【美国精神】第21期

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Explanation:  

   Americans live all over the United States, but some places are much more popular than others. For example, more than 35 million people live in California, but only about 500,000 people live in Wyoming. One of the challenges (or difficult things to do) in the U.S. government is to let big and small states participate in the government fairly. Is it fair to give both states equal participation¹ in the government? Or should California have more power than Wyoming since it has so many more people? 

 

   The people who created the U.S. government decided² that they would have to answer ‘yes’ to both questions. They created the Senate, where each state has equal power no matter how big or small it is, and they created the House of Representatives, where states with more people have more power than states with fewer people. 

 

   The House of Representatives currently³ has 435 representatives, or people who are elected (or chosen by large groups of people) to make decisions for their states. Congress can pass a law to change the total number of representatives if it wants to, but the number hasn’t changed from 435 since 1910. Larger states have more representatives than smaller states do. Right now, California has the most, with 53 representatives. Several of the smallest states, such as Wyoming, Montana, and North and South Dakota, have only one representative each. 

 

   The U.S. government does a census⁴ every few years, which is an official count of the number of people living in the country.  After each census, how many representatives each state gets of the 435 seats (or positions) in the House of Representatives is redone. This means that states that have grown may get more representatives and states that have shrunk (or become smaller) get fewer representatives. This process is called apportionment, which means deciding how something should be shared among many people or, in this case, among many states. 

 

   In addition to the 435 representatives, the House also has four delegates⁵ who can speak at the meetings but cannot vote. These delegates represent Washington, D.C. (the nation’s capitol), and the country’s territories, which are areas of land that belong to the United States but are not states.

 

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