At Issue; 21; Redistricting the Congress

... ... again. The Supreme Court, by its decision of February 17, that equal numbers of people should have

equal representation in the Congress, set in the motion a massive realignment of congressional districts. The case in question concerned the state of Georgia. Where is some reaction from Atlanta? We concede the imbalance in congressional apportionment based on population. We concede that. We will interstipulate it. We agree that it was such an inequitable imbalance that it should be corrected. Our legal position was simply that the court didn't have the authority to do it and still is our position. Well, of course, the thing of it is that it would take making in Columbus, for instance. The district created with only one of those cities in the district would have a very small Negro percentage vote.

But when you throw both of them in there, then you've got a big percentage at Negro folks seat. And so it means that they are going to have more representation, just as redistricting of the Senate resulted in the election of the first Negro senator and modern Georgia history. It's perfectly conceivable that a Negro could be elected to Congress from the Fulton County District. National Educational Television presents At Issue, a commentary on events and people in the New Orleans. This week, At Issue examines a momentous Supreme Court decision and its political implications. Commentator is Neil Pierce, the political editor of Congressional Quarterly. The 435 congressional districts of the country, very in population from 177,000 to 952,000.

There are 13 states in which some districts are twice as large as others, and serious disparities exist and well over two-thirds of the states. What the Supreme Court said was that as nearly as is practical, one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's. This week we will explore the meaning of this decision, what its effect will be on the states, how it may change the urban rural balance of power, what it will mean for the two political parties. First, let's look at Georgia which provided the crucial case. The least populated of Georgia's 10 districts, the rural 9th, has a population of 272,000, but the urban 5th district, embracing Atlanta and its suburbs, has a population of 824,000, making it the second largest in the United States.

Now as the Georgia State Legislature moves to comply with the mandate of one man, one vote set down by the Supreme Court, all its rural districts are being altered and one is being eliminated altogether. As for metropolitan Atlanta, where there was previously one vastly overpopulated district, now there will be two districts, nearly equal in population. In Atlanta, Georgia Attorney General Cook defended the state's rights to draw its own district lines. He was asked if the real feelings of the people of Georgia would now have fairer expression in Congress. Well, what it meant by the real feelings of the people, we have a Republican system of government whereby the people in the General Assembly speak for the people, the will of the people through their representatives. And I don't think it was ever intended that a person has a vote and every person's vote should be weighed exactly or precisely alike. That's a mathematical impossibility.

The only way to make the weight of a vote be equal, and voting for congressmen and representatives is to draw lines with equal population, equal qualified voters, and to stop people from dying and being born. As the Georgia General Assembly debated its own redistricting bill, reporter Andrew Stern talked with a state legislator who was likely to win the new congressional seat in the suburban area of Atlanta, representative James Mackie. Well, I'm just thankful for the Supreme Court and the fact that we have a system of checks and balances. We have the most brilliant political system in the sense of history of organized government. And you watch it operating, in my lifetime I've seen it operate time and time again. But here is a situation in which the Congress, which has a power to the time on who should be seated in Congress. But the Congress did not act, the state legislature did not act. Our Georgia legislature is acting under the fact, under the recognition that the alternative to our doing the thing is for us to all run at large or for the Supreme Court to draw

these congressional districts on the map of Georgia. So I welcome the decision. I think the Supreme Court was derelict, the Supreme Court hurt Georgia for many years because it would not entertain these petitions where people were terribly discriminated at polls. Now we had Senator Russell address the General Assembly just this last week in which he said that he believed in constitutional government more than anything in the world. He said in the same speech, he made smearing references to the courts. And you can't have constitutional government unless you have respect for the courts. Take the prayer keys. There was a wild demagogic reaction in Congress and among politicians generally that all what a terrible thing the court had done. And when they read the decision, they realized that what the court said was absolutely correct

in terms of the tradition of the separation of church and state. So I really believe this that the people of Georgia are way ahead of the politicians of this state and we politicians are having to catch up with the people. And when we catch up with the people we're going to find a better society than the stereotype motions that many of us entertain just as working politicians. Could you tell me how you think that the Negro and the Negro vote will be affected by the decision? Well, I'm sure that the behavior of all politicians has been modified by the several decisions that have come down. For instance, the Negro voter is an effective person at the ballot box. And now the urban citizen, whether he is white or negro, is effective in state politics. And I've found, just as a politician myself, that my manners improve around my constituents

who I know to be registered. And this is the thing that Georgia is proud of. And that is the improved feeling for everybody in our state. Now in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, we have the educational center of the world for Negroes in the Atlanta University complex. And these people have been disenfranchised along with us. And so it means that they are going to have more representation just as redistricting of this Senate resulted in the election of the first Negro senator in modern Georgia history. It's perfectly conceivable that a Negro could be elected to Congress from the Fulton County District. State Senator LaRoy Johnson is the first Negro in this century elected to the Georgia legislature. I think it will have a great deal of effect on our vote here in our state. The reason for this is because I think it will tend to encourage a greater effort on

the part of Negroes to register Negroes not only in your metropolitan areas but in your smaller areas. Your portion has as a general proposition been beneficial to the metropolitan area and to Negroes who generally live in metropolitan areas. It means that of course they will have a greater share in their government and will take a larger share in the election of governmental officials. In our own state in Fulton County we will now have as a result of the Supreme Court ruling and as a result of the action that the legislature itself will take will have a congressman of our own. This means of course that Negroes who constitute some 40% of the population of Fulton County will have a very definite effect on the man who will be elected from this area.

I think also that it may very well aid and assist and bring in new persons who are interested in politics into the political arena. Bright young fellows in law and business and in other areas who have shard away from politics because of many reasons now I think we'll look at it, we'll take a second look and we'll get interested and I think we may have a new crop of politicians coming from the South Land and from our state. Attorney Roy Harris, one speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, feels the Supreme Court decision could lead to a new form of imbalance. Now one of the problems that scares most of these boys to death is that if you group one city in the middle of a group of rural counties the Negro vote doesn't have the influence it does if you put two cities in one district because most of the Negroes are moving into

town and that's where the big Negro vote is and it's very light in the rural areas and that scares a lot of these folks to death when you concentrate a powerful Negro vote in one district. But doesn't this equal their representation though? Well, it doesn't distribute it, however. It does equal their representation but you can take and throw all of it in one area for instance you could put three cities in one congressional district which would back their If the Roy Harris's have lost their former power in the state capital it is because moderates such as Governor Carl Sanders are leading voters in a new direction. He approves of the court's decision. Well I think this decision will certainly eliminate the real extreme individuals in this state. I don't think that it will necessarily mean that we are going to completely change

our pattern of government or our present structure of government. But I think certainly the individual who counted on extreme positions and extreme relations with the people in order to drum up maybe emotional issues and things of that kind. I think that they are dead, I think they have been dead in this state prior to this decision and I really don't believe that there is any hope for that type of individual in the future in Georgia. Georgia is a progressive state now and I believe it is going to continue on that rule. Malaportionment and its ugly hand made in gerrymandering are not limited to anyone part of the country or simply to urban rural imbalance or to the power lust of one political party. This Republican and Democratic legislatures attempted gerrymanders following the 1960 census for example. Let's look at California where Democrats controlled the legislature and enacted a bill

that won them two-thirds of the state's house seats with little more than 50% of the vote. Here in Los Angeles they created this gigantic 28th district with 589,000 inhabitants, 42% above the average and the most of any in California. The reason is quite simple. In the 33 miles between the north and south of this district and you will notice connected here in the middle by nothing more than a strip of shoreline and highway are crowded the wealthiest and most Republican areas of the city. By contrast every one of these districts which border the 28th are below average in population and all but one of them have Democratic congressmen. Now the Supreme Court decision says nothing about oddly shaped districts but it does say there must be substantially equal in population. This makes the kind of situation that exists in Los Angeles illegal.

So changes will have to be made across the country. Douglas Cater, national affairs editor of the reporter magazine and lecturer at Wesley in University looks at the long range political implications. No one can predict within a statistical certainty what will be the impact of the Supreme Court's decision on the House of Representatives whether the House will be more Republican or Democratic or liberal or conservative. Much depends on how the states meet this new challenge. Whether for example they choose to redistrict more fairly or whether they resort to electing congressmen on a statewide basis which was a fairly common practice during the first 50 years of our nation's history. But certain consequences can be dimly foreseen. The court has shaken the power structure of the House of Representatives to its very foundations. The old rotten boroughs those congressional districts which were carefully carved up to

perpetuate a man or a party without challenge from the voters are not likely to survive. Their departure could very well lead to the passing of other unrepresentative practices in the House of Representatives. Geremandering and faulty apportionment have tended to breed cynicism among members about the House's claim to its constitutional birthright as the popular body of Congress. Justice Black, speaking for the court majority, re-annunciated the principle that one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's. Perhaps it could cause the congressmen to re-examine certain of their own practices. The automatic seniority system, the hierarchical rule of the committee chairman, the tyranny of the rules committee, all of which prevent one member's vote from being as good as another's.

In his dissent, Justice Holland declared, what is done today saps the political process. This was because he said it cannot but encourage popular inertia in efforts for political reform through the political process. This observer would like to voice a respectful dissent to Mr. Holland's dissent. What the court has done will hopefully restore a bigger to our political processes, which in many instances has been sadly lacking. The psychological groundwork for the Supreme Court's decision was laid down in 1962 when the court ordered states to reapportion the population size of voting districts for state legislatures. Former Justice Felix Frankfurter dissented, warning that the court was entering what he considered the forbidden and dangerous territory that was best left to the states. He called it a political thicket. With me tonight are two close observers of the court. Dr. Robert Dixon, Professor of Law at George Washington University, who has strong reservations

about the court's decisions in this field, and Alfred Scanlon, a Washington attorney who represents the Maryland citizens for fair congressional redistricting. Dr. Dixon, do you share Felix Frankfurter's view that the court has gotten into a political thicket where it has no business being? Mr. Pairs, this is the basic question perhaps in this area. The answer is like all the questions in law, it depends. I think that the basic rationale for Baker vs. Carr, and I do support Baker vs. Carr. That was the decision on state legislatures to the state legislature case, is that political avenues for redress had been unsuccessful. Decades had passed, little had been done to improve either congressional districts or state legislative districts in regard to their erythematical size.

I think the point had come in 1962 when you could say that some judicial intervention into the politics of the people was a necessity to have any effective politics of the people. But that still leaves up in the question, how far can the court's goal, other adequate standards and other adequate remedies, that we are still learning much about. And we may know more about that at the end of this current Supreme Court term. Mr. Scanlan, an attorney in favor of the court taking an active role to see that redistricting is done properly and on an equal basis, what's your feeling on the question of one man, one vote? What's set down a absolute standard or how close to mathematical precision will be coming in state legislature districts or in congressional districts? Well, let's talk about the last first, the congressional districts.

I don't think we should speak in the future tense, but in the past tense, the court has already determined that population and population only one person, one vote, shall be the guy. Certainly, that's how I read Westbury versus Sanders, which was the Georgia redistricting case handed down last Monday. So I think aside from a few deviations that might be required because of geographical complexities, the controlling standard as far as congressional cases are concerned is one man, one vote, as to representation in state legislature. First questions are now pending before the Supreme Court in the Maryland, Virginia, New York, Alabama, and Delaware cases, all of which were argued before the court last fall. They perhaps might present a more difficult problem for the court, and I detect that in the fact that Justice Black and his great opinion, and I know Professor Dixon doesn't necessarily share that estimate of Justice Black's opinion, but in that opinion, he specifically abstained

from getting into the 14th Amendment issue, which was also involved in the case, rather than getting into that, the majority of the court put it on Article 1, Section 2, the Federal Constitution, which very clearly says that the House of Representative shall be closed composed of the people, and he marshals what I think is the fair weight of the historical evidence as to the intention of the framers of that historical document that people and only people were to be represented in the House of Representative. What's your feeling on that, Dr. Dixon, about Justice Black's decision and its historical groundwork? Well, I think that to evaluate that opinion, there's also a read just as Harlan's opinion, and putting it together, I am not convinced that Article 1, Section 2, in his tropical context, Judge Black put it, did support the conclusion he reached, the conclusion he reached might be supported by some other line of reasoning, the decision is fairly well accepted, I believe,

already, only two days old. I would like to back up to a very basic point, under the underlies, this last question, the preceding question, and that is this. These cases about apportionment and districting are not simply right to vote cases concerning the personalized civil right of the individual voter. They are that to be sure, and that is an important aspect of the cases. But they also involve the process of representation, and therefore the very structure of government itself. Now, regard to the right to vote, the Constitution gives us much guidance, and there's no reason to classify the right to vote cases as being political question cases. We have the 14th, 15th, 19th amendments. However, there is not much guidance in the Constitution, on the matter of how to arrange districts and apportionments, so that political parties and interest groups, which are after

all the basic building blocks of political power, will be adequately or fairly or properly represented in the legislature. One man won vote is a relevant factor in devising a standard, but I'd like to point out that even with one man won vote, and it's apparent corollary, equal population districts, it is possible to get a skew to the presentation system, under which one party may gain excess weight in the legislature, even from an equal population district system. For example, suppose a case where we have an urban area populous, and we want to devise for it to five districts, congressional districts, or states and editorial districts. We also assume that in this area, the party split is 55 percent, 45 percent, and assume that the dominant parties strengthen spread fairly evenly throughout this area.

If they are in control, it would be quite possible for them to devise the five districts so that their party capture each one. Therefore, you would have consistent with one man won vote, and equal population principle under that hypothetical situation. A delegation to Congress or the state legislature from that area, which would be five for one party, zero for the other, using one of the 55, 45 percent split in popular vote. To avoid that, you'd have to go to a proportional representation or something of that nature. Well, to avoid that, we'd have to do more than say that the formula is one man won vote. We would have to say that is a consideration, but political realities require considering other things, such as the factor of political parties. Mr. Scallon, do you think that some new factors are going to be introduced into the latest Supreme Court decisions, other than straight population? On the congressional case, no.

That matter has been decided on representation in the state legislature, possibly, but let me say in reference to Professor Dixon's comment that you still can have within the framework of one man won vote disparities, not in the amount of citizens making up a congressional district, but in the way they were distributed or the district lines were drawn. Jerry Mandarin. Certainly, Jerry Mandarin still can go on, even under an equal population formula. But we've always had that. We've had that plus unequal congressional districts, at least we've eliminated through Justice Black's opinion, I hope. The evil of inequitable or overweighted or underweighted congressional districts. The problem of Jerry Mandarin districts, where, for instance, you cut out a section of the city to put all the Puerto Ricans and all the Negroes are as many as you can in one district so to make another district a silks stocking district remains. Whether or not the courts can get at that, I don't know, I would rather doubt it.

There's still going to be room as Justice Holmes put it for a little play at the joints here. You don't want to take the politics out of politics, but we do want to see that if the political process is going to exercise itself, it exercise itself in the framework that we think the founding fathers intended, that everyone's vote counted just the same as everyone else's. I think this is a fairly elementary concept, but it took a long time to vindicate it in the Supreme Court of the United States. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being with us this evening. Our guests were Dr. Robert Dixon of George Washington University and Alfred Scanlon, a Maryland attorney in the redistricting and reapportionment cases in that state. Naturally, it's too early to make final and definitive conclusions about the impact of court's decision, but we have some powerful clues through careful research. The impact in the 1964 election could well be limited to those states, Georgia, Maryland and Texas, where the courts have already found congressional districts illegal.

The real national impact, however, is not likely to come until the 1966 elections. By that time, up to half the states of the Union may be forced to redistrict. On a party basis, a moderate gain for the Republicans is possible, perhaps in the neighborhood of 10 or 15 seats. While important on some close votes, this in itself would scarcely upset the 70 to 80 vote margin, the Democrats have maintained in the House in recent years. The effect of the decision on the urban rural balance in Congress is not likely to be great. Nationally, 10 suburban and six city seats would be added, reducing rural or mixed districts by a total of 16. Supposed rural overbalance is popularly assumed to be the reason for general conservatism in the House. But the seniority system, which has frozen many southerners into committee chairmanship, is probably a much more important reason. Another factor is the very nature of the district system itself.

A Republican House member from upstate New York, for instance, will feel much less obliged to vote for liberal measures than one of New York's two Republican senators who know they have large urban areas and their constituencies. One certain effect of the decision is that at least two-thirds of the states will redistrict following the census every 10 years. In the past, only those states which lost or gained seats and not all of those felt compelled to redistrict. The House of Representatives, as envisaged by our founding fathers, was to be that part of the federal government closest to the people. The Supreme Court's decision is a momentous step toward that ideal. This is NET, National Educational Television.