Does anyone know how many households are included in a zipcode?

[SoCalDem]

I keep thinking that congressional districts "should" be according to zipcode and not gerrymandered into idiotic contortions.

The postal service surely set up zipcodes into logical boundary areas, and I keep thinking this would be the best way to accurately "take the pulse" of any given community and get fair representation for them..

Is it done by household, or population in addition to the obvious geographic distinctions.

Could congress mandate a change like this to achieve uniformity and fair representation, without the states overruling them?

[RagingInMiami]

1. Think of how efficient that would make mass mailings from candidates

[SoCalDem]

4. and how utterly "fair" the representation of those districts would be

Probably why it would never work..

I would like to see Wyoming as the "test case". they have ONE representative for roughly 500K population.

Out here we have 53 reps and almost 37MILLION people..that works out to 1 per 698K people

add the two senators and the Wyoming model really shows the disparity.. That works out to 1 per 166K or so in WY...

and yet add 2 senators to the mix in California and it makes it 1 per 660K people

[Gormy Cuss]

2. ZIPcodes don't define population areas with any uniformity.

Excluding the specialized ones like the IRS-only ZIPs, zipcodes do define a geographic area although not necessarily an area that defines a political area. For example, my zipcode and the postal designation of my "town" are for the adjacent city, but on voting day my ballot excludes all the city-level races because I don't live in the incorporated area.

The post office does set up logical boundaries as much as possible but practical boundary in terms of geography are paramount because the purpose of the code is to enhance efficiency of postal delivery.

[Deb]

3. I think this link might help

http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/zipstats.html