What does representation by population mean

In England, the House of Commons represented every British subject regardless of whether the subject could actually vote for its membership.

American colonists, who were used to controlling their local affairs in the directly-elected colonial legislatures, lacked a voice in Parliament and resented the British policies imposed on them. The Articles of Confederation created the first national congress to represent the interests of the states: each state would appoint between two and seven delegates to the congress, and each state delegation would have one vote.

House of Representatives. Approved by the 39th Congress — as H. The Constitutional Convention addressed multiple concerns in the process of designing the new Congress. The first was the relationship of the least populous states to the most populous. The battle between big and small states colored most of the Convention and nearly ended hopes of creating a national government.

If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint. The compromise enabled the Convention, teetering on the brink of dissolution, to continue.

The Convention determined that a Census of the population conducted every 10 years would enable the House to adjust the distribution of its Membership on a regular basis. The method, however, proved controversial. Southern delegates argued that their slaves counted in the population, yielding them more Representatives. Northern delegates countered that slaves were property and should not be counted at all. Before federal income taxes or tariffs, the states contributed to the national government with local taxes, often flat poll taxes on each citizen.

Since constitutional framers had to provide for the funding of the new government, they debated the proper relationship between representation and taxation. Several delegates argued that geographic size or useable farmland were better measures of state wealth than mere population. View PDF. Related Reading. Tags rep-by-pop. Search this site. Stay Connected. Latest from Twitter Tweets by MowatCentre.

Application of the "senatorial clause" and "grandfather clause". The total population of each province is from Statistics Canada's quarterly estimate of July 1, The electoral quotient is obtained by multiplying the quotient of the last decennial redistribution , by the average of the population growth rates of the 10 provinces 9.

The new electoral quotient thus calculated is , The number of seats initially allocated to each province is calculated by dividing the population number of each province by the electoral quotient.