on June 18, 1929, that establishes a permanent method for apportioning a constant 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives according to each census. This reapportionment was preceded by the Apportionment Act of 1911, which established the 435-seat size, and followed nearly a decade of debate and gridlock after the 1920 Census. The 1929 Act took effect after the 1932 election, meaning that the House was never reapportioned as a result of the 1920 United States Census, and representation in the lower chamber remained frozen for 95 years as of 2024 .
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that addresses the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, but was never ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. As Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is still pending before the states. As of 2024, it is one of six unratified amendments.
The Wyoming Rule is a proposal to increase the size of the United States House of Representatives so that the standard representative-to-population ratio would be that of the smallest state, which is currently Wyoming. Under Article One of the United States Constitution, each state is guaranteed at least one representative. If the disparity between the population of the most and least populous states continues to grow, the disproportionality of the U.S. House of Representatives will continue to increase unless the body, whose size has been fixed at 435 since 1929, is expanded.
Matthew Søberg Shugart is an American political scientist. He is a Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. He is also an Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. Shugart specializes in electoral systems, party systems, and the design of political institutions, primarily through empirical studies of political systems across large numbers of countries. Shugart is also an orchardist, and runs the Fruits and Votes blog on electoral systems and fruit growing.
In voting theory, the micromega rule holds that, when political parties choose electoral systems, "the large prefer the small and the small prefer the large". The term "micromega" references Micromégas, a tale by Voltaire in which dwarfs and giants dialogue.
Redistricting in North Carolina has been a controversial topic due to allegations and admissions of gerrymandering.
