The argument is made that the long
ballot would be eliminated. This goes hapd
and hand with the visibility argument.
Once again, I submit, that a ballot with
three slots on it is very workable and can-
not be considered a long ballot. It is one
that the average voter can deal with very
readily. This leads to the responsibility
argument, which is also made by the ma-
jority, that if you have a single member
district, the representative from that dis-
trict would be more responsive to the
people. Once again, if the voter can iden-
tify on the ballot three people, certainly
after/he leaves the ballot box, or the ballot
booth, he will be able to single out that
delegate and make his views known to him
after election.
Now, in answer to questions from the
floor on Tuesday, Delegate Gallagher said
that it is not the position of his Committee
to deal with the subject of redistricting, and
thaU this would be done by a blue ribbon
bipartisan commission.
I submit that by imposing single mem-
ber districts upon the State and in the Con-
stitution this question has been largely pre-
determined and pre-judged because the
tools of flexibility have been taken away
from this Commission. Really, all that is
left is a job for the sociologists and the
demographers, to figure out how to divide
up neighborhoods; and believe me, when
you divide a subdivision into 17 parts or
28 parts, that is exactly what you are
doing.
Delegate Gallagher says euphemistically
that this will be done along natural tradi-
tional boundaries. Once again, I would defy
any group of people, no matter how expert,
to divide a district up into 28 or 17 parts
along natural and traditional boundaries.
The job has been done already, if we
adopt the Majority report of the Legis-
lative Branch Committee on this point.
There is an additional problem. Once the
agony of drawing these lines has taken
place, it will have to continue to take place
at every census. What sort of political
stability does it create, if one time you may
be in one district and when the lines are
redrawn, you find yourself in another. It
is hardly an answer to say you need be a
resident in the district from which you
want to run because as a practical matter,
you will not be elected if you are not a
resident of that district.
Perhaps the strongest argument against
compulsory separation of districts is the
argument that is called the parochialism |
argument, and I am sure you have all
heard this: that is that the representative
will only be responsive to a single narrow
interest group and will be afraid to speak
his mind on many issues, and that any un-
derstanding of regional or community prob-
lems will be gone in this multitude of single
member districts. On this subject, and I do
not want to speak much longer, I think the
best statement is from a report prepared
by the American Assembly, which wrote a
report on State legislatures and American
politics. It is the most definitive study I
have been able to find. There, in the sec-
tion I will call the political section, is the
following statement, "A multitude of single
member districts has other disadvan-
tages. The district may become grossly
unequal in the ten years following a
census. Frequent redistricting may be
chaotic and vulnerable to gerrymander-
ing, legislatures may represent only nar-
row interests, and there may be no one
capable of viewing the counties' problems
as a whole. . . ."
"Another practice that has been used
is the establishment of a number of small
districts electing three, four or five mem-
bers in a county. If it were possible to
divide a county into natural boundaries
of some kind, these could remain un-
changed and not subject to gerrymander-
ing while the number of members in each
district vary with population changes.
Even if this were not feasible, the use
of several multi-member districts would
minimize the problem of drawing and re-
drawing boundaries. It might insure that
major political interests in the county
would be represented without making
each legislator a spokesman for a single
narrow interest, and it might establish
a reasonable maximum limit to both the
length of the ballot and the cost of legis-
lative campaigns."
After examining all of the alternatives,
and 1 hasten to point this out, the conclu-
sion is that there is no single good answer
that has been proven on this subject. The
conclusion is that the problem of legislative
representation within the metropolis will
become increasingly important. Although
it is too early to suggest a definite formula,
it is time to suggest the need for research
and the desirability of experimenting with
various formulas.
It is on this point that I would like to
close. Do not foreclose the possibility of
experimentation in this area. Ask yourself
whether or not you are so sure that the
single member districts are so clearly ap- |
