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44 Nat'l Mun. Rev. 571 (1955)
Unrepresentative States

handle is hein.journals/natmnr44 and id is 601 raw text is: Unrepresentative States From 1937 to 1955 legislatures' representativeness declined in more than three-quarters of the states. By MANNING J. DAUER and ROBERT G. KELSAY* H E problem of apportionment of our state legislatures is receiving increasing attention as the growth of American urban population contin- ues. The importance of the issue is emphasized by the report of the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.1 As matters now stand, the report points out, Paradoxically enough, the interests of the urban areas are often more effectively rep- resented in the national legislature than in their own state legislatures?2 A number of studies of apportion- ment in individual states, of the methods of apportionment employed, and of the general problem of rural- urban representation h a v e b e e n made.3 Until now, however, no * Dr. Dauer is head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida and Mr. Kelsay is an instructor in political and social sciences at the same institution. Dr. Dauer, author of The Adams Federalists (1953) and contributor to magazines in his field, is immediate past president of the Southern Political Science Association. A Report to the President for Trans- mittal to Congress. Washington, D. C., Government Printing Ofice, June 1955. 2 Ibid., page 40. Gordon E. Baker, Rural v. Urban Political Power. Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1955; Legislative Reappor- tionment (A Symposium), Law and Contemporary Problems, Spring, 1952, pages 253-469; Kenneth C. Sears, Methods of Reapportionment, Chicago, University of Chicago Law School, 1952; Belle Zeller, editor, American State Legislatures: Re- Port of the Committee on American Legislatures, American Political Science Association, New York, Crowell, 1954, study has included an up-to-date in- dex of representation showing the extent of the apportionment problem in all 48 states.4 That is the subject of the study discussed here, the re- sults of which are shown in the ac- companying tables. The basic assumption of the study is that a legislature which does not equably represent the people of the state contains an innate weakness which limits the effective function- ing of that government on many types of problems. It is assumed further that a measure of the rep- resentative character of the legisla- tures can be achieved by determin- ing the smallest percentage of a state's population which could theo- retically elect a majority of the lower house and a corresponding figure for the upper house under present dis- trict boundaries. The resulting percentages allow the arrangement of the states in rank order from most representative to least representative. The figures for the upper house of each state are presented in Table I and those for chapter 3, Representation and Apportion- ment, pages 30-45; American State Legis- latures: Structure and Procedures, Pre- liminary Report, Chicago, Council of State Governments, 1953. 4 The most recent attempt at such an index appeared in the New Republic for August 22, 1955: Gus Tyler, The Ma- jority Don't Count, New Republic, Vol. 133, No. 8, pages 13-15. Population data is from 1930 federal census with legislative districts as of 1937. 571

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