What's the Right Size for a Legislature?

by Karl Kurtz

Steve Wiegand wrote a column today in the Sacramento Bee about a proposal to increase the size of the California Legislature. California's 40 Senate districts of about 850,000 people each are larger than any other legislative districts in the country outside of the U.S. Senate (even then, California Senate districts are larger than six states).  The state's 80 Assembly members each represent about 425,000 people.  So the question of the size of the legislature and legislative districts is a legitimate one.

Despite a few seemingly obligatory media shots at the legislature and an occasional lame joke at the expense of non-Californians ("New Hampshire...has a legislature of 424, and a total population of about 425. They take turns not being a legislator."), Wiegand thinks clearly about the issue and has done his homework on it.  Perhaps as interesting as anything else, though, is that within a few hours of the column appearing on line, half a dozen people posted comments on it.  Most of the comments are well-reasoned and add new ideas.

One of the more interesting ideas that has been floating around in California (and is covered in the column) is to keep the total number of legislators at 120 but put them into a unicameral legislature.  That would reduce each district's size to 283,000.

All of this raises questions about the appropriate size of legislatures and of legislative districts.  I'll try to add some more information and perspective to this issue below the jump.      

There's a great deal of variation in the size of state legislative chambers.  Houses of representatives range from 400 in New Hampshire to 40 in Alaska.  Minnesota has the largest senate with 67 members and Alaska the smallest with 20. 

Similarly, legislative district populations vary greatly.  Leaving aside California's giant districts for the moment, state houses of representatives range from a low of about 3,100 people in New Hampshire House districts to a high of 210,000 in New Jersey (which has two-member districts).  The smallest senate districts are in North Dakota (13,000) and the largest (672,000) in Texas.  Here's a table on legislative districts that provides complete information.

Here's what my coauthors, Alan Rosenthal, Burdett Loomis and John Hibbing, and I had to say about district size in Republic on Trial: The Case for Representative Democracy:

Representation probably is easier in smaller rather than in larger districts. Smaller districts are likely to be more homogeneous, with fewer organized interests and fewer competing ones. In districts under 50,000 or so representatives can have personal contact with a sizeable proportion of constituents. Geographical size and shape also affect the nature of representation. Urban districts are more concentrated, while rural districts are more dispersed. In California state legislative districts range from 18 to 28,991 square miles. New York’s range from one square mile to 4,731 square miles. Colorado’s districts range from those in Denver, which are roughly 6 square miles, to a district of 12,916 square miles that covers the entire northwest corner of the state.

Is there an ideal size of legislative districts?  No.  As with so many other issues of government organization, each state needs to find its own solution that best fits its circumstances and traditions. 

But the large populations of those  districts in California, the Texas Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives appear to make effective representation--the link between legislators and their constituents--difficult. A good case can be made that it would make sense to increase the number of legislators and reduce the ratio of elected representatives to people in those and perhaps a few other cases.

However, there's a tradeoff between smaller legislative districts and having a manageable legislative body, once you get beyond a certain (unspecified) number of members.  For example, in the case of Congress reducing the size of house districts (as advocated by UC San Diego political scientist and blogger Matthew Shugart, among others) would require substantially increasing the size of an already unwieldy body.

But other than the New Hampshire House, no state legislature approaches the size of the U.S. House, so perhaps democracy could be improved in a few states with very large districts by increasing the size of their legislative bodies.

The irony is that one of the great state legislative reform movements of the 1960s and 70s was to decrease the size of legislatures to make them more efficient and effective.  (The legendary--and super-sized--speaker of the California Assembly, Jesse Unruh, used to say about this reform, "I was always opposed to reducing the size of the legislature because I thought they were talking about reducing the size of legislators.")

Comments

[MShugart]

I am not sure what is so 'unwieldy' about the US House.

[Vince Leibowitz]

Each of Texas' state senators represents more people than do United States Congressmen, making it quite a big job.

[Sandwich Repairman]

The District of Columbia, not being in any state, functions as a sort of hybrid between a state and a city. For example, it has to run a public university system and Medicaid program as well as making sure the trash gets collected on time. As such, I think it should be included for consideration here. It has a unicameral legislature of 13 seats, of which 8 are elected by ward and 5 at large. As of the last census, DC had about 572,000 people. This means the 8 ward council members represent about 71,500 people each.

[Sandwich Repairman]

There is absolutely no reason for state legislatures to be bicameral in the first place. Congress has an excuse: the New Jersey Plan and its history. But one person, one vote requires that states elect their upper and lower house legislators in the same manner--indeed, several states don't even bother drawing different sets of districts (AZ, ND, NJ, WA). Combining California's chambers into a unicameral legislature with the same total number of seats (120), seems far and away like the best option to me. I would say the same of Minnesota, where Jesse Ventura proposed the same thing when he was Governor, as well as Ohio and many other states. Nebraska seems to manage just fine with a unicameral, as does every major US cities, all of which have unicameral legislatures. Bicameral state legislatures simply waste time and money. They add to voter confusion by giving them more offices to vote for and representatives' to remember the names of. I find that in Canada, where the federal and provincial legislatures are unicameral, more people know who their elected officials are. The citizenry can be better informed and more engaged without the needless clutter of an extra layer of legislating.

[Dan W.]

The size of California's districts, in particular it's lower house is ridiculous. Having Assmebly members representing 500,000 people, which is a bigger ratio than most countries, means the power of money in campaigning and lobbbying when governing is greater.

If a bicameral legislature is kept, California's Assembly should be doubled to 160 members, which would still make it the highest ratio for a lower house in the country. One idea is to have a form of proportional representation within multi-member districts using the ranked-choice method used in Australia, Ireland and increasingly Britain.

The bigger issue of why a bicameral legislature is needed in the first place is a good one. If California were to have a unicameral legislature, it could afford to increase the number of legislators to 200 or even 250.

A unicameral legsilature of 200 or 250 members elected from 40 or 50 multi-member districts electing five members each via ranked-choice voting would create a vastly more reprensative legislature. We'd have Orange County Democrats serving alongside San Francisco Bay Area Republicans, and probably a few Liberatarian/Green/Independent members. I would volunteer and work tirelessly for such an initiative to give California the quality legislature it deserves.

Having a lower house State Assembly of 80 members, suitable for a small state, no longer cuts it.

[John Grams]

Perhaps, we are attacking this issue from the wrong angle. It may not just be about the population size of districts, but about how we elect our representatives.

In Ireland, they have districts of approximately 100,000, represented by 5 TDs (TD is an abbreviation of Teachta Dála, a rough Irish translation of "Member of Parliment.")

This allows TDs to be selected proportionately. Instead of only the majority of the district getting represented like here in CA, everyone is represented, some less than others.

There are weaknesses to the Irish system certainly (for one, they don't really have a concept of constituent services), but I think a hybrid of our current system and the Irish system might lead to better representation of CA.

[Brandon]

Though I partially agree with Sandwich Repairman's post of 12/11/06 re bicameral legislatures generally, I disagree completely with this notion of "one man, one vote" in regards to State Senates. The Supreme Court decisions of the 1960's that forced states to stop using political subdivisions (such as counties) as the basis for Senate representation is just another example of (you'll pardon the cliche) "judicial activism", on par with Roe v. Wade. So for almost 170 years, it was fine with everyone, then a bunch of black-robed demi-gods insinuated their political philosophy on the whole country. Federalism should be the rule all the way down. Every political unit, from the federal down to the municipal, should have its powers explicitly granted by the people in its charter, and the 9th and 10th amendment type guarantees should be enforced. State Senators SHOULD be based on counties, but only if counties have some sort degree or sphere of political autonomy (which, unfortunately, they don't). The goal, IMHO, should be to keep gov't at the most local level possible for a given type of exercise of power.

[Lurker]

Everyone else has brought up all my my thoughts but this:

Why does NJ still have 2 member districts? They're elected at the same time, are always from the same party... does this do any good at all? I suggest either splitting up the districts into 2, with one from each, or having only 1 member per district, which will reduce the General Assembly to 80.

The only problem is that this is exactly how the Senate is constituted, which means our Legislature will be essentially the Senate times two, which leads back to the unicamerialism argument.

[Dr Nick]

I agree that there isn't much utility in having two almost mirror-image houses (here in Washington, we currently have 49 Legislative Districts that each elect one Senator and two Representatives).

Unicameralism would certainly be one way to go, but if we do stay with a bicameral legislature, they could at least be elected under different systems so that different constituencies are represented.

My thought would be to keep the size of the legislature as it is but elect the 98 Representatives from 98 separate districts while electing Senators proportionally, with 7 Senators from each of 7 districts (each of which consists of 14 House districts).

Of course, the House would never go for it, since being elected from the same district as a Senator perfectly sets up a Representative for a run at the Senate.

[icr]

Keep it simple-and more in accord with democratic norms in the world as a whole.

Keep bicameral but elect the houses by radically different methods. Elect one house by the traditional Anglo-American first-past-the post (i.e. plurality)single-member district plan. Elect the other house by statewide party-list proportional representation(the same-but for only ONE house- as the Israeli Knesset). This would allow for various ideological and other minorities that do not get represented under the traditional system to get some representation in the legislature.

It would also do more than any single reform to break up the two-party duopoly.

People seem to get confused(or disingenously pretend to be confused) over the details of non-plurality voting systems, but what I've described above is a lot easier to explain than the rules of any of the major spectator sports. Admittedly, most people learn the rules of the major sports when they are very young and and learning new things comes easily.

[icr]

"There is absolutely no reason for state legislatures to be bicameral in the first place."-sandwich repair

Right, but for some reason every state but one has a bicameral legislature and the only pol who has made a big issue of the fact in recent years is a maroon like Jesse Ventura.

Switching from two to one-despite the blinding obviousness of it-is not a reform worth on which it is worth expending political capital. PR, however, is. See, as examples, the success of Greens in Germany and other countries and the Euroskeptic UKIP in the UK.

You can actually shake up the political landscape with PR. US voters are often promised this will happen with an election-but typically the changes are no more than cosmetic.

[icr]

"Of course, the House would never go for it, since being elected from the same district as a Senator perfectly sets up a Representative for a run at the Senate."-drnick

WA has initiative and referendum- but, unfortunately, not for constitutional amendments, which changing the method by which state legislators would require.