10,956

1

if left in there, almost prohibitive for the legislature

2

to act in many areas, and anyone who has had experience

5

and worked on the congressional redistricting bill, knows

4

what a tremendous job it is to keep within due bounds

5

and to try to please everybody.

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When you say that they have got to be compact in

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form and they have got to be contiguous, they have got to

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have adjouning territory and they can't exceed ten percent

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then sometimes you might get a very good congressional

10

district with everybody in the State happy where you had

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11 or 12 percent variance, or you might be able to get them

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with as much as 15. And when we were first working on

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this, a lot of them thought that 15 was a fair basis

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for variance, between the norm, either 15 percent under or

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15 percent over, and : the Supreme Court, as has been

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pointed out, has not acted and has not said that it has to be

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a certain perc entage, and I think it would be doing harm

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and violence to the freedom and flexibility of the

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legislative processes if we froze in a percentage.

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Likewise, it is dangerous to try to say that in

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every instance the areas should be contiguous because, as