The Alabama paradox is an apportionment method paradox in which increasing the total number of seats while leaving all populations
fixed causes a state to lose a seat. An apportionment
method susceptible to the Alabama paradox therefore fails house
monotonicity .
The paradox takes its name from calculations made after the 1880 United States census, in which Alabama would have received eight seats in a house of size 299 but only seven in a house of size 300 (Balinski and Young 2001).
See also Apportionment Method ,
House Monotonicity ,
New-States
Paradox ,
Population Paradox
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References Balinski, M. L. and Young, H. P. Fair Representation: Meeting the Ideal of One Man, One Vote, 2nd ed. Bogomolny, A. "The Constitution
and Paradoxes." https://cut-the-knot.org/ctk/Democracy.shtml#Alabama .
Cite this as:
Weisstein, Eric W. "Alabama Paradox."
From MathWorld https://mathworld.wolfram.com/AlabamaParadox.html
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