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gher in his presentation the first time, was
the State of New York, and that is true, it
is one of the twelve states.
I would like to read some commentary
of how it was done in New York. This is
the example that Chairman Gallagher
chose to use. Here is what this study says.
"On the other hand, the single-member
constituencies into which all of New York
City is divided are not very inspiring. One
can wonder how many voters there are in
New York City, what assembly district
they live in, or who their representative is,
or how he votes. There is almost no medium
of communication other than the direct
canvassing of the voters that is geared to
a one-district area as small as a New York
City assembly district. In 1961 all twelve
of the assembly members from the Bronx
were Democrats as were twenty-one of
twenty-two from Kings, fourteen of six-
teen from New York County and nine of
thirteen from Queens. Some minority party
representation was evidently provided
either because of or in spite of the gerry-
mandering that had gone into the district-
ing pattern."
Now, I would like to address myself to
the two arguments that were used on the
floor to support single-member districts.
One is that you must have single-member
districts because they provide "differing
perspectives than between the delegates to
the house of delegates and the senators
elected to the senate." This is not a per-
suasive argument. It is merely a make-way
argument.
If the Committee on the Legislative
Branch had been sincere in attempting to
create meaningful distinctions between the
two houses, they could have picked many
other alternatives, one of which would
have been a staggered term situation so
the terms did not overlap. They did not do
it. They bring in this plan and try to use
as its justification that you had to create
a different basis of representation. I think
the argument cuts the other way because
the redistricting case in the Supreme
Court known as Reynolds v. Sims stated
that a reapportioning of legislature does
not mean any difference in complexion and
it made the following statement: "One
body could be composed of single-member
districts while the other could have at
least some multi-member districts." This
is exactly what this amendment would do.
It would allow not force the redistricting
commission to provide for some multi-
member districts in one house. We already
have a single-member Senate. We certainly
do not want to tamper with this.
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Another argument is that this provision
violates somehow the constitutional require-
ment of one-man, one-vote. Once again this
is just poor bunk. The Supreme Court has
indicated to the contrary clearly in several
cases. Sure, somebody in a triple-member
district has three times as many votes but
the simple point is that his vote is diluted
out over three times as many people so
the force of the vote is just the same. I
would like to read again from the Reynolds
case in the Supreme Court where it said
"single-member districts may be the rule
in one state while another state might de-
sire to achieve some flexibility by creating
multi-member or floterial districts."
This principle was specifically upheld in
Forson v. Dorsey in the Supreme Court in
which a Georgia districting scheme with
seven multi-member districts and the rest
single -member districts was specifically
upheld.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Lord, you
have not used your time, but I think I
should advise you that you have used eight
minutes of your time.
DELEGATE LORD: Mr. President, I
think that I can bring this matter to a
close rather quickly. The authorities in the
field have certainly indicated that we have
to use a flexible scheme. In fact, I would
like to quote again from the source I just
read from where the conclusion was
reached "that this discussion can be sum-
marized that the case for rigid insistence
for single-member districting has not been
proved. The authors believe any district
electing more than four or five members
should be divided but they see no harm in
continuing indefinitely the policy of any
states in which two and three-member dis-
tricts are widely used."
I would like to close by quoting some of
the language used in the discussion on the
floor by the Chairman of the Legislative
Branch Committee when dealing with virtu-
ally this same amendment. He says, "I
have got to commend the proposal, how-
ever, in the sense that it does obtain the
single-member approach for the Senate and
it goes a long way in elimin'ating the evil
we were after in trying to eliminate the
delegate situation where seven and eight
people were running and we ran into a
question of low visibility. We commend this
proposal."
We commend this proposal. We recom-
mend its adoption. I will rest on that.
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Gallagher.
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