Gerrymandering: a tribute

[giblets]

what do you do if the congressional districts are supposed to have 600.000 inhabitants each and a State has 1.500.000 inhabitants, do you create 3 districts, one with only 300.000 inhabitants, or two with 750.000 inhabitants each.

If it's 3 districts, then they will each have around 500,000 inhabitants.

Basically, they would start by giving each state one representative, and then add representatives to various states one by one according to a formula. So you really couldn't calculate the number of reps for a state with a large enough population for 2.5 representatives without knowing the populations of the other states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment#The_Method_of_Equal_Proportions