2. Membership
• 435 members
• Larger body of Congress
• Number of seats per state based on population
• Each state must have at least one
3. Qualifications
• To be elected to the House
of Representatives, you
must be:
• At least 25 years old
• A citizen of the U.S. for at
least 7 years
• A legal resident of the
state you are representing
It is a tradition to live in the
district you represent,
although it is technically not
required
• Your rep is Cliff Stearns-
District 6
4. Term of office
• 2 year terms
• Elections in November of even-numbered
years
• Term begins on Jan. 3rd
• Every 2 years, all 435 members must run
for re-election
• Over 90% of all representatives are re-
elected each year
5. Representation and
reapportionment
• Census (population count) every
ten years
• First census was taken in 1790
• Most recent was 2010
• Next will be 2020
• Reapportionment- pop. of each
state (based on census)
determines new number of
representatives
• Some states lose reps
• Some states gain reps
• Total number always remain 435-
6.
7. Congressional redistricting
• After number of representatives is decided, states
must draw up districts
• One district per representative
• Redistricting-setting up new district lines after
reapportionment has been completed
• Problems
• Unequal population between districts
• Gerrymandering
8. Gerrymandering
• District boundaries drawn in an
irregular way, where one
particular political party gains
advantage
• Named after Elbridge Gerry-
drew a salamander shaped
district in Massachusetts to help
his party gain advantage-a
cartoonists added a head,
wings, and claws to the district
map and called it
gerrymandering
• Gerry + Salamander =
Gerrymander!
12. gerrymandering
• 2 types- “Packing” and “Cracking”
• Packing
• Crowding the other party’s voters into one
district ensures that your party of choice will win
all the other districts
• Cracking
• Dividing the other party’s voters into small
groups within each district weakens their voter
base
• Supreme Court has ruled that districts must be
compact and physically adjoining, but
gerrymandering still exists today.
