URBAN AND RURAL POLITICAL UNBALANCE DUE TO CENTRALIZATION OF POPULATION IN URBAN DISTRICTS

Abstract

The latter half of the present century is an era of urbanization, a phenomenon common to all over the world. The application of conventional systems to cities and towns, ignoring the changes of social structure in urban districts due to the urbanization, will produce not a few contradictions. One of them is the inequality of suffrage, one of the basic human rights. The inequality of suffrage can be seen not only in Japan but in the United States of America. In the Federal Lower House and State Congress of the United State where a proportional to population representation system is adopted, and the Federal Senate which has the character of a political unit representation, remarkable contradictions can be seen as follows: (1) In the Federal Lower House, the seats are distributed in proportion to the population of each state by the President. But the seats thus distributed are re-distributed by the Congress of each state to the minor electoral district system of “one representative per constituency”. For examlpe, under the constituency in 1950, the 8th district in Texas should have been given two seats if the calculatiorn were made truly in proportion to the population. Under the current electoral system, the urban districts are given fewer seats than those of rural districts in spite of the fact that the formers have larger population than the latters. In other word, a vote of the people living in urban districts has only a third or a fourth value of a votee xercised by the people living in rural districts. (Table No. 4 and No. 5) (2) One of the causes for the above mentioned inequality of suffrage is that the State Congress the majority of whose seats are occupied by the representatives elected from rural districts has the right to determine the electoral district for the Federal Lower House (Gerrymandering can often be seen) and that the rural districts have a traditional prejudice against urban districts. (3) The contradiction mentioned in paragraph (1) results in the number of the number of seats and the rate of votes polled. For example, urban representatives gain a great number of votes, while a larger number of seats go to rural districts with smaller population and more electoral districts. Thus, the will of urban people can not be reflected fully, and rural voices bear down urban ones. Such a phenomenon can be seen in both in the Federal Congress and the State Congress, creating oppositions in the administration and the legislature. (4) In the case of the State Congress, the current fixed number of seats in each electoral district has been fixed in accordance with the population at the 18th century. Therefore, in Florida the urban population is 60% of the population of the state, but the number the seats occupied by the representatives elected from the urban districts is only 7-9%, showing an utter unbalance of political power between urban and rural districts. (Table No. 8) (5) The member of Federal Upper House has the character of a state representative. Now that the significance of the state has been decreased, such a system may be behind the times. Lastly we propose the following suggestion in order to wipe out the contradictions mentioned above and establish a true democracy: 1. The right to determine the electoral districts held at present by the State Congress be transfered to the third person such as court, committee for eletion administration and the like. 2. The district-representation-system (Federal Upper House) be gradually changed to a proportional to representation system. 3. The proportional to population representation system be gradually changed, too, to a proportional to voter representation system. Since there is a difference in the age structure of the people living in urban and rural districts and the rate of urban voters is larger than of rural voters. 4. Exercise of “the right to speak”