A floterial district is a legislative district that includes several separate districts that independently would not be entitled to additional representation, but whose combined population entitles the area to another seat in the legislative body. It is a technique that a state may be authorized to use to achieve more equal
apportionment by population during
redistricting
Redistribution (re-districting in the United States and in the Philippines) is the process by which electoral districts are added, removed, or otherwise changed. Redistribution is a form of boundary delimitation that changes electoral distri ...
.
In common usage, a floterial district is not just a multi-town district, but a multi-town district that "floats" over towns that already elect one or more legislators. For example, a city due more than five representatives but not quite six might elect five representing the city itself, and one more in a floterial district that includes some neighboring towns whose small populations, alone, would not merit even a single representative.
Examples
Several states have maintained floterial districts for state offices, including
Idaho
Idaho ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Monta ...
,
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
,
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...
and
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
. , New Hampshire District 31 in
Rockingham County is a floterial district consisting of
Portsmouth
Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council.
Portsmouth is the most d ...
’s Ward 3,
North Hampton,
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...
and
Newington.
Based on the
Reapportionment Act of 1929
The Reapportionment Act of 1929 (ch. 28, , ), also known as the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, is a combined census and apportionment bill enacted on June 18, 1929, that establishes a permanent method for apportioning a constant 435 seats ...
, reapportions the
U.S. House to the states following each decennial census. If a state received additional representatives but failed to redistrict, the additional representatives would be elected
at-large
At large (''before a noun'': at-large) is a description for members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent a whole membership or population (notably a city, county, state, province, nation, club or association), rather than ...
, so the entire state would be a floterial district. This has occurred in many states. However, subsequent decisions of the
U.S. Supreme Court, such as ''
Reynolds v. Sims'' (the "
one man, one vote
"One man, one vote", or "one person, one vote", expresses the principle that individuals should have equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of political equality to refer to such electoral reforms as universal suffrage, ...
" decision), now oblige the states to redistrict.
New Hampshire litigation
In 1982, U.S. District Court in ''Boyer v. Gardner'' upheld New Hampshire's
reapportionment
Apportionment is the process by which seats in a legislative body are distributed among administrative divisions, such as states or parties, entitled to representation. This page presents the general principles and issues related to apportionme ...
of the 400-person House of Representatives using floterial districts. The plaintiffs had taken issue with the "aggregate method," which compares the relative voting power of the group of districts with both floterial and dedicated representatives, and had asked the court to consider the "component method." For example, a small town paired with a large city in a floterial district would be unlikely ever to control that House seat.
However, after the reapportionment of 2002, the New Hampshire Supreme Court found that towns and wards with floterial districts elect different numbers of representatives, the floterial scheme is "complicated and often confusing", and the floterial scheme is not specified in the state constitution. Finding that none of the plans submitted to it correctly used figures from the 2000 census and that all of them had political components, the court redistricted the state into 88 districts, none of them floterial, and all but five electing multiple representatives.
Legislators and voters were dissatisfied that the larger districts in the court's plan valued numerical equality over more local representation. Consequently, the New Hampshire constitution was amended in 2006 to guarantee a representative for each town or ward "within a reasonable deviation from the ideal population for one or more representative seats" and to explicitly authorize floterial districts for fine-tuning.
N.H. Constitution, Part 2 on municipalities
See Article 11.
References
{{Reflist, 30em
External links
New Hampshire State House Districts
(including floterial districts) at NH.gov
United States congressional districts
Government of New Hampshire