The Wyoming Initiative

The "Wyoming" initiative might better be called the smallest state initiative. In this rationalization the population of the smallest state is used to select district size (the divisor). That size is used as a divisor applied to each state population thus generating a quotient for each state which is rounded based on geometric mean to produce the number of seats awarded to each state. The total membership of the House is the sum of the rounded quotients. The idea has a certain appeal in that it assures that the smallest state gets one representative and the rest of the apportionment is not subject to jockeying around by the current House members and political parties. But reliance on one particular state seems to produce some strange looking results.

A better approach might be to use the average population of the five smallest states so as to "smooth" the function. The Method of Hill would still give these states at least one representative.