MODULE 4 ASSIGNMENT 1: Apportionment Paradoxes

1. Explain the Alabama Paradox

The Alabama Paradox is the first apportionment paradox to be discovered in the

United States. Typically, the US’s house of representatives contain seats that are based on

the number of population. Back when the chief clerk of the census bureau of the United

states calculated the apportionment for each state, he saw that Alabama when contained a

house size of 299, 8 seats will show, while with a size of 300, 7 seats will show.

Basically, Alabama Paradox refers to the occurrence where increasing the total number of

house size or items of the population would result to the reduction of the total number of

seats/shares. This paradox occurs because the increase of fair share on larger states are

much faster rather than to those smaller states.

2. Population Paradox

The population paradox is an apportionment paradox that is contrary to what may

seem to be a general belief or something that’s easily observable. This paradox explains

that two states, a larger one, and a smaller one, whose population growth rate is far

quicker than that of the bigger state, the smaller state will lose a seat in spite its rapid

growth in population.

3. New States Paradox

This paradox is very particular to the event that a new state is added, for the case

of the USA. This may be applicable whenever the number of seats is increased due to the
occurrence of adding a new state who’s entitled to have a seat in the house of

representatives. The apportionment when the new state is added would then change

despite of the fact that the number of seats have been increased relative to the population

of the newly-added state. This would result to a state losing at least one seat due to the

changes in the apportionment.