Reapportionment Revolution
The "Reapportionment Revolution" refers to a pivotal shift in U.S. electoral politics, primarily occurring in the 1960s, that addressed significant issues of legislative district representation. Prior to this revolution, many states had not updated their district lines in decades, leading to severe malapportionment, whereby rural areas were overrepresented compared to rapidly growing urban populations. The landmark Supreme Court case Baker v. Carr in 1962 initiated a series of rulings that established the principle of "one person, one vote," mandating that legislative districts be roughly equal in population. This was further solidified in subsequent cases like Reynolds v. Sims and Wesberry v. Sanders, which extended these requirements to both state legislatures and congressional districts.
Despite expectations that a more equitable representation would lead to a shift towards more liberal policies, the actual outcome saw a rise in suburban conservatism rather than a clear liberalization. The revolution also highlighted the ongoing challenges of gerrymandering, where district lines are manipulated for partisan advantage, complicating the promise of fair representation. Although there have been attempts to address gerrymandering, the Supreme Court has generally refrained from intervening in cases where political motivations are evident, focusing instead on population equality. As a result, while the Reapportionment Revolution made strides in achieving more equal representation, it also exposed new complexities in the political landscape.
Reapportionment Revolution
The transformation of legislative representation ending rural domination of almost all U.S. legislatures. In 1962, the Supreme Court declared that malapportioned state legislatures could be corrected by court action.
Origins and History
The Supreme Court requires legislative districts to be equal in population, but a serious problem of malapportionment had arisen before the 1960’s. The U.S. Constitution requires the number of representative in the U.S. House of Representatives shifted with the population after the national census taken once every ten years, but the various state legislatures have the responsibility to draw congressional and state legislative district lines within their own state boundaries.
For more than 150 years, small disparities were either repaired or ignored, but after 1945 an accelerating movement from rural to urban areas left rural areas depopulated but still overrepresented in the legislature. Because rural incumbents almost everywhere benefitted from this and held a majority of seats, there was little the urban legislators, who represented a much larger population, could do to solve the inequity.
The Court Rules
This malapportionment seemed to have no solution before the reapportionment revolution because rural-dominated legislators would not reapportion to their own political disadvantage, and the Supreme Court refused to act until the Baker v. Carr decision in 1962. This case arose in Tennessee where the state legislature had not redistricted itself since 1900 despite a specific requirement in the Tennessee constitution to do so after every election. The disparity between the largest and smallest district was such that the largest district had sixteen times more voters than the smallest district. The Supreme Court decision technically applied to only the lower house of the Tennessee legislature, but its implications were broader, opening the doors wide to further litigation to establish proper redistricting procedures. The decision also established that the federal courts can enter the state arena to correct districting imbalances, and it did not take the courts long to extend a requirement everywhere it was practical to uphold such a rule.
One Person, One Vote
In Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Supreme Court specifically set out a one-person, one-vote rule to apply to both houses of the state legislatures. This rule applied even when a state’s constitution allowed its senate districts to be unequal in size (as happened when a state mimicked the U.S. Constitution and treated its counties as if they were analogous to states, allowing one senator per county). Up to this point, court decisions did not directly affect the federal legislature, so the Supreme Court did not have to risk conflict with a coequal branch of the national government.
In Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), however, the Supreme Court applied the same requirements to the state legislatures that were drawing U.S. House of Representative districting boundaries. Still technically affecting only state actions, the Court was reaching closer to a conflict with the U.S. Congress. Subsequently, the Court has mandated almost exactly equal districts under the one-person, one-vote doctrine for all election districts (except the U.S. Senate where the constitutionally mandated equal representation of each state means admittedly unequal representation according to population).
With the one-person, one-vote standard enunciated, the question remained how close to mathematical equality the district lines within each state had to be drawn. This question was resolved in the Kirkpatrick v. Preisler (1969) decision, in which the Court said it would accept minimum acceptable variance in population size. Thereafter, all U.S. legislative districts of any kind (except for the U.S. Senate) were to be as mathematically equal as possible.
Impact
Before the reapportionment revolution, many scholars hypothesized a dramatic change in U.S. politics because they believed that once the rural domination of legislators was broken, the impact of the equalized urban vote would be in a liberal and democratic direction. Some Republicans, led by Republican Senate Majority Leader Everett Dirksen, even attempted a failing effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to stop the one-person, one-vote principle from being adopted. They did not need to be so fearful. True, urban voters were somewhat more liberal, but the real shift was from rural area to suburban areas, in which the voters were more conservative. To be sure, more representation was provided for nonrural areas, but the expected shift in a liberal direction never developed.
Even with districts of equal size, gerrymandering, or the drawing of district lines for partisan benefits, was still possible. Gerrymandering is the process by which the party controlling the legislature attempts to draw district boundaries to favor its own candidates. Although citizens may vote contrary to the intention of those who draw the lines, there has been enough stability in the history of precinct and county voting that a skilled political cartographer has a reasonable chance of creating districts favorable to either party. Any general region of a state can be made to produce a high likelihood of either a solid Democratic or Republican majority by the simple expedient of drawing the lines.
Most incumbents prefer the “bipartisan gerrymandering” type of districting, or “loaded” districts, for everyone, thereby virtually ensuring their own reelection. In fact, the toughest fights during redistricting are usually among members of the same party who are competing to receive the strongest areas of support.
Subsequent Events
Although courts have ruled that districts cannot be drawn to disadvantage obvious minorities such as African Americans, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to enter the very difficult area of gerrymandering for political purposes. Particularly when so many observers are lamenting the regularity with which incumbents are being reelected, it is remarkable that so little is said about the phenomenon of gerrymandering. The Supreme Court has apparently believed the solution lies in population equality of the district alone, but this is clearly inadequate.
Additional Information
R. B. Dixon’s Democratic Representation (1968) remains the most comprehensive book setting out the reapportionment revolution at the end of the decade. R. C. Cortner’s The Apportionment Cases (1970) similarly gives a decade-long perspective. G. E. Baker’s The Reapportionment Revolution (1966) is also a good source of detailed information.