Temporary Representatives

The writers of the United States Constitution provided in Article I.2.3, "As a temporary expedient until the first census is taken, each state is entitled to a specified number of Representatives." This provision was merely a temporary procedure to insure that each state had at least one Representative in Congress. The Founders took a calculated guess as to what the population was in each state and assigned a certain number of Representatives. Virginia (10), Massachusetts (8), and Pennsylvania (8) had the most Representatives while Rhode Island (1), Delaware (1), New Hampshire (3), and Georgia (3) had the least.