The practice of reapportionment every 10 years demonstrates the principle of representative government by ensuring that the distribution of seats in a legislative body accurately reflects changes in population. Here's how it works:
1. Reapportionment:
Reapportionment is the process of redistributing seats in a legislative body, such as the U.S. House of Representatives, among states or districts based on population changes. It takes place every 10 years following the U.S. Census.
2. Population Changes: Over time, populations within states or districts can shift, either growing or shrinking.
Reapportionment allows for the representation of these changing populations, ensuring that each person's voice is adequately represented.
3. Equal Representation: The principle of representative
government holds that each person should have an equal say in the decision-making process. Through reapportionment, the number of seats in a legislative body can be adjusted to reflect changes in population, ensuring that each representative serves roughly the same number of constituents.
4. Fairness and Accuracy: By periodically adjusting the distribution of seats, reapportionment helps maintain fairness and accuracy in the representative system. It prevents certain regions from being overrepresented or underrepresented based on population changes, ensuring that the government remains truly representative of the people.
For example, let's say that State A experiences rapid population growth over the course of 10 years, while State B's population remains relatively stable. Without
reapportionment, State A would have an unfairly larger number of representatives compared to State B.
Reapportionment helps rectify this imbalance by allocating more seats to State A and ensuring fair representation for both states.
Hopefully this helps!