Delaware voters sue to create a 436th seat in the House – after the state lost one in 1823

Two Delaware voters are suing the U.S. government in an attempt to get back a seat in the House of Representatives that their state lost in a census-based revision 203 years ago. In a lawsuit, filed Wednesday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, against the Department of Commerce – which administers the census – activists David Redlawsk and Kevin Price argue that the current 435-seat cap in the House is unconstitutional.“The Constitution requires representation according to population,” the complaint reads. “Article I, Section 2 establishes that requirement, and Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment reaffirms it: ‘Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers.’” Redlawsk and Price argue that the current state of play does not honor that direction because their state is allowed just one member in the lower chamber of Congress – currently Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride – who is expected to represent a far greater proportion of the population than elsewhere.Delaware is the 45th most populous state in the U.S. and has an estimated 990,837 citizens who receive “23.2 percent less representation per person than the national average,” the plaintiffs calculate.Two Delaware voters have filed a lawsuit arguing that their state should have a second seat in the House of Representatives, which it has not had since 1823 (AP)Rhode Island, the next largest state according to population size, meanwhile sends two elected officials to Washington, illustrating the unfairness, the suit claims. “The 435-seat limitation imposes a severe and avoidable disparity on Delaware’s voters,” Redlawsk and Price complain, proposing the revival of the old second seat lost in 1823 as the only remedy. “A second Delaware seat would satisfy the Constitution’s requirements for whole seats, state boundaries, and at least one representative for every state. The statute’s age and automatic operation supply no justification for continuing to deny Delaware that representation.”Redlawsk and Price argue that creating a second congressional district would address the problem of fair representation, thus creating a post for a second congressperson, and bumping the state up to four Electoral College votes from three.Should the lawsuit succeed, that detail would stand to benefit Democratic presidential candidates, judging by recent form. The state has voted Democrat in the last nine successive elections for commander-in-chief.Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride is Delaware’s only House representative but that could change (AFP/Getty)Redlawsk and Price hope to see their desire implemented in time for the 2028 presidential election and are asking the court to set a deadline for Congress to address the problem. They have also requested for a three-judge panel to conduct a review and expedite the process, giving Delaware time to redistrict before the country next goes to the polls.Congress has had 435 House seats since 1911, a response to the 1910 census when the population of the U.S. was just 92 million, compared to 331 million today. The chamber’s makeup was earlier thrown into doubt by the 1920 census because it revealed that more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas for the first time. This led rural lawmakers to react by lobbying for an end to the redistribution of seats to avoid ceding power to metropolitan areas.Congress responded by enacting a new statute in 1929 that made reapportionment an automatic process after each census while retaining “the then existing number of representatives,” effectively fixing in place the status quo.The situation was challenged in 1992 and again in 2010, when the Supreme Court threw out an appeal for change that also raised the Delaware disparity.