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You should have before you Committee
Recommendation LB-2, Committee Memo-
randum LB-2, and also the minority re-
port.
Delegate Gallagher.
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: Mr. Chair-
man and ladies and gentlemen of the Con-
vention :
I have the honor to present on behalf of
the Committee on the Legislative Branch
the report on LB-2.
As you will see from Debate Schedule
No. 7, it would be appropriate to consider
together sections 3.02, 3.03, and 3.03 (a).
These three sections pertain generally to
legislative districts and the redistricting
commission, and finally, the redistricting
procedure.
In the ordinary course of events, con-
stitutional provisions such as these would
be termed at least partially as apportion-
ment procedures, but because we did in
LB-1 adopt single member districts, in
reality the problem of apportionment is
taken care of in that section, so that we
deal primarily with the districting, rather
than the apportionment procedure.
We have already determined, and it is
set forth again in 3.02, that the State shall
be divided into districts for election of
members of the House, and into districts
for election of members of the Senate. Each
of the districts shall consist of adjoining
territory and be compact in form. I call
your attention to the two tests that are
provided here, that is adjoining and com-
pact. In the ordinary course of events it
is more often said that a district shall be
contiguous, rather than adjoining; how-
ever, the Committee and the Commission
on the Constitution considered the use of
the words and decided that adjoining was
a stronger word, a more definitive word,
with respect to whether or not something
actually touches, and thought that it more
aptly could be used rather than the word
"contiguous."
The third test, above and beyond the
test of compactness and adjoining, is that
natural subdivisions and boundaries of po-
litical subdivisions shall be followed insofar
as practicable. That has been a standard
provision in most districting constitutional
provisions and is designed to eliminate to
some degree the element of gerrymandering.
We did not follow the example of New
York, which had a specific Eleventh Com-
mandment, which was, "Thou shalt not
gerrymander." We thought that was per-
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haps carrying do-good too far; that is, to
eliminate the practice. I think what you
will find significant is the next sentence,
the number of persons represented by each
senator shall be substantially equal, and
the number of persons represented by each
delegate shall be substantially equal. Here
we departed from the language of the
Commission text which provided that the
population represented should be as equal
as practicable in substance.
We did so after hearing testimony from
some experts in the field to the effect that
it was possible to so district the State that
you could have exact mathematical pre-
cision in districting, so that you would
have within less than a percentage point
precisely equal, or substantially equal dis-
tricts within the State. We felt that we
wanted to avoid this particular approach
because it would mean that any time an
existing plan of redistricting were chal-
lenged, if someone could show that the
State could be redistricted to affect 100th
less of a deviation of a percentage point,
that that would be sufficient to upset what
was generally considered to be an accept-
able redistricting plan.
Now, you will note on page 3 of the
Committee Memorandum LB-2, beginning
at line 41, that we have said the follow-
ing — which I would ask that you consider
not to be a part of this Committee Memo-
randum, because I am specifically disclaim-
ing it at this time.
It says on page 3, line 41 : "In order to
illustrate the flexibility in redistricting
which the phrase 'substantially equal' will
permit, the Committee on the Legislative
Branch has prepared two possible redis-
tricting plans based on 1970 population
estimates. These redistricting plans are in-
cluded in Appendix A at the end of this
report. Because both of these plans in Ap-
pendix A do exceed what the Committee
felt it wanted to be the maximum deviation
allowable, we are asking that lines 41
through 46 be considered not a part of the
report, and neither redistricting plan be
considered offered by the Committee."
I think that is fairly important. It is
said that these two possible redistricting
plans might be two impossible redistrict-
ing plans, and we want to avoid that.
Now, the Committee, in using the lan-
guage "substantially equal", had to agree
among itself as to what variations, what
maximum variations from the ideal or the
mean would comply with what it meant by
the words "substantially equal."
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