Texas Officially Gains Two More Votes in the Electoral College
One of the major functions of the once-a-decade U.S. Census is to determine Congressional apportionment for the 435 members of the U.S. House.
Monday afternoon, the U.S. Census Bureau announced the results of the 2022 congressional reapportionment, based off of the 2020 Census.
For the eighth consecutive reapportionment, Texas has gained seats in the U.S. House. In 2022, Texas will gain two seats, bringing its number of representatives up to 38 and its number of electoral college votes up to 40. In fact, Texas is the only state to gain two seats for the 2022 reapportionment.
Other states gaining one congressional seat are: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Montana, and Oregon.
States losing one congressional seat are: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, Michigan and Ohio. All other states are unchanged.
Other interesting facts to come out of Monday's U.S. Census announcement: Utah is the fastest growing state in the country over the past 10 years. Their population has grown more than 18%.
Washington, D.C.'s population continues grow too. It increased by 14.6% to a population of 689,545. By virtue of the 23rd Amendment, Washington, D.C. currently receives three votes in the Electoral College.
Puerto Rico, which has a non-voting member in Congress, saw its population decrease over the past decade. Puerto Rico's population loss amounted to 11.8%.
The smallest state in the country is Wyoming. The census tabulated their population to be 576,851.
Overall, the U.S. population has grown to 331,449,281 as of April 2020. That's a 7.4% increase over the previous census figures in 2010. However, the 7.4% increase is the second-slowest rise in U.S. history, behind only the decade of the 1930s.