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News & ArtsWednesday, December 23, 2009
Politics Will Washington Pick Up a Congressional Seat?
Posted by Dominic Holden on Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 12:58 PM
The Washington Secratary of State's office thinks it's possible:
New Census projections show that we’re on the move in Washington — people moving in from other states and folks having babies. In the past decade, we’ve grown by 13 percent and are now the 13th largest state.We’ve grown by nearly 100,000 during the last year and — drum roll please — our new statewide population number is nearly 6.7 million. It’s 6,664,195, up over 770,000 from the April, 2000, number of 5,894,143.
A decade ago, we were the 15th most populous state.
Is our population growth enough to pick up a 10th congressional seat? It’s too early to say for sure, especially since the new national Census of 2010 still awaits, to give us the official numbers. A year ago, the analysts at Election Data Services put us in the small cluster of states that could vie for the 435th and final congressional seat. Oregon is another possible winner. Some states are losing population relative to the rest of the country and others are growing faster than most of the rest of the USA.
1
Hopefully southern and midwestern teabaggers will hide from the census and skew the numbers in Washington's favor.
2
Interestingly, both Florida and Nevada are likely to show gains even though they've been shedding thousands of residents for the past two years. At the rate things are going, those states are going to be back to 1990 levels before long.
3
1. too bad the recession is driving immigrants back to Mexico...bad timing...
2. notice how the bigger we are, the less our votes count in the US senate which was created to bar democracy in the USA.....doesn't matter how many reps. we get when the smallish teabagger states still each have two senators each just like us or the other large states....
In general with each decade this problem gets worse as the large population states continue to grow and the small population states stay the same or are reduced in some cases.
We're almost 7 million, yet we get same no. of votes in the senate as a state with one tenth that population...no wonder we can't pass anything we want, duh.
It's no mystery why Canada and Europe and all those places have nationalized health care, gun control and trains everywhere, here we are subjected to rule by the rural minority.
2. notice how the bigger we are, the less our votes count in the US senate which was created to bar democracy in the USA.....doesn't matter how many reps. we get when the smallish teabagger states still each have two senators each just like us or the other large states....
In general with each decade this problem gets worse as the large population states continue to grow and the small population states stay the same or are reduced in some cases.
We're almost 7 million, yet we get same no. of votes in the senate as a state with one tenth that population...no wonder we can't pass anything we want, duh.
It's no mystery why Canada and Europe and all those places have nationalized health care, gun control and trains everywhere, here we are subjected to rule by the rural minority.
6
Dear Stranger Copy Editor / Spell-Checker: Isn't it "Secretary"?
The bad news is that every place you want to be is overrun with the 6.7 million. I miss when it was still under 4 mil. Ah the good old days, when if you were in the mood to head down to the Pike Place Market you could park on the street nearby no problem... sigh...
The bad news is that every place you want to be is overrun with the 6.7 million. I miss when it was still under 4 mil. Ah the good old days, when if you were in the mood to head down to the Pike Place Market you could park on the street nearby no problem... sigh...
7
don't get your hopes up, hipsters- that extra Congressional seat, like your Boeing assembly plants, is coming to the South.
10
The Senate does suck for being unrepresentative, but before we start complaining about one-representative teabagging states (Wyoming), we should probably not forget the one-representative states that send two democrats to the Senate (Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota)
11
Sorry, Rhode Island sends two representatives (and is about to lose one, either in this or the next census), but you get my point.
12
Considering that Reichert's district is one of the faster-growing regions of the state I'd imagine a 10th seat would make his reelection easier. If the inclusion of another district causes his district to shrink it could split at Bellevue and leave a more Democratic-leaning northern district and Republican-leaning southern district in which as an Auburn resident he would be more at home.
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