The Statistics of Malapportionment

Abstract

has unlocked the Federal courthouse door for citizens who claim their legislative vote is not being counted equally.The effects of this decision upon the judges inside and the politicians outside have been suggested earlier.No less important, however, is how the newly admitted citizens will fare once they cross the threshold.Their reception in the court largely depends upon facts-they must prove, first, that there is inequality, and, second, that the inequality is of such proportions as to be unconstitutional. Unequal EqualityUnquestionably, the vote of some people in every state is being diluted, while by comparison that of their neighbor's is weighted.In Vermont, for example, where representatives to the lower house are chosen from towns as they existed in 1793, one voter in the state's smallest district has 872 votes compared to his neighbor in Burlington, the state's largest city.The votes of 11.6 per cent of the people can control the house. 2 In California, it requires the votes of 422 citizens of Los Angeles County (population 6,038,771), who have one state senator, to equal the vote of a citizen of the 28th senatorial district (population 14,294), which also has one senator. 3These examples, while extreme, are not isolated, but rather exemplify the pattern of minority (which today means rural) control of state legislatures.These situations challenge a fundamentally accepted principle of representative government-that the majority, not a minority, should govern. 4his principle, however, even if relaxed to the point at which a majority of the legislators would be elected from districts containing at least 40 per cent of the people, would, according to available data, permit only 26 legislative tLL.B., New York University, 1962; B.B.A., City College of New York, 1959. 1. 369 U.S. 186 (1962).2. This percentage is found by listing all the districts in order of population and then adding, from the smallest to largest, until the total includes a bare majority of the total number of ditricts.For statistical data on legislative apportionment for all states see Appendix A. The apportionment plan of Vermont's senate was recently declared invalid, but the court was not asked to rule on the lower house's town-by-town formula.Mikell v.