Question 19
Would adding that 51st state change the permanent number of House seats?
Yes
No
Yes
No
posted by Crab Rangoon at 10:36 PM
Answers to the US Citizenship Test I wrote and posted on www.okcupid.com
Correct answers are in bold
posted by Crab Rangoon at 10:36 PM
3 Comments:
Adding a state, in and of itself, might not change the number of House seats, but it could. If you're also going to be a grammar stickler, I concede "no" is the correct answer. If not, you need to clarify the question.
Under current law, for several decades, the size of the House of Representatives has been fixed at 435. Adding a state would not change this. When Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union in 1959, they were each granted a temporary House seat, and the House's size was 437 for a short time. However, as soon as the 1960 census was completed, the 435 House seats were apportioned among all 50 states. The law is the same now as it was then. The act of admitting a 51st state to the union would not change the size of the House from 435 seats. The new state would get 1 House seat, expanding the body to 436, until the next census and reapportionment. However, it *would* automatically expand the Senate to 102 seats. The size of the House is a number fixed by law. The size of the Senate is prescribed in the Constitution as 2 per state. That was the main point of those 2 questions.
The size of the House of Representatives has been fixed by statute at 435 since 1911. This could be changed by a regular law. Changing the size of the Senate would require a constitutional amendment.
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