Slow-Burning Fuse

"The pigs and cows in Moore County have better representation in the Tennessee legislature than the citizens of Nashville and Davidson County." So complains Nashville's Mayor Ben West, referring to the fact that Tennessee's smallest county (pop. 3,454) has far greater voting power in the legislature than the second most populous one (pop. 399,743). Angered by the arrangement--and by the failure of the Tennessee legislature to redistrict since 1901--a group of Nashville citizens eight years ago started action that led to a major Supreme Court decision last week.

Without even reading the majority opinion by Justice William Brennan (for which, from a literary viewpoint, they can't be blamed), many politicians and pundits hailed the 6 to 2 decision as one that might change the U.S. political landscape overnight, and permanently entrench the Democratic Party. It was far from that. Without setting forth any guidelines for action, it simply gave federal courts the right to hear cases involving state political apportionment. As such, it was less a bombshell than a slow-burning time fuse.

Mother Hubbard. For years, the Supreme Court has refused to assume jurisdiction for federal courts over state apportionment disputes. In the 1946 case of Colegrove v. Green, Justice Felix Frankfurter (who strongly dissented from the majority ruling last week) held that federal courts "ought not to enter this political thicket." This ruling, wrote Justice Tom Clark in concurring with the majority last week, has "served as a Mother Hubbard to most of the subsequent cases." By its latest decision, the Supreme Court has merely opened the cupboard door. It holds that crazy-quilt systems of legislative apportionment may violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution requiring "equal protection of the laws." In his dissent, Justice Frankfurter, who was joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan, urged "complete detachment, in fact and appearance, from political entanglements." Wrote Frankfurter: "There is not under our Constitution a judicial remedy for every political mischief"--and relief for victims of unfair apportionment "must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives." No Streetcars. Tennessee is just one of many states in which the consciences of state representatives have remained notably unseared. For decades, even as the U.S. population has moved from rural areas to the cities, rural voters have continued to dominate the state legislatures under archaic apportionment laws passed when rural America was at its prime. The rural voter's power sets the tone and direction of politics in dozens of states. In 44 states, legislative districting systems permit less than 40% of the population to elect a majority of the legislature; in 13 states a third or less of the population can elect legislative majorities. Many state constitutions make no provision at all for redistricting (Vermont has not reapportioned its lower house since 1793), and 15 states have ignored constitutional requirements to redistrict periodically.

Even the 21 states that have redistricted since 1960 have often made only minor changes that do not solve the basic problems. Says University of Chicago Population Expert Philip Hauser: "Our legislatures are as bad as anything since England did away with its rotten borough system." The failure of the states to reapportion has created ridiculous inequities. One of the nation's worst examples is Georgia, where a county unit vote keeps political power in the pineywoods country even though much of the population has moved to the cities. Several Georgia Governors have won the Democratic nomination (the equivalent of election in Georgia) without winning a majority vote, including the late Eugene ("Ole Gene") Talmadge, who said that he did not care if he never carried a Georgia county large enough to have a streetcar. In Missouri, St. Louis and St. Louis County, which contain 25% of the state's population and account for 54-c- out of every dollar of state income tax, have only 29 of the 163 members of the state House of Representatives; equal distribution would give them 54. In California, the single state senator from Los Angeles County represents 6,038,771 people, while a colleague represents 14,294--a ratio of 422.5 to 1.

Rational Design. In the initial reaction to the Supreme Court's Tennessee ruling, many commentators predicted that the decision would set off a revolution in the relationships between federal and state governments, the courts and the body politic, the cities and rural areas, the Democratic and Republican parties. Within hours after the decision, more than a dozen suits demanding reapportionment were filed across the U.S. But, in fact, the Supreme Court had ruled only on Tennessee, where citizens have no recourse to the weapons of initiative and referendum that are available in many other states; and it had held only that a federal court could hear the plea of the Nashville citizens. As Justice Clark was careful to point out, the Supreme Court had laid down no rules for systems of legislative apportionment. But, said Clark, "certainly there must be some rational design to a state's districting." And it is certain that in some states the systems defy reason.

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