Better Know A District - District Count

District Count

Better Know a District began as a "435-part series," 435 being the number of United States Congressional districts; however, on November 29, 2005, Colbert banned California's 50th District after his "friend" Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the 50th's Representative, pled guilty to receiving over $2 million in bribes and resigned his seat. California's 50th is now the lone member of the "Never Existed to Me" category, and the map showing the United States' Congressional districts now looks as if the district does not even exist. This brought the series to a "434-part series". After this, Texas's 22nd congressional district was retired on April 4, 2006 when Tom DeLay announced that he planned to leave Congress. Texas's 22nd was reinstated on June 8, 2006, with a fake interview in which video of DeLay in three previous interviews on other television networks was interspersed with questions from Colbert. The congressman's words were used out of context for comedic effect. The district was put back into retirement at the end of the segment.

In the show's first year, 34 districts were profiled.

The original district map lacked Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. During a phone-in segment, a resident of Michigan’s 1st, which includes all of the Upper Peninsula as well as a sizable portion of the northern Lower Peninsula, reported this absence. Colbert informed the caller that he lived in Canada and if it was not on Colbert’s map, it was not a part of the United States. The Upper Peninsula was added to the map the next time it was shown.

During the interview with Eleanor Holmes Norton, Colbert established that the District of Columbia was not a state, and thus the District of Columbia was not a part of the United States. The Better Know a District map was updated with an asterisk notation to reflect this fact. Furthermore, the count of 435 districts does not include non-voting districts, such as the District of Columbia; however, this segment was included in the district count, filling in for California's 50th district's absence, restoring the total to 435.

After the 2006 midterm elections, Colbert was invited to a meeting of the incoming House freshmen at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. During this encounter, he brought his total of "better-known districts" from 36 up to 51 (including a British parliamentary constituency); however, he did not count these as installments, and the count picked up at 37 with the next regular installment. The show aired on December 12, 2006.