The Reapportionment Struggle in California in 1948

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IN NOVEMBER, 1948, the electorate of California rejected by a large majority a proposed amendment to the state constitution providing for a new method of apportioning membership in the state senate. The contest was a continuation of the ancient controversy between representation by territory and representation by population. The proposal appeared on the ballot as an initiative constitutional amendment. Some 204,000 necessary signatures to the petitions were filed with the secretary of state, and the voters were again involved in a significant dispute in which urban and rural hostility, practical expediency, political exigency, pressure group influence, inaccurate historical analogy, schoolboy erudition, dire prediction, profound ignorance, and equally profound sincerity appeared as constituent factors. Before discussing the 1948 amendment, it may be useful briefly to summarize the reapportionment problem as it has existed in California. The constitution of 1879 provided for 80 assembly and 40 senatorial districts, to be established on the basis of population.1 It was the duty of the legislature at its session after each Federal census to reapportion the districts on the basis of equal population.2 There were the usual requirements that the districts be composed of contiguous territory, and that no county or no city and county should be divided unless it contained population sufficient to form two or more districts. This plan functioned with relative success until 1910, when sectional conflict between the northern and southern portions of the state and reciprocal antagonism between the cities and the so-called cow counties were reflected in the bitter divisions in the legislature over reapportionment. The reapportionment act of 1911 was a partial victory for the rural areas after a long conflict between rural and urban interests.3