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In 1911, the membership of the U.S. House was set at 433; with the subsequent admission of Arizona and New Mexico as states, membership increased to 435, where it has remained (except for a brief period from 1959 to 1963 following the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, during which House membership was 437).

1 Apportionment methods

Apart from the fact that the number of delegates is at least one for each state, as required by the Constitution, this number is in principal proportional to population (equalizing the size of congressional districts nationwide). To arrive at whole numbers, the Method of Equal Proportions is used. The method first assigns one seat to each state, and then assigns each additional seat successively to the state with the highest "priority value", a value for the population per seat. For the latter the question would arise whether the current number of seats or one more should be taken. This is solved by taking an intermediate value, the geometric mean of the two. The resulting priority value is the geometric mean of the current population per seat and the population per seat in the case the state gets the extra seat.

Computing for every state and any number of seats the priority value, and sorting the list in descending order of the resulting values, the first 385 are applicable (seats 51-435) (see Census 2000 Ranking of Priority Values).

The Equal Proportions method has been the fifth distinct method of determining congressional apportionment since the adoption of the United States Constitution. The size of the Congressional delegations from the thirteen original states were assigned by the Constitution for use until the completion of the first U.S. Census. Legislation admitting new states into the union has also designated the number of representatives of states until the time of the next census.

1.1 North Carolina and Utah, 2000 Apportionment

Under this method, the 435th seat in Congress granted as a result of the 2000 Census was the 13th granted to North Carolina; the state of Utah failed to obtain a 4th seat by only 857 residents. Utah officials took legal action in an attempt to have this seat reassigned; they contended that the population of Utah was undercounted and that the population of North Carolina was overcounted in several ways:

• The relatively high number of Mormon residents in Utah included over 11,000 who were left uncounted because they were performing missionary work outside the U.S.; North Carolina's figures included a number of overseas military personnel, but they were accurately counted through military channels. Federal law, however only allows for military or government personnel stationed overseas to be counted in the census.
• A higher number of vacation homes in North Carolina meant that census officials who could not contact a home's residents or owners "imputed" more residents than actually existed. The United States Supreme Court ruled (Utah v. Evans) in 2002 that the procedure of imputation was properly applied.
• The Census Bureau admitted to overcounting the student population of a dormitory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is the oldest public university in the United States. It is known to many as Carolina or simply UNC . It is consistently ranked amongst the top tier of American Univer by over 2,000 students; although this was not a large enough error to tip the seat to the Utah delegation, it meant that Utah was, according to revised figures, only about 80 residents short of earning an additional Congressional seat.

A compromise measure was introduced to Congress by Rep. Tom DavisThomas M. Davis III (born January 5 1949), American politician, has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1984, representing the Eleventh Congressional District of Virginia from 1995. Born in Minot, North Dakota, he of VirginiaVirginia is one of the original 13 states of the United States that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution and is generally classified as part of the South. Its official name is the Commonwealth of Virginia it is one of four Commonwealth, but did not reach a floor vote; it would have temporarily increased the size of Congress to 437 seats until 20102010 is a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). See also: 2010: Odyssey Two Events January 15 Annular solar eclipse (The longest lasting annular eclipse of the 21st century. February 12 to February 28 2010 Winter Olympics scheduled in Va, granting an additional seat to Utah and a voting seat to the District of Columbia.