When District shapes looked like Sea Life or didnt exist at all
By Mike Asmus
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Undertaken following each census redistricting is a process fraught with competing goals groups & personalities. While this must be done at least once a decade it can be done as often as a state cares to wield a Sharpie. With new and returning state lawmakers sworn in and the 2011 Legislative Session underway our Texas House & Senate elected servants have plenty at hand in wrangling back into balance a budget now several billion dollars out of kilter.
On top of this they will be drawing new maps of legislative districts from the state level up to U.S. House of Representatives.
To change a district boundary is to move a person persons community or whole county from what was District X to some other representative territory; and not all the moved nor all the former and slated representatives of the moved enjoy the trip.
On the Congressional level Texas legislators will be working to fit an additional four (4) U.S. House Districts into the Lone Star States boundaries. The increased delegation (36 Congressmen up from 32) comes via the states meteoric rise in population since the 2000 census. With U.S. House membership firmly rooted at 435 voting members for the past century the seats Texas gains must by design come from states posting less lively population gains. For instance New York and Ohio are each shedding a pair of seats. (All states gained in population over the past decade with the exception of Michigan.)
The Articles of Confederation the post-colonial nations operating manual was an admirable try at establishing a national government in coexistence
with the governments of the several states. That said the document was quickly found to be woefully inadequate.
To distill the documents numerous shortcomings into three prime facets the Articles of Confederation:
- Did not establish a chief executive with meaningful power to execute policy
- Did not provide a mechanism for the national government to raise funds and
- Did require unanimous approval from the legislatures of the states for amendments to the Articles of Confederation.
First of a mind to simply make repairs to the document the Framers of 1787 ultimately started over. Among the many vast improvements Ben and George and James and the other constitution conventioneers made the national legislature a two-house system to replace what had been the singular legislative body that was the Continental Congress.
In drawing up the blueprint for the Senate the Framers envisioned a body in which the states would in effect be casting their votes thus leading to the two members allowed to each and every state. Expanding on the notion of the Senate as a gathering of states it was the legislatures of the states who chose their two senators in each election until 1913 when individuals were given the power of direct election.
Members of Congress on the House side of the capitol rotunda were envisioned as representatives (hence House of Representatives) of the citizens of the states rather than proxies of the state legislatures. Care to be a U.S. rep? Heres what the U.S. Constitution requires of you:
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States and who shall not when elected be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
Are you 25 or older? Been a citizen of the country for seven or more years? Will you be
inhabiting the state youre running in at the time of the election? Great and good luck.
In reading these requirements you find it seems that you can live wherever you like within a state and run for whatever congressional district you like. Well you could and still can. And re-reading you dont even find mention of districts.
As noted earlier the size of each states Congressional delegation was and is set by some fairly simple math ruled for the last century by the number 435. At bottom the more populous the state the greater the number of representatives. California has the most members in the U.S. House (53) while several states have a lone representative.
As we know things today each member (in multi-member states) has a district. But the Constitution doesnt speak to the forming of or even the concept of congressional districts.
The Framers by design ensured each state had proportional representation in the U.S. House but by virtue of absolute silence on the matter left to the states whether that representation should also be proportional within each state. And so it was many states maintained delegations of representatives who had been collectively elected by voters statewide.
Naturally with this in play so long as you lived anywhere in the state your residency requirement was fulfilled.
On another front states using the at-large practice were intentionally or not distilling the political DNA of their delegations to a single party. If state ABC had a strong majority of party X voters state ABCs congressional delegation would accordingly almost assuredly be completely allied with the party X. This despite the fact that said state might have large geographic areas in which voters were of another political party stripe. (Such as is often the case between rural and urban regions.)
Congress in 1842 called on the states to enact single member districts in place of at-large delegations. Yet many states kept right on holding statewide elections for their representatives. Discrepancies in practice existed even among the states using single-member districts.
Some of these states redrew district boundaries following a census but some didnt. Some accounted for intrastate population shifts some didnt. It wasnt
uncommon to find a state legislature leave lines unchanged even though densities had. You might have districts of reasonable sameness of population in 1910 in state X and then by 1950 find that the number of people still living in rural districts had become a fraction of the size of metropolitan area districts.
In theory lines would have been redrawn to where cities gained representation and rural areas lost. But theory and practice dont always come to dinner together and even less frequently leave together.
Through a series of rulings made in the 1960s the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that states must adhere to three districting principals:
- Districts will be redrawn to reflect population shifts following each census
- The districts will be drawn in the spirit of being compact and
- The districts within each state shall have as near as possible the exact same numbers of people within them.
These criteria were good additions. States would re-evaluate boundaries at least every 10 years. They would not be allowed to gerrymander district shapes to resemble ropes starfish or letters of the alphabet. And in requiring districts within each state be of co-equal population a persons vote in congressional district A will have as much mathematical/representational power were it to be cast in district B. (As
mentioned boundary line drawing is a non-project for states with a sole representative.)
These refinements enacted the theory of districts firmly in practice there remains to this day no requirement that a candidate live in the district s/he is seeking nor that a seated representative live in the district s/he represents.
Now whether or not voters in the Texas Panhandle would take a shine to a candidate from the Hill Country is a completely different consideration but not one the Constitution cares to weigh in on. (Former Nebraska Cornhuskers football coach Tom Osborne lived in one Nebraska congressional district and represented another.) Really with Congress in session as much as it is many members find themselves actually living more by the banks of the Potomac than in their home state let alone what part of that state.
Back across the rotunda to the Senate in which each states two-person delegation is elected at-large by the voters statewide there are no districting or re-districting complications. Unless … unless you start to wonder about the very boundaries of these united 50 states. Arent the shapes of the states themselves the outlines of legislative districts?
Are there 50 districts represented in the U.S. Senate each district of wildly varying population size and shape of that of its brethren? Well maybe yes maybe no.
In any event the Constitution bridges the two camps of thought by invoking the two houses of Congress one chamber more for the states the other more for the individuals of those states. We the People... does not introduce a flawless list of governmental articles but it does introduce about the best operating manual that mere mortals have come up with to date.
A former mayor & State Senate Communications Director Mike Asmus managed the 2010 congressional campaign of Donna Campbell who remains in the hunt for 2012.
