Redrawing the Lines

THE SUPREME COURT

Rarely has a Supreme Court decision caused such swift, tumultuous reaction. Late one night last week, the gavel pounded and pounded again in the Georgia state house of representatives. Dozens of lawmakers were shouting: "Mistuh Speakuh! Mistuh Speakuh!" The clock was fast approaching midnight on Feb. 21, the hour and day of statutory adjournment of the Georgia legislature. But adjournment was out of the question. At stake was the necessity of readjusting Georgia's outrageously malapportioned U.S. congressional districts.

Now it was 11:50 p.m. — and the Speaker ordered that the clock be stopped, a tried-and-true parliamentary move. Opponents of redistricting were in a frenzy. Macon's Representative Denmark Groover had a hasty thought: if there is no clock, it can't be stopped.

He raced up to the gallery, swung over the balcony, and holding onto the parapet with an arm and a leg, reached over, pulled the official clock from its place on the wall and sent it crashing to the floor. There, others cracked and smashed it. But proponents were rushing the bill to completion, and by 12:11 a.m., it had passed. "Mistuh Speakuh!" cried Chattooga County's James Floyd in desperation, "I think the tactics used here are unconstitutional, Communist, and everything else — and I don't like it worth a damn!" But he was on the losing side.

Unfair on the Face. The wild Georgia scene was the direct result of a milestone Supreme Court decision handed down only four days before. The court was dealing with a Georgia case, Wesberry v. Sanders. The plaintiffs were residents of Georgia's Fifth District — which includes Atlanta and, until the legislative action that came later in the week, had a population of 823,680.

That was more than 108% above the 394,312-person average of Georgia's ten districts. The plaintiffs' case rested on the plain and simple fact that their votes for Congressmen did not count on a par with those of Georgians in other districts.

Similar — or worse — disparities exist in congressional districts throughout the U.S. Republican John B. Bennett represents 177,431 people from the Upper Peninsula Twelfth District of Michigan, which he calls the nation's "smallest" and, less accurately, "the most important." Republican Bruce Alger represents 951,527 people in and around Dallas; his Fifth Congressional District of Texas is the nation's most populous. Yet both Bennett and Alger have one vote apiece in the House of Representatives. Such variations mean that voters in overpopulated districts are underrepresented in the House, and vice versa. This, on the face of it, seems unfair.

The Principle. The Supreme Court's decision on the Georgia case not only agreed that it is unfair, but that it is unconstitutional as well. Justice Hugo Black, writing for the six-member majority, composed of Chief Justice Warren, Justices Douglas, Brennan, Goldberg and White, said: "We hold that, construed in its historical context, the command of Article I, Section 2, that Representatives be chosen 'by the people of the several states,' means that as nearly as is practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's." Black found that it was the intent of the Founding Fathers that all congressional districts within a state be more or less equal in population. "To say that a vote is worth more in one district than in another would not only run counter to our fundamental ideas of democratic government; it would cast aside the principle of a House of Representatives elected 'by the people,' a principle tenaciously fought for and established at the Constitutional Convention."

In a blistering, 29-page dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan (with Justices Clark and Stewart writing separate dissents) argued that Black was dead wrong. "I had not expected to witness the day," he wrote, "when the Supreme Court of the United States would render a decision which casts grave doubt on the constitutionality of the composition of the House of Representatives." He pointed out that Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution says: "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations." Moreover, Article I, Section 5 says: "Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members." Harlan recalled that in 1872 Congress passed a law requiring that Representatives be elected from districts of nearly equal populations. But that law was dropped, almost unnoticed, in 1929 —and the man mostly responsible for its disappearance was Democratic Representative Sam Rayburn, who came from one of the most sparsely populated congressional districts in the U.S., the Texas Fourth. Wrote Harlan: "It cannot be contended, therefore, that the court's decision today fills a gap left by the Congress. On the contrary, the court substitutes its own judgment for that of Congress." That much was certainly true. But obviously neither the Congress nor the many state legislatures had fulfilled their constitutional duties, and their inaction led to the glaring inequities in representation that the court now is trying to correct.

The Effects. Despite the bitter differences between the majority and minority opinions, the decision curiously enough caused little immediate reaction —at least as far as the legalities were concerned. What did arouse vast conjecture across the U.S. was the possible political effect.

It has become part of American political mythology that Republicans are strongest in rural, underpopulated areas, while Democrats hold sway in urban, overpopulated places. According to that notion, Democrats would stand to gain by an equalizing of congressional districts. But several studies indicate that the opposite is probably true. In the 1962 elections, Republican candidates for the House won 48% of the national vote, but took only 40% of the seats. If they had gained as high a percentage of the seats as they did of the vote, there would now be 209 Republican Congressmen instead of 176.

Furthermore, any redistricting along the lines indicated by the Supreme Court would almost certainly give more Representatives to Southern urban areas, where Republicans are strong, and take Representatives away from rural areas, where reactionary, racist Democrats often rule. Thus Bruce Alger's Dallas district might be divided into two or three, any or all of which could go Republican. Dallas is only one example of a heavily populated area where Republican strength is high. Nationwide, out of 66 Congressional districts with populations of more than 500,000, the Republican party currently holds 34 seats.

Greater representation would go to suburbia, where Republicans dominate.

For example, Connecticut's five congressional districts range in population from 318,942 to 689,555. Democrats control all but the Fourth, Fairfield County. Fairfield would be strengthened for the Republicans if it were to lose some of the Democratic manufacturing towns along the district's northeast boundary. And the Second District, most vulnerable to realignment, has sent Republicans to Congress in six of the past ten elections, so there is a good chance that the G.O.P. would benefit from a change there.

Advantage Lost. Last week's Supreme Court decision did not set forth a specific percentage figure for fair representation, but 15% above or below the state's district norm is generally considered the benchmark figure. Altogether there are 33 states in which districts fall outside that standard. Even before the court rendered its decision, suits similar to the one in Georgia were pending in Texas and Maryland. Close on the heels of the decision, Maryland's Governor J. Millard Tawes asked for a postponement of the state's May 19 house primaries in the hope that a special legislative committee would be able to redraw some notably inequitable district lines.

Georgia's Governor Carl Sanders, on the other hand, did not bother to wait, called on his legislature to act, almost within the hour—and the midnight riot ensued.

Before the clock was stopped, stomped on and smashed, Georgia's Fifth District, a three-county area embracing Atlanta, was the second most populous in the nation. The Ninth, on the other extreme, comprised 272,154 people. State legislators from the rural districts naturally preferred to keep things that way since it gave their sparsely populated areas a tremendous voting advantage over Atlanta. As a result of the redistricting, the Atlanta area was divided into two districts, each with its own Congressman. The rest of the state map was redrawn so as to provide districts of near-equal size. The upshot of Georgia's lightning reapportionment: the ten districts now range in population from 329,738 to 455,575.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873809,00.html