Reapportionment By Initiative in Oregon

Abstract

NE OF THE MOST PERSISTENT and knotty problems of state government is the periodic apportionment of legislative seats to keep pace with population shifts. Few states, if any, have solved the problem in so apparently satisfactory a way as has Oregon. The fact that the solution was arrived at by means of the System of direct democracy makes this accomplishment a matter of special interest to students of government. The implementation which appears satisfactory to most Oregonians did not materialize until 1952 and did not take effect until 1954. Indeed, for nearly half a century the question of reapportionment had been the subject of frequent legislative struggle, political discord, and public debate. As the state's population pattern shifted over the years, Oregon changed from a rural society to a largely urban one. Yet, successive legislatures, reflecting an apportionment dating primarily to the first decade of this century,' failed to carry out the state constitution's provisions for decennial reallocation of legislative seats according to population changes. These many years of inaction worked to the particular disadvantage of Multnomah County, which contains most of the Portland metropolitan region. From 1910 onward this single county contained approximately one-third of Oregon's total population, yet it elected less than one-fourth of each house of the state legislature. However, population shifts throughout the state eventually resulted in other counties being substantially underrepresented as well. The earlier apportionments contained some strange disparities even for their time, and by 1950 the number of inequities in district strength had multiplied. Some of the areas absorbing Portland's suburban growth had shown dramatic population increases, while to the south, counties such as Lane and Klamath were proportionately underrepresented even more than the metropolis. Geographically, the area which benefited most from the status quo was the sparsely populated eastern two-thirds of the state, separated by the Cascade mountain range from Oregon's main urban centers to the west. While portions of eastern Oregon had kept pace with (or even exceeded) the state's population growth, most of these eighteen counties had lagged far behind. By the 1950 census the region as a whole contained only 16 per cent of the state's population, yet elected close to 27 per cent of each house of the legislature. With slightly more than half the number of inhabitants as Multnomah County, eastern Oregon could handily outvote that metropolitan center in legislative matters.