Uniform Congressional District Act

The Uniform Congressional District Act is a combined relief and redistricting bill that provides that, for the purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Ricardo Vallejo Samala has been residing in the United States since August 30, 1959, and requires that all members of the United States House of Representatives in the 91st United States Congress and every subsequent Congress be elected from a single member constituency unless a state had elected all of its previous representatives at-large, where this requirement commenced during the 92nd United States Congress.

Uniform Congressional District Act
Long titleAn Act for the relief of Doctor Ricardo Vallejo Samala and to provide for congressional redistricting
Enacted bythe 90th United States Congress
EffectiveDecember 14, 1967
Citations
Public lawPub.L. 90–196
Statutes at Large81 Stat. 581
Codification
U.S.C. sections created2 U.S.C. § 2a
Legislative history
  • Introduced in the House as H.R. 2275
  • Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on December 14, 1967

Historical context

Since 1929

Since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Wood v. Broom, 287 U.S. 1 (1932) that previous requirements contained within the Apportionment Act of 1911 in relation to congressional districting and the manner of elected representatives were no longer in force since the enactment of the Reapportionment Act of 1929, there were no requirements imposed upon the states by Congress as to how to elect representatives to the United States House of Representatives. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 did not contain any requirements on how representatives were to be elected, including any requirements on how districts were to be drawn (if the state legislature chose to use districts), due to the presumption by Congress that the requirements enacted by the Apportionment Act of 1911 were still in force since Congress never repealed those requirements.[1] Due to Wood, Missouri (13 seats), Kentucky (9), Virginia (9), Minnesota (9), and North Dakota (2) all elected their representatives at-large in the 1932 United States House of Representatives elections. Arizona would continue to elect their representatives at-large until 1946, even after gaining a second seat in 1943 and New Mexico and Hawaii would continue to elect all their representatives at-large from their admission into the union until 1968 and 1970 respectively. Alabama also elected all eight of its representatives at-large in 1962. Meanwhile, those states that elected representatives from single-member districts often elected representatives from districts that were not compact, contiguous, or roughly equal in population.[1]

Colegrove era

In 1946, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a 4-3 decision Colegrove v. Green that the federal courts do not have jurisdiction to interfere with malapportioned congressional districts, with Congress having the sole authority to interfere with the same. For the next fifteen years, both congressional districts and state legislative districts would often have huge population imbalances. The congressional districts imbalances in population to could have been fixed by an Act of congress but congress failed to enact any standards and requirements about congressional districts and elections. Due to congressional inaction and new members on the Supreme Court, the courts finally intervened in 1962 in the case Baker v. Carr which required that all state legislative districts be of roughly equal population. The court used the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to justify its ruling (specifically the Equal Protection Clause). Wesberry v. Sanders extended this to the districts of the U.S. House of Representatives.[1]

Legislative history

The act was enacted by Congress in 1967 primarily due to two reasons: the fear that the courts would force elections to be conducted at large if congressional districts were not compliant with federal jurisprudence or law and that southern states may have dissolved their districts so that racial minorities would not be able to elect representatives that are from a minority race, particularly after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[1][2] In general, the requirement that all members of the House of Representatives be elected from single-member districts was widely supported by Congress, with Representative Gerald Ford stating, "I happen to feel that at-large elections are completely the wrong way for the election of Members of this body." The only real contention to this bill was whether there should be an exemption for Hawaii and New Mexico since they had always elected their representatives at-large, with Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii stating that "because of geographical reasons, it is not very simple to district the State of Hawaii With the adoption of the amendment, an orderly transition will be possible for our State," along with Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico arguing that his state "has not been redistricted and it would cause a lot of trouble at this late hour to redistrict."[1] However, there were members of Congress opposed to this exemption, with Senator Roman Hruska of Nebraska arguing that "The proposal before us will apply to every State in the Union except two. That is not good legislation. It certainly is not good principle," while Senator Gordon Allott of Colorado was opposed due to selfish reasons, arguing that "If under a decree of court one State could be required to be redistricted, there is no excuse for one State, two States, or 20 States to be excepted from that which others had to do."

Due to the widespread support of the members of Congress that there was a pressing need to ban at-large elections, both the House and the Senate passed the bill with a voice vote, although the bill did allow for Hawaii and New Mexico to elect their representatives from single-member districts two years later than all other states due to their need to draw congressional districts for the first time in their histories.

Impact

The impact of this act has become largely negative in today's political climate. Due to this act, there is no easy fix to gerrymandering since the only way to truly eliminate gerrymandering is by eliminating or limiting the use of single-member districts by using multi-member districts or alternative election methods such as mixed-member proportional representation, which this act bans in its entirety.[2][3] Due to this act, elections to the House of Representatives are very similar to elections to the House of Commons of Canada and the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, except that United States congressional districts are far larger in terms of population that constituencies to the House of Commons. Because today almost always only two parties win election to Congress in the United States, the districts are more representative than those in Canada or the United Kingdom since the winning candidate in the United States typically wins by a majority or close to a majority due to all three of these countries employing first-past-the-post electoral rules. Also due to this act districts in the United States are inherently more unrepresentative than those in other countries that employ mixed-member proportional representation such as Germany or New Zealand since each district in the United States only has one winner, therefore making competitive districts in particular more unrepresentative than safe districts since close to half of all votes in a competitive race go to waste while in multi-member districts the proportion of the vote won by a political party results in them winning the same proportion of seats in a multi-member district.[4][5][6]

See also

References
  1. Flores. "The 1967 Single-Member District Mandate". Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  2. Matthew Yglesias (July 20, 2015). "There's a simple way to end gerrymandering. Too bad Congress made it illegal". Vox. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  3. Kim Soffen (July 14, 2015). "Can Anyone Draw Unbiased Districts in Florida?". New York Times. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  4. CGP Grey (June 16, 2015). "Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History". YouTube. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  5. CGP Grey (March 9, 2011). "The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained". YouTube. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  6. CGP Grey (September 26, 2011). "Mixed-Member Proportional Representation Explained". YouTube. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
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