Today I Learned: Kent County’s Population Exceeds That Of Two US States

Early 2020 Census Information is out, and the population of Kent County exceeds the population of two US states. Do you know which ones?

The population for Kent County hit 656,955 according to early 2020 census estimates.

That is more than the population of two states.

The first one may be obvious: Wyoming. The state of Wyoming had 581,011 people, so that means the county that contains the City of Wyoming has more people than the entire State of Wyoming.

The second state is Vermont, which has 623,251 people and at least that many cows.

We are also closing in on the District of Columbia and Alaska, both of which are slightly over 700,000.

But as someone pointed out on reddit.com, having more people than some states makes us a little under represented in Congress.

The state of Wyoming has two senators., one representative.

We have to split our representative (MI03) with four other counties,
We split our two senators with the entire state of Michigan, population 10 million.

Not sure the "democratic" compromises arranged by the founding fathers really operate well today.

And to that end, here's a reminder: the independent committee to redistrict is meeting Thursday night in Grand Rapids at DeVos Place.

The discussion that takes place in the thread after that point is quite interesting and involves the Founding Fathers, the Senate as enticement for small states to join the Union, and whether there should be more than two parties. (There should. Five parties would be delightful).

At any rate, growth has been good for the West Michigan metro and the fact that we're now bigger than two states is proof of that fact.

Now, if we could just get rid of Ohio, everything would be good.