Partisanship in apportionment. The county recognized in the ap this section shall equal in amount the debt for which it was created, no further direct tax shall be levied on account of said sinking fund and the legislature shall reduce the tax to an amount equal to the accruing interest on such debt. 182. Legislative Apportionment * The problem of legislative apportionment - one of the thorny questions of American politics was thoroughly discussed in the New York constitutional convention of 1894: MR. SPEER. The proposition reported by your Committee on Apportionment increases the Senate from thirty-two to fifty members and apportions the districts so that thirty-two will be Republican and eighteen Democratic, according to the approved estimates of the experts of your Republican majority, as published in the New York Press, a Republican organ. The assembly is increased from 128 to 150. Of this 150, ninety-one are to be Republicans and fifty-nine Democrats. Each House will be Republican by over three-fifths. This apportionment is of such a nature that should the Democrats carry the State by a majority of 120,000 they would not be able to control both Houses of the Legislature. Then you adopt the English idea, the plan on which members of Parliament were elected in England's most corrupt days, of portionment. giving representation to counties irrespective of population. What is there sacred about county lines that you should so insist upon them in your proposition and report. The county of Putnam has a population of 13,325, a third of the number to entitle it to a Member of the Assembly, still you give Putnam county an Assemblyman. Is this because Putnam county is Republican? Schuyler county has 16,326 population, less than half the ratio you have fixed of 38,606. It is to have an Assemblyman because Schuyler county is Republican? More votes required to elect Democratic senators. You seek to appeal to prejudice to array the rural counties of the State against the cities. You aim at arousing the agricultural interests against the commercial and industrial. What an appeal! What a spectacle you are making not only to the residents of the tion against Taking your own figures as printed in your report, Document DiscriminaNo. 65, let us see where are the districts which have more than New York the ratio and where are the districts which have less. In Kings City. county you have 58,264 citizens left over, enough to be entitled to another Senator, a robbery of one Democratic Senator in addition to your gerrymander of the Brooklyn district. In every New York City district you have exceeded the ratio and disfranchised 34,160 citizens. In Westchester county you have exceeded the ratio 13,407. In these three counties alone, all of them Democratic, your excess is over 100,000. the number be in MR. MAYBEE. The basic idea of the whole scheme, the founda- Why should tion upon which the whole scheme rests, is the great defect in this measure. It increases the number of Members of Assembly creased? from 128 to 150; it increases the number of Senators from thirtytwo to fifty, an increase of forty members of the Legislature, without any reason whatever. Will any gentleman tell me what good reason exists for this large increase in the membership of the Legislature? Has there been anywhere a demand for it? Have the people, by petitions, through the columns of the newspapers anywhere, made a demand for this increase? What good purpose does it subserve? The purpose of it is political and political only. There is no reason why an Assembly of 150 members will do the business of the State any better, any more satisfactorily than an Assembly of 128 members. There is no reason why a Senate of Larger constituencies return better members. Local divisions are recognized in making apportionments. fifty members will do the business of the State with any greater satisfaction to the people of a State than a Senate of thirty-two members. It is a recognized principle in political history, which has become axiomatic, that the larger the constituency within a reasonable limit, the better representative will you get. This is not denied by any students of political history. This measure intends to narrow the constituencies, not to broaden them; intends to make them smaller, and not larger; and for a political purpose, and a political purpose only, contravenes the well-known theory of political history and political economy that a large constituency is more apt to return a good member than a small one. Now, the Congress of the United States consists of about 350 members. Those members represent between sixty and seventy millions of people, and yet gentlemen upon the other side of the House say that 128 Members of Assembly are not enough in number to fitly and adequately represent about six millions of people. MR. CHOATE. Mr. Chairman, it is not true that direct population, popular count, man for man, has ever been in this State, the basis of representation in the Legislature. We are not a pure Democracy; we are not an impure Republic. We are a representative government so far as its legislative body and the dealing out of legislative powers are concerned. For the great offices of State, the Governor and other great officers, we vote man by man and the majority rules. In the highest judicial court of the State we vote in the same way, popular sovereignty, popular majority, or, at any rate, popular plurality. It has never been so, it never will be so, it never can be so, in respect to the Senate and Assembly. We must be represented by districts; we must be represented by counties; we must be represented by some form of territorial division. When my friends on this side of the chamber concede, as they must concede, as they have conceded, that, they give away the whole of the argument which Mr. Osborn presented, based upon equal popular representation. Why, there is the little county of Putnam of his, with 13,000 people and the adjoining county of Westchester with 127,000, that, according to his theory ought to have ten times as much. Nobody has ever dreamed under this or any other apportionment, of giving it more than three times as much. What do the people of this State come to the Legislature for? Counties To make laws for the whole State; to represent the whole State, rights in the have equal and each part of the State is interested in the whole. My friend legislature. down here upon this side talked as if all the wealth accumulated in the city of New York ought to lie at the basis and foundation of apportionment. Who owns the magnificent harbor which is the foundation of all her prosperity and those great rivers which meet to kiss each other at her door? Why, the little county of Niagara might just as well claim to own for itself the Cataract of Niagara, that other wonder of the world at the other end of the State. No, sir, they come here representing these divisions, and the first rule always has been, and always will be, I believe, that each one of these divisions, these counties which have been formed as political divisions for the very purpose of being the centres of home rule, if you please, of local government, every one of them has the right, and the equal right; and if there were but sixty counties, if there were but sixty representatives, they must be distributed among these sixty counties, upon every doctrine that has ever prevailed in this State; and the little county of Putnam in that case would be entitled to the same number in that assembly as the great county of New York. cited. Mr. Chairman, if you want to go, for example, to good Demo- Florida cratic authority, I want to give you some on this doctrine in support of this proposition that is represented in this scheme; that is to say, that the greater the territorial extent of a little and poor county the greater shall be its representation in the popular branch of the Legislature. Florida - is not that a good Democratic State? Did anybody ever hear of a Republican entering its borders except for the purpose of summer recreation or for the investigation of fraud? Florida says: "The representation in the House of Representatives shall be apportioned among the several The practice in Georgia. Evils of amending on the third reading. counties as nearly as possible according to population; provided, each county shall have one representative at large in the House of Representatives; and no county shall have more than three representatives." Think of that. Georgia - is not that a good Democratic State? Here are States that are all of one way of thinking. Georgia apportions her one hundred and seventy-five representatives among the several counties thus: "To the six counties having the largest population, three each; to the twenty-six counties having the next largest population, two each; to the remaining one hundred and five counties, one each. After each United States census, the General Assembly may change the above apportionment so as to give to the six largest counties three each; to the twenty-six next largest, two each; but in no event shall the aggregate number of representatives be increased." Is that good Democratic doctrine? 183. Legislative Procedure The importance of the details of legislative procedure is fully shown by the following speech made in the New York constitutional convention of 1894, by Mr. Vedder: Mr. Chairman, the object of this amendment, I think, was apparent to each delegate as it was read. Under the Constitution, as it now is, a bill may be amended upon its third reading. This prevents a bill from being amended on its third reading. Under the Constitution, as it now is, a bill may be passed when it is not printed. An amendment may be made to it which changes the whole nature of the bill, and without any of the members of the Legislature knowing anything about it, except, perhaps, the mover. Especially is this true during the last days of a session. There has probably been more bad legislation by reason of this defect in the Constitution than because of any other. This is the way it works: The Clerk announces the reading of a bill; he begins its reading, and a member of the Legislature offers an amendment which no one may understand but himself, and the amendment is adopted, and the reading goes on and the bill is passed as amended. |