How Do The Individual Congressional Districts Get Their Number Designations?

[Free Bird]

They seem wildly arbitrary, with Nebraska being the best example (from west to east it goes 3-1-2). Who decides which districts get what number? The same applies to State Legislative districts.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It's State legislatures that decide.  At least here in South Carolina, they typically insure that incumbents will be running in the same numbered district.

In the case of Nebraska, it looks like that back when Nebraska had a lot more districts (at one time it had 6) the 1st was in southeast Nebraska and the the 2nd was centered on Omaha in east Nebraska. As Nebraska lost districts, they kept the 2nd being the Omaha district.

[Progressive Pessimist]

New Jersey's are probably the most confusing. 1-4 make sense being in South Jersey but then 5 is all the way at the tippy-top of the state and from there it becomes a confusing mess.

[MarkD]

It's State legislatures that decide.  At least here in South Carolina, they typically insure that incumbents will be running in the same numbered district.

In the case of Nebraska, it looks like that back when Nebraska had a lot more districts (at one time it had 6) the 1st was in southeast Nebraska and the the 2nd was centered on Omaha in east Nebraska. As Nebraska lost districts, they kept the 2nd being the Omaha district.

In most cases that's true, although some states have decided to do redistricting via independent commissions, and still other states have had state courts or federal courts intervene in the redistricting process. For example, recently in Pennsylvania a new district map was adopted by the state Supreme Court and in choosing the numbers to assign to the districts, they started from scratch and disregarded whether incumbents would be running for re-election in a different district number. And getting back to independent commissions, redistricting in Iowa is done by a state bureaucracy called the Legislative Services Bureau.

[Panda Express]

It’s based off of I.Q.

So the people in every first district are the smartest people in that state.

[DINGO Joe]

It’s based off of I.Q.

So the people in every first district are the smartest people in that state.

Mississippi is so dumb that even though they only have 4 CDs, they still have a MS-13

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

California's seem to be pretty much in order by the latitude of the northernmost part of the district.

[Badger]

I really like the way the Pennsylvania Supreme Court included a commonsensical renumbering from east to west when they impose their redistricting order. It replaced an absolutely nonsensical hodgepodge.

I bet other states than South Carolina also try to ensure incumbents running the same numbered districts after redistricting. That would explain a lot how things get so topsy-turvy over the years.

[politicallefty]

California's seem to be pretty much in order by the latitude of the northernmost part of the district.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the commission is required to number then from Northeast to Southwest, hence the way they are numbered.

Does anyone know if there's anything stopping a state from naming its Congressional districts instead of numbering them? Obviously, that wouldn't work very well in hideously gerrymandered states, but I was curious. I think Massachusetts sort of combines the two in a way for the legislature.

[cvparty]

sometimes it reflects the order in which they were drawn

[emailking]

I think all of them should follow a commonsensical scheme. Not necessarily obeying any specific rule, but just meeting the standard that a typical person could look at it and say "yeah, this seems reasonable."

[Bojack Horseman]

For years and years #1 was John Dingell’s seat in Detroit, but I think it was either the 1990 or 2000 redistricting that made Bart Stupak’s old district in the UP district 1 with the numbers increasing as you went further south.

[pbrower2a]

Well, DE-01 has never caused any problems.