Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Interesting Side-Effect Of War

Because so many military members stationed in North Carolina are deployed overseas in our various wars, North Carolina will not receive an additional Congressional seat that it would have been awarded from the results of the 2010 Census.

It works this way: if the military members had been home in North Carolina, they would have been counted as NC residents for Census purposes; since they were all deployed, the Census counts them as part of their home state, or state of origin. (It's explained better in the linked story, believe me).

Another interesting side-effect of this Census practice is that, since most of the large US military bases are in the South, potential loss of seats in Congress would be larger from Southern states than northern/midwest states with smaller military populations. Of course, those same northern and midwest states are the ones that lose residents due to high taxes/high cost of living, so it seems to balance out, doesn't it?

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