addition, other programs offered by the Census Bureau, such as the 1980 Neighborhood Statistics Program and the 1980 Election Precinct Program, offered data for small areas in a variety of formats, thereby filling the need for data that would have been provided at the ward level.
The need to provide data for political representation, as prescribed by the Constitution, remains the primary purpose for conducting the decennial census of population. The U.S. Supreme Court’s one-person/one-vote decision of 1964, and various subsequent rulings of the courts, have been instrumental in providing census data aggregated for small geographic units. Before the one-person/one-vote ruling, most State authorities favored drawing or revising congressional and State legislative districts to coincide with legally defined units such as counties, MCDs, and incorporated places. These geographic entities often are not demographically or statistically comparable, however. Consequently, the resulting districts often had significant population imbalances. In addition, there were other problems associated with the selection of only governmental unit boundaries for redistricting. Richard L. Morrill described some of these problems in his book, Political Redistricting and Geographic Theory:[1]
“In the United States, representatives are elected at several levels of government, but there is no simple hierarchy of districts, only complex and overlapping systems. U.S. senators and presidential electors are elected at large from States, U.S. representatives from congressional districts of about equal size (510,000 in 1980). Within States, senators and representatives are elected to legislatures from a structure of districts totally unrelated to the congressional districts. In some States, like Mississippi, even districts for senate and house are unrelated. Again, the structure of county council or supervisor districts is wholly independent of state legislative or congressional districts. Finally, city council or school districts are likely to overlap confusedly with all the preceding systems and with each other. The only example of nesting or hierarchy of governmental units in the United States are councils of government (COGs) which are not directly elected, but consist of members elected from constituent city, county, or special district agencies.
The geographic problem as such was historically not very profound or technical. Since population was not viewed as having to be very equal, there was a tendency to use simple existing boundaries of familiar legal territories, such as city limits, and merely group these in convenient ways. There was also a need to define voter precincts, the finest subdivision of districts. This was not always done on a clear basis
Notes and References
- ↑ Richard L. Morrill, Political Redistricting and Geographic Theory, Association of American Geographers, Washington, DC: 1981.
14-2Voting Districts
