Slide Rule for Legislators

Since the Supreme Court began handing down its series of one-man, one-vote decisions, it has insisted that the ideal must be approached " as nearly as practicable."How near is that? At first some politicians and lawyers figured that a population difference of 15% or so between the largest and smallest districts in a state would prove satisfactory. Last week, however, the court made it clear that even far smaller variations may be unacceptable. So strict was the standard applied by he court that it may eventually necessitate reapportioning the districts of virtually every elected official, from Congressman to city councilman.

Up for consideration were the most recent reapportionments of congressional districts in Missouri and New York. In an effort to satisfy court requirements, Missouri had staked out districts with populations that varied from one another by only 6%. New York had achieved a maximum spread of 14%. By a 6-3 vote, the court found both efforts unsatisfactory.

Strait Path. The one-man, one-vote principle, wrote Justice William Brennan for the majority, requires that the state "make a good-faith effort to achieve precise mathematical equality" and "must justify each variance, no matter how small." Brennan added: "We can see no nonarbitrary way to pick a cutoff point" at which population variances become too small to matter.

The three dissenters described the new rule as unrealistically rigid. "Strait indeed is the path of the righteous legislator," wrote Justice John Harlan wryly. "Slide rule in hand, he must avoid all thought of county lines, local traditions, politics, history and economics, so as to achieve the magic formula: one man, one vote." Justice Abe Fortas tended to agree, but he nonetheless concurred in these cases because neither state had made a sufficient "good-faith effort."

The difficulty of achieving the court's ideal is obvious. At least 30 states still have population discrepancies from district to district that are greater than Missouri's. Even in states where the variations are smaller, Congressmen--and officials at the state and local levels as well--may find their districts under reapportionment attack before the 1970 census.

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