Redistricting Rule

The Supreme Court has changed the rules of the Congressional apportionment game. In declaring Georgia's thirty-year-old apportionment unconstitutional, the Court held that districts must be equal in population, "as nearly as is practicable." This decision was re-affirmed two weeks later, when Texas districts fell, and a lower federal court struck down a 1963 Michigan plan.

One prediction is easy to make. Urban areas--and suburbs more often than cities--will send more Representatives to Congress than at present. In Georgia and Texas, the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas, will each gain an additional Congressman. However, the Court has not demanded immediate redistricting (which would interfere with 1964 elections), and these Representatives will not arrive in Washington till 1967.

It is unlikely that altered representation will produce votes for the kind of measures most Congressmen from cities favor: the Administration's mass transit bill, an Urban Affairs Department, civil rights legislation, and welfare programs. Unlikely, that is unless the state legislature in question favors such programs. Malapportionment in most state legislatures today favors rural areas, and the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the many cases challenging the situation.

Meanwhile, legislatures still play the redistricting game, though now the rules have been stiffened. Districts must be "nearly" equal in population, although the Court has not said how near that is in practice. Even if they are allowed to vary as much as 20 per cent from the average size of the state's districts, twenty-eight states, with 306 representatives will have to redistrict. In both Georgia and Texas, districts varied much more than 20 per cent; in Michigan, a lower court threw out districts that varied from the average by twenty-six per cent. The New York Legislature--or rather, the Republican majority of that legislature--apparently anticipated the new rules. Its 1961 reapportionment has shown how the game of getting one's views represented in Washington and eliminating obnoxious Congressmen can still be played with equal-population rules. New York's districts vary no more than eighteen per cent from the average, but they were obviously drawn with considerable care. New York City's nineteen districts have a seemingly irrational assortment of twisted and contorted shapes. The Sixteenth District even joins Staten Island to a section of eastern Brooklyn.

Anyone who glances at 1962 election results will, find a rational explanation for these districts: The three Republican Congressmen from the City have safe districts, and Republicans in a good year should be able to pick up two others.

Democrats, of course, play the reapportionment game, too. Victims of Democratic legislatures include Edgar Hiestand and John Rousselot, both California Republicans and members of the John Birch Society. These two were eliminated although they each represented almost a million constituents and, before 1962, won by large majorities. The legislature placed each of the Birchers' residences in smaller, more Democratic areas, and they were both defeated.

California gained eight seats in the 1960 census (while New York, in contrast, lost two), and the legislature saw that all eight were picked up by Democrats. In Los Angeles Country, Republicans and Democrats gained almost exactly the same number of votes in Congressional races, but Democrats won eleven and Republicans four. But California legislators apparently did not anticipate the equal-population rule, and districts there vary from the average by as much as thirty per cent.

Cities have been traditionally slighted by a malapportionment, but even with an equal-population rule, state legislatures play a large part in deciding what kind of representatives an urban area will have. Until the composition of most state legislatures is changed--and the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on their apportionment--Congressional representation from most states will retain some rural bias. Because the courts and legislatures move slowly, the Court's recent rulings will probably have little effect until after the 1970 census. By that time, most central cities as well as rural areas will have lost large numbers of people, and suburbs will make most of the gains.