In this conversation:

• 1819: Black Belt planters vs North Alabama plain folk at statehood

• Some plain folk refuse Confederacy’s war

• Redemption, planters take the state back

• 1901: planters disenfranchise black Alabamians and many poor whites

• 1921: black and white miners defeat another disfranchisement amendment

• Big Jim Folsom: the plain folk find their champion

• 1946: another disfranchisement amendment, Boswell, passes

• Brown makes race personal; plain folk coalition cracks

• 1958: the planters win

A War of Sections is available on UGA Press or Amazon. Follow Steve’s Substack.

Bernard Grofman and Gary King were assigned homework by the Supreme Court of the United States. Naturally they determined to complete the assignment.

Since 1986, the Court had held that partisan gerrymandering could, in theory, violate the Constitution.1 But it had never come close to invalidating a partisan map. The obstacle was the absence of a clear, objective standard. Evaluating a 2003 Texas gerrymander, the Court maintained the same position.

But hidden in the details was a slight shift. Four Justices fixed on a way to measure gerrymandering, a metric called partisan symmetry.

A fifth Justice, the swing vote, remained unconvinced. The problem, wrote Justice Kennedy, was it lacked a legal threshold—how much asymmetry is too much? Second, measuring symmetry requires simulating hypothetical elections. Kennedy would not invalidate a map based on “a hypothetical state of affairs.”

Still, Kennedy did not “altogether discount” symmetry. Solve these problems and he’d reconsider.

Bernard Grofman and Gary King, among the two most prolific political scientists in the country, had helped develop the metric. Victory was one Justice away, and Kennedy had just issued the challenge.

It was their move.

Courts can enforce speed limits because most people agree: speed is distance over time. Anyone who hoped to cure gerrymandering would first need to define it, and Grofman and King had been trying for decades.

The key concept is symmetry, also called bias. It asks whether the same votes produce the same seats for both parties. If Democrats win 7 of 10 seats with 60% of votes, but Republicans would win only 6 seats with 60%, the system is biased.

Grofman proposed measuring bias across a range of plausible outcomes.2 But that required knowing how many seats a party would win under vote shares that had not actually occurred. If Democrats win 55% of the vote and 6 of 10 seats, how do we know how many seats they would win with 54% of votes? Or 40%?

For years, political scientists used a shortcut, shifting every district by the same number of points and seeing which seats flip. This assumes that any statewide shift would hit all districts equally, a “uniform swing.”

Gary King, working with a colleague, relaxed that assumption. Instead of using uniform shifts, they estimated how each district would move under different statewide outcomes.3

For decades they labored in the academic wilderness. Over twenty-five years, Grofman published 10 papers on partisan symmetry; King published 11.

Now, finally, they had the attention of the highest court of the land.

In The Rights Revolution, Charles Epp argues that judicial change depends on people like Grofman and King.

For 125 years after the Bill of Rights, and 50 years after the 14th Amendment, the Court “largely ignored civil liberties.” That changed around 1917, two decades before the Court’s liberal shift. What caused the change, Epp contends, was the infrastructure around the Court.

Before 1915, only large businesses could sustain prolonged constitutional litigation. With the NAACP, ACLU, and AJC, among others, civil-liberties litigants began developing comparable capacity.

Around the same time, legal education shifted from apprenticeship to law schools, fostering a more critical legal culture. Professors developed new constitutional theories, the private bar grew more sophisticated, and civil liberties organizations increasingly drew on these networks.

The U.S. rights revolution, in short, “developed within a broader political economy of litigation.” Scholars helped breathe life into Bill of Rights.

In 2007, Grofman and King turned in the assignment. It was their first article together.

Partisan Symmetry as a Judicial Test for Gerrymandering is not typical scholarship.4 It doesn’t say anything new. It reads like an open letter to the Supreme Court, a memo to a law clerk.

The coauthors make their best case for partisan symmetry. There is, they declare, an academic consensus: “We are aware of no published disagreement or even clear misunderstanding in the scholarly community about partisan symmetry as a standard for partisan fairness.”

They explain concepts patiently, for the quantitatively disinclined, then address Kennedy’s objections one by one.

Addressing the where-to-draw-the-line problem, Grofman and King offer Kennedy five possible thresholds.

On hypotheticals, the authors explain that partisan symmetry requires estimating the relative vote share across districts. Gerrymandering itself depends on the same exercise. Mapmakers pack opposing voters into landslide districts and spread their own voters across winnable ones. This requires knowing the partisan lean of different parts of the state. If this was unknowable, partisan gerrymandering itself would be impossible.

They end in hope. “The Supreme Court has seeded the clouds after this 20 year drought. We think that, at last, there can now be a non-trivial probability of rain, and as a result to a new flowering of American democracy.” Non-trivial probabilities aside, it’s a nice line.

Then the academic consensus cracked.

There was precedent for what Grofman and King wanted—a generation earlier, the Supreme Court had remade American democracy.

Until 1964, legislative districts were hugely unequal in population. A 38-person town in Vermont had the same representation as Burlington.

Within days of Reynolds, Michigan drew new districts. More than half the state’s senators retired or lost their primaries. Within two years, nearly every state had followed. Los Angeles went from one senator to fourteen.

The Court accomplished this with what now looks like a simple rule: legislative districts must be “as nearly of equal population as is practicable.” One person, one vote.

But the simplicity is retrospective.

For one, population equality competes with other theories of representation. American institutions, Alexander Bickel argued, historically represented “not only people, but interests, groups, and regions.”5

Even if votes should carry equal weight, one-person-one-vote does not guarantee fair representation. States might respond with at-large elections, allowing a bare statewide majority to capture every seat.6

Scholars canvassed many possible standards. Courts could cap the ratio between the largest and smallest district, the maximum or average deviation from an ideal district, or the percent of the population able to elect a majority.7

One person, one vote—population equality—was the most radical possible outcome. Even supporters thought it unlikely the court would constitutionalize the principle.8

But that’s exactly what the court did.

Grofman and King were not the only scholars who rose to the challenge. Eric McGhee and Nicholas Stephanopoulos fashioned a new metric, custom-built to meet Kennedy’s criteria.

McGhee criticized partisan symmetry for putting weight on implausible outcomes. If Democrats earn 60% of votes and every seat in San Francisco, it doesn’t matter that Republicans would theoretically achieve the same outcome if they somehow won 60%. They never would.9

Stephanopoulos and McGhee introduced the efficiency gap. It compares the votes “wasted” by each party. A “wasted” vote is one either cast for a losing candidate, or every surplus vote, over 50%, cast for a winning candidate. In a 60-40 district, the winner wastes 10% of the total vote and the loser wastes 40%. The efficiency gap is intuitive, requires no hypotheticals, and looks administrable.

Then came the objections. Two mathematicians observed that the metric “fetishizes” 75-25 districts but penalizes proportional outcomes.10 Three economists predicted EG would reduce competition and increase polarization.11 A political scientist argued that surplus winning votes are not equivalent to losing votes.12

The efficiency gap was one of many metrics that emerged around this time. A pair of political scientists proposed repurposing an old statistical measure of skew.13 A mathematician suggested borrowing from angular geometry.14 A redistricting workshop for mathematicians attracted 1,000 applicants.15

Each new metric arrived as a possible solution to Kennedy’s challenge, and also underscored his point; there is no singular answer.

Can courts bring about social change? If not, there would be little point to the whole circus. But there’s a growing band of skeptics.

Gerald Rosenberg posed the question in The Hollow Hope, and answers a faintly qualified “no.” His central target is Brown, his thesis captured by a two-word epigraph: “nothing happened.”16 Ten years after Brown, only 1.2% of Black children in the South were attending desegregated schools.17 Southern states effectively resisted, closing public schools and funding private segregated schools.18

“Brown and its progeny,” Rosenberg concludes, “stand for the proposition that courts are impotent to produce significant social reform.”19

Michael Klarman expands the argument—courts rarely stand up for rights when it’s unpopular.20 Together, Klarman and Rosenberg question the Court’s capacity to act against prevailing opinion.

Mark Tushnet makes the normative leap: the Supreme Court should not have the final say in what the Constitution means. Political institutions should settle their own boundaries.21

The cost of litigation-based reform, Tushnet says, is deeper than popular backlash. Public debate adopts legal vocabulary. Discussion of principle becomes circuitous, doctrinal. Resources—money, elite attention—funnel into litigation, at the expense of other channels of change.

The moment arrives.

A typical story, a partisan gerrymander. Wisconsin.

The case is brought on behalf of twelve voters, represented by the Campaign Legal Center and co-counsel, including one Nicholas Stephanopoulos, co-framer of the efficiency gap.

The district court declares the map unconstitutional. The efficiency gap is central to its analysis.

The Supreme Court agrees to review the case. Now everyone is paying attention.

Eric McGhee files an amicus brief for the efficiency gap. Gary King urges the Court to rely on partisan symmetry. Bernard Grofman files separately, urging a framework of symmetry, responsiveness, and causation.

They are few among many. King’s brief is joined by the soon-to-be Dean of Yale Law School. Eight political scientists, in two briefs, assess whether the bias could be explained by geography. It cannot. Historians argue gerrymandering has long been denounced in constitutional language.

John McCain and Sheldon Whitehouse file a brief. John Danforth, Bob Dole, John Kasich, Richard Lugar, and Arnold Schwarzenegger file a brief.

In all, thirty-six political scientists, ninety-five law professors, fifteen historians, and one-hundred-fifty-four politicians join or file briefs.

It’s thirty-five years after Grofman published his first article on symmetry, eleven years after Grofman and King predicted a non-trivial probability of rain, four years after Stephanopoulos and McGhee introduced the efficiency gap.

The support structure has assembled.

It’s a punt.

Chief Justice Roberts writes for a unanimous court. The plaintiffs have not shown the right type of injury. The Court does not consider whether gerrymandering is constitutional, whether any metric can prove it.

It has been the greatest honor and privilege to serve our nation in the federal judiciary for 43 years.22 With these words, Justice Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court of the United States, effective July 31, 2018. Twelve days later, President Trump nominated his replacement, Brett Kavanaugh.

If Grofman, King, McGhee, Stephanopoulos, and all the others were wondering Kavanaugh’s position on gerrymandering, they were not left guessing for long. Rucho was decided in Kavanaugh’s first Term.

The door was slammed shut.

“There are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments,” wrote the Chief Justice, “let alone limited and precise standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral.”

And that, as they say, was that.

Reviewing studies on the effects of Reynolds—one person, one vote—Gerald Rosenberg, in Hollow Hope, concludes “any [policy] effects that can be traced to reapportionment are small.”23

More recent scholarship suggests otherwise. When suburbs and cities received more representation, they secured significantly more government funding.24 More importantly still, Reynolds weakened the Southern Democratic party and helped create space for Southern Republicans.25 It was among the key ingredients in America’s partisan realignment.

Fixing gerrymandering through courts was not inevitably doomed to fail.

Had the Court chosen to intervene, it would probably have been effective. Gerrymandering is more similar to Reynolds than Brown; enforcement would not require mass cooperation or social change.

But aren’t metrics flawed? Yes; certainly, partisan symmetry and the efficiency gap both carry defects. Other metrics, especially those that rely on simulations, are probably better. Regardless, any metric would restrict the degrees of freedom partisan mapmakers can exercise.

Wouldn’t the Court have to draw an arbitrary line? Courts draw them for a living. “Beyond a reasonable doubt,” “probable cause,” “undue burden”—as arbitrary as they are ambiguous. “Where do you draw the line?” is so commonly asked by law professors that one of them termed an acronym: WDYDTL.26

How could Grofman and King have known that the Court would punt, that Kennedy would then be replaced by a less-receptive Justice?

Who could blame them for trying?

And yet I wonder if Grofman and King, if McGhee and Stephanopoulos, would find some truth in Tushnet’s frame. That in judicializing rights, the academic dialogue came to fixate on the perfect metric.

Ending gerrymandering doesn’t require a metric.

The Supreme Court could adopt a presumption that any partisan map—any map drawn by one party, without the consent of the other—is unconstitutional. Or the Court could forbid any “self-interested insiders” in participating in the districting process.27 Neither requires a metric.

Congress could address the problem in all sorts of ways. It could require maps to be drawn by nonpartisan commissions, as did a bill the House passed in 2019. It could require multi-member districts with proportional elections, or simply statewide proportional representation.28

There is something seductive about Kennedy’s challenge. How do we measure gerrymandering without hypotheticals? How do we flatten a many-dimensional object into something easy to understand and apply?

It’s a neat little puzzle. Trivial to understand, excruciating to solve. On the other side, a fairer electoral system.

A hard math problem that matters—or so they hoped.

There are at least 18 ways to measure gerrymandering, most of them developed since 2014. For each metric, there is a wealth of criticism—most of it quite technical/academic/in-the-weeds, and specific to the metric being criticized.1

There are a few non-academic articles explaining why measuring gerrymandering is hard. They’re worth reading—Drutman explains the many facets of “fairness”, and Yglesias and Whitcomb show how a fair-looking map can, by virtue of geography, favor one party.

But metric-makers are sophisticated folks—political scientists, economists, mathematicians. Why has the problem proven intractable?

My goal is to uncover the shared conditions that make measuring gerrymandering hard. I argue it’s hard to measure for three reasons. First, the thing being measured is discontinuous: single-member districts convert tiny vote-share differences around 50% into different outcomes. Second and third, the relevant comparison is counterfactual. To tease apart partisan gerrymandering, a metric needs to know what elections are plausible, and what maps were actually available.

Consider this my grand unified theory of why shit’s hard.

Conditions that make it hard

1. Discontinuity. A district lost with 49.9% of votes, as a matter of vote distribution, essentially the same as a district won with 50.1%. But it’s a different outcome.

2. Electoral baseline. Not all statewide vote outcomes are equally likely. Some states are reliably Democratic; others are reliably Republican. A good metric accounts for the actual likelihood of statewide outcomes.

3. Geographic & legal contingency. What maps are geographically and legally available? A metric that only takes into account votes and seats fails to consider these constraints. That’s lossy. In Joe Biden’s words: don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.

Points two and three can be combined into something like “counterfactual baseline”—is the metric assuming an unrealistic distribution of votes (geographic contingency), implausible maps (legal contingency), and unlikely statewide outcomes (electoral baseline)? I choose to separate electoral baseline, and group together geographic & legal contingency, but you could of course make other choices.

To see geographic and legal contingency, imagine a hypothetical state, Fractalia, divided into thousands of precincts. In every precinct, Democrats receive exactly 49 votes and Republicans receive 51. If districts are contiguous unions of precincts, then every possible district is 49% Democratic. Democrats receive 49% statewide and win zero seats—not because of a gerrymander, but because no legally available map can do otherwise. If the same voters were arranged differently, it would very much look like a gerrymander. But in Fractalia, it’s the geography, stupid.

This may seem implausible; but consider a different hypothetical state—call it “America”—where one party is overwhelmingly urban, with small pockets of support elsewhere. The urban party—with or without gerrymandering—will produce landslides in the urban districts. For a party, landslides are bad. You’d rather some of those urban folks sprawl out and help you win a few more seats.

Bring out the metrics!

Now consider the 4 most cited ways to measure gerrymandering. This gets a little technical, but the tl;dr is—each of these four very important gerrymandering metrics is injured by these conditions.

1. Partisan Symmetry: Asks whether the map treats parties equally at the same vote share. If Democrats win 9 of 10 seats with 60% of the statewide vote, would Republicans also win 9 seats with 60%?

2. Efficiency Gap (EG): Compares each parties “wasted votes”: all votes cast for losing candidates, plus surplus winning votes (every vote over 50%+1). Were Democrats or Republicans more efficiently distributed?

3. Mean-Median Difference (MMD): Compare a party’s mean and median district vote share. If its mean is significantly higher than its median, the party’s vote is probably concentrated in high-margin districts. You’d typically rather win by slimmer margins.

4. Declination: Measures the difference in magnitude between losing and winning districts, i.e. asymmetry across the 50% won/lost line. A party that is losing narrowly and winning by a lot is competing on unfavorable terms.

EG and declination inherit the discontinuity. For EG, for instance, a district won by 50.1% is essentially the “perfect district” for that party—they waste no votes—while a district lost with 49.9% of votes is the worst-possible district. Therefore, a tiny shift in votes commits a massive difference in efficiency. The same is true for declination.

The other two metrics—symmetry and MMD—smooth over the discontinuity. A tiny shift in votes does not change either of these metrics. But that creates a new problem. Now the metric is removed from actual outcomes. If Democrats win 2 of 3 districts with 40%, 51%, and 62% of the vote, MMD detects no difference from Democrats winning 3 of 3 districts with 51%, 51%, and 51% of the vote.

Electoral baseline is particularly devastating for symmetry. Who cares whether Republicans would theoretically earn 9 of 10 seats with 60% of votes, if they can never hope to earn 60%? Symmetry does not limit its investigation to plausible outcomes.2

The other metrics are also affected. Declination becomes unstable in landslide states and undefined altogether if the minority party loses every district.3 Let’s say District A tends to be 7 points below than the state average for Democrats. EG will be significantly different if the state votes 55% for Democrats (they lose the district with 48%) vs if the state votes 60% for Democrats (they win with 53%).

All four metrics require only district vote shares and seat outcomes—none account for geographic & legal contingency.

It is quite plausible Democrats are winning landslides, and losing by smaller margins, because they have overwhelming support in cities, and small pockets of support in other areas. Indeed, this is the thesis of Jonathan Rodden’s excellent book.4

These conditions would organically create an “asymmetric” map, where Democrats win fewer seats with equal vote share. It also means Democrats likely “waste” more votes (EG), have higher mean than median district vote share (MMD), and win with higher margins than they lose (declination).

These are not the only problems with these metrics. But this is, I think, a fair synthesis of the background conditions that make this a fickle problem.

There is a solution

Or at least a better framework.5 Simulate a bunch of maps. Use some basic geographic unit—e.g. precincts—and require maps meet contiguity/compactness/VRA requirements. Applying actual election returns, ideally from several elections, record how each party fares under each simulated map. Perhaps also test counterfactual vote shares.

Compare the enacted map to the simulated ensemble. Test how the enacted map compares to the ensemble on raw seat count or any other metric (including, if you’d like, symmetry, EG, MMD, etc.). If the enacted plan is more favorable to Democrats than 99.5% of simulated valid plans, that is really strong evidence of a gerrymander. The old metrics, too, can be interpreted against an ensemble.

Complexity hides in the detail. It’s not easy to model the VRA, there are different ways to define “compactness”, and there are different possible sampling distributions.

Still, simulation largely solves the baseline problem. It asks whether the enacted map is extreme relative to a stated universe of lawful, geographically plausible alternatives.

Gerrymandering is hard to measure because maps are not just partisan artifacts. Partisan manipulation occurs in the shadow of geography, law, and a particular political moment. A good test has to see the alternatives.

FairVote, Protect Democracy, and other reform organizations make the intuitive case—seats should track votes. If a party wins 35 percent of the vote, it should receive 35 percent of the seats.

That argument made me curious about the current system. How disproportional are single-member House elections? Are they more or less proportional than they used to be? I decided to chart the relationship between votes and seats over time.

I made the chart below: the Democratic share of the national vote for House of Representatives vs the Democratic proportion of House seats. When the dotted line is above the solid line, Democrats secured a higher proportion of seats than their share of the national vote.

For instance, in 1892, Democrats secured 48% of the vote and 61% of House seats. Two years later, the Democratic share of the national vote decreased by 10 percentage points—to 38%—but their share of House seats halved, to 26%.

Excited, I sent the chart to a friend. House elections look more proportional in recent years than ever before, I said.

It’s a cool chart, he responded. But I don’t know how to discern proportionality from it.

Just look at the shading, Jack!

But the closer I looked, the more I had to agree:

1. The closer the vote share to 50%, the more material any seat surplus/deficit.

2. The “vote-seat gap” flattens two distinct concepts—bias and responsiveness—into one.

3. Measuring bias is hard, interpreting it is harder.

A seat surplus is more valuable today than it used to be.

The first point is easy to see. There may be a greater political difference 51 and 55 percent of seats than between 55 and 70 percent of seats.

More clearly, there is a discontinuity at 50%. A tiny seat surplus makes all the difference to a party that earns 49% of the vote.

From 1959 through 1994, Democrats always had at least 50 more House seats than Republicans. Today thin majorities are the norm. The world of landslides and durable majorities has given way to narrow margins and regular changes in control.2

That makes any seat surplus far more valuable.

Proportionality doesn’t tell us what we want to know.

Let’s say Democrats win 55% of votes and 65% of seats. That’s a 10pp seat surplus.

Is that fair? Maybe. If Republicans won 55% of the vote, would they have also won 65% of seats?

More generally: conditional on a vote share, would each party receive the same seat share?

Responsiveness is the percent change in seats corresponding to an additional percent of votes. Bias is an asymmetry between parties in the seat-vote relationship.

Consider three different ways of translating votes to seats:

In a proportional system, 40% of votes secures the same share of seats. In a winner-take-all system it secures no seats. In the majoritarian system modeled here, it secures 30%.

The three systems are significantly different, but none of them are biased. Republicans and Democrats are treated the same.

Here are the winner-take-all and majoritarian system, with a bias:

Now Republicans need more votes to achieve the same representation as Democrats.

Measuring bias is hard, interpreting it is harder.

Bias varies with vote share. Look again at the biased majoritarian system. The Republican penalty depends on the vote share. If Republicans win 100% of the vote, they win all of the seats; there is no bias. At other vote shares, there is a bias.

So where, along the curve, should we measure bias? Most commonly, political scientists measure bias when vote share = 0.5. They define “bias” as the difference between the seats Ds and Rs would expect to secure, if each with 50% of the vote. Others sum the difference in expected seats across several possible vote shares (e.g., if each party has 45%, 46%, etc., up to 55% of the vote). The more complete approach would be to sum the entire area between the curves, although that might put too much weight on unrealistic outcomes.

Additionally, elections do not magically produce vote-seat curves. An election delivers only one point along the curve. To recover the curve, political scientists model counterfactual elections. The simplest model, “uniform swing”, moves every district by the same amount (say, increase Democratic and decrease Republican vote share by 1% in each district), counts new seat shares, and traces the curve. Newer methods soften that assumption, allowing districts to vary around the swing.

Finally—and most critically—a good measure of bias does not uncover intention. Gerrymandering can create bias, but so can different turnout across districts and natural geographic sorting. Sorting is particularly salient today, as Democrats have become an overwhelmingly urban party.

Look again at the first chart. It tells us that seats are not perfectly proportional to votes. At times, seat share dramatically departs from vote share, although the largest gap is not necessarily most important. But the chart does not tell us whether there is a partisan bias, whether Democrats and Republicans would be treated equally if they achieved the same vote share.

This complicates my analysis of the proportionality of the House. More importantly, it complicates the argument for proportional representation.

There’s nothing wrong with saying that 35% of the vote should translate to 35% of seats. But the claim is broader than it first appears. It rejects partisan bias, which I suspect most people would agree with. It also rejects the winner’s bonus. In other words, it says the system should be less responsive—a 1% change in votes should yield a 1% change in representation.

That’s more controversial, and it’s a topic for another time.

• Why reapportionment made the North more liberal, but the South more conservative

• Why the Civil Rights Act would be harder to imple

  ment without reapportionment

• How reapportionment paved the way for party realignment

“I can stay here as long as you can!” declares the senator from Northern California. “And I can stay here as long as you can,” dutifully retorts the southerner.[1]

It’s Monday, April 18, 1921. We’re in the California State Senate in Sacramento. The room is deep red. The carpet, the heavy draperies, the upholstery on the chairs—all red, all borrowed, deliberately, from the British House of Lords. It’s dim.

Forty desks face the dais in tight curving rows. An enormous chandelier hangs overhead.

Carved into the cornice, above the rostrum, the Latin motto: SENATORIS EST CIVITATIS LIBERTATEM TUERI—it is the duty of a senator to guard the liberty of the Commonwealth.[2]

The California Constitution says representation “shall be apportioned according to population.” After each census, the legislature must redraw the districts.

Senator Frank Boggs introduced the first bill of this legislative session, to do exactly that. It’s labeled “Senate Bill 1,” or S.B. 1.

***

Senator Boggs is convinced his bill will pass—if only he can get it to a vote.

But Senator Walter McDonald of San Francisco has made it his personal mission to keep the bill from reaching a vote.

For months, he has campaigned against the reapportionment plan. “If we permit a reapportionment on the proposed basis,” he warned in January, “We may as well divide the State.”[3]

At 10:30 a.m., the Senate Journal records: “Bill read second time. Committee amendments pending.”[4] S.B. 1 is now on the floor, slated for a vote today.

McDonald is worried. “They’ve slipped,” he says of his fellow opponents. “We’ve got to fight for time.”[5]

At 11:00 a.m., before the Senate can vote on any amendment, McDonald rises. “Mr. President,” he announces, “I move to place Senate Bill 1 at the foot of the second reading file.”[6]

That is: beneath every other bill, unlikely to be reached before the end of the session. Defeat through delay.

The Senate Journal records, impassively: “Motion seconded.”[7]

McDonald declares he will use “every means” to defeat reapportionment, including demanding a separate roll call on eighty-four amendments.[8]

The lieutenant-governor suggests this would cause delay.

“I object to the presiding officer of this Senate explaining this bill to the advantage of its proponents,” an opponent of reapportionment protests. “As long as we beat this bill, I don’t care if we pass no other measure.”[9]

Eventually the Secretary calls the roll on McDonald’s motion. If it passes, S.B. 1is very likely dead.

“Allen” “Nay”

“Anderson” No response

“Arbuckle” “Aye”

It’s going to be close.

***

Since the 1910 census, California’s population has grown 44 percent. There are a million new Californians.[10]

But the growth has not been even. Los Angeles County has nearly doubled. Some northern districts have shrunk.

As a result, one northern Sierra senator represents about 43,000 people, while one Los Angeles senator represents about 117,000. One voter has three times the representation of the other.[11]

This is an instance of a national pattern.

Land has always promised self-reliance—the American virtue—and wealth, the American dream. In 1910, most Americans still lived on farms or in villages of fewer than 2,500 people.

But the country is changing. Over the last decade, six million Americans have left farms for cities.[12] By 1920, for the first time in American history, most Americans live in urban places.[13]

The city throws up a new landscape—skyscrapers and apartment houses, speakeasies and department stores. The livery stable becomes a gas station.[14] Great writers portray small-town life, once the nation’s moral center, as narrow, stifling, and provincial.[15]

There’s a backlash. To a turn-of-the-century politician, writes William Leuchtenburg, “no asset was greater than that of birth in a log cabin.”[16] The Ku Klux Klan has exploded in membership, strongest in places where old-stock Protestants feel themselves being overtaken by an America becoming Catholic, Jewish, immigrant, Black, wet, and urban.[17]

The old America clings to its institutional advantage. By 1921, Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have all failed to redraw districts. For the first time in history, Congress has failed to reapportion after the 1920 census.

It’s a battle between two Americas, described by Walter Lippmann as “the new urban civilization with its irresistible economic and scientific and mass power,” and “the older American village civilization making its last stand against what looks like an alien invasion.”[18]

On April 18, 1921, California is at its center.

***

Back in the Senate chamber, the Secretary is still calling the roll. It’s close, but the motion loses, 18 to 15, with 7 absent. Those seven absences give McDonald his opening.

Before the secretary can proclaim that McDonald’s motion has failed, McDonald rises again.

“I move for a call of the Senate.”

The Senate Journal records dryly: “Pending the announcement of the vote, Senator McDonald moved for a call of the Senate. Motion carried.”

It continues: “Time, eleven o’clock and twenty-five minutes a.m. The President directed the Sergeant-at-Arms to close the doors.”[19] The sergeant-at-arms is sent to find the absent senators.

A call is an old attendance rule.[20] But California’s rule has a wrinkle. Ordinary business cannot continue without the unanimous agreement of every present member.[21] Many legislatures allow business to move under a call if there is a quorum—California does not.

To pass, S.B. 1 will need twenty-one votes, an absolute majority of the forty-member Senate. Both sides believe they have the votes: “We’ve got enough votes to put it through,” says Boggs. “Go ahead and try . . . . You haven’t got the votes,” responds Senator Crowley of San Francisco.[22]

Neither side has twenty-one in the room, so both sides have reason to gamble.

The vote is suspended; the chamber is sealed.[23] Since McDonald can withhold his assent, he can stop the Senate from doing almost anything else. It’s a filibuster.

The newspapers capture the stalled chamber.

The Bee says Senators were “locked up.”[24] “McDonald tied up the Senate,” says The Examiner. “Nothing was done,” the paper continued—“and it was fully demonstrated that time, if made for slaves, was not made for State Senators of California.”[25]

Some clerical business does continue, but important matters are frozen.

Eventually, the call of the Senate will be lifted. There will be a deal, or absent members will show up. But even then, McDonald wields a potent threat. The reapportionment bill carried eighty-four amendments out of committee. McDonald will demand a separate roll call on each.

“I don’t want to block good legislation,” McDonald tells his colleagues, “But I propose to have a roll call on everything.”[26]

“It looks as if he could hold us here for at least 48 hours,” admits one pro-reapportionment senator. “We cannot prevent roll call after roll call.”[27]

The Chronicle reports, “McDonald had demanded a separate roll call on eighty-four amendments to the Boggs bill. Lieutenant-Governor Young . . . suggested this would cause serious delay.”[28]

That, lieutenant-governor, is the point.

***

Thomas Jefferson opens his Manual of Parliamentary Practice with Arthur Onslow, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Commons. Onslow taught that parliamentary rules are “a check and control” on the majority, “a shelter and protection to the minority.” The majority has numbers, the minority has rules. Procedure is a check, Jefferson says, on “the wantonness of power.”[29]

Modern constitutional scholars make a similar point. Sujit Choudhry calls some legislative procedures “opposition rights”: procedural rules that let a minority scrutinize, delay, demand answers, and force questions into public view. Democracy, he argues, needs a “regime of opposition rights.”[30] But those rights, in his account, are different from supermajority rules. Opposition rights should not replace majority rule.[31]

***

At 1:45 in the afternoon, McDonald is seized by grace, or just hunger. The rules say no recess can be taken during a call. McDonald offers a “gentleman’s agreement” for a lunch recess.[32]

What’s a rule among gentlemen?

Almost all members sign.[33] One senator from Los Angeles, asked to sign, cracks: “I don’t see the names of any gentlemen signed to it.”[34]

***

How does McDonald get anywhere close to half of the Senate to subvert a constitutional duty?

Two ingredients: local interest and North-South politics.

Los Angeles has grown the most and needs more senate districts. For every new district, some other districts have to be merged.

San Francisco is set to lose a district, having already lost two districts following the last census. The entire San Francisco delegation—seven men, including McDonald—oppose redistricting.

Santa Clara County is set to lose one of its senators. One of the county’s senators concedes the arithmetic. “Santa Clara has population for one senator and a sixth,” he says. “The trouble is we cannot make one sixth into a whole.”[35] He understands the county doesn’t have enough people to justify two districts—and votes against reapportionment anyway.[36]

Sometimes the losers are created by chain reaction. District 17 needs more people. Boggs proposes adding Santa Barbara, which pulls it out of a district with Ventura. Ventura needs a new partner, and the only adjacent county large enough is Kern. Boggs glues the two together.

The senator from Ventura is furious. The pairing is “intolerable,” he writes, “since there is practically no community of interest between the two counties.” Kern is more populous, he continues, so Ventura “would be simply the tail of the dog.”[37]

Even within counties, the politics are deeply local. Chico, the largest city in Butte County, favors a plan joining Butte with a mountain county,[38] creating a district with stronger timber and mineral interest. Gridley, a smaller farming town in the same county, wants the district to stay agricultural.[39]

In the end, the Boggs plan would essentially keep District 6 unchanged, swapping one small Sacramento Valley farm county for another.[40] Senator Duncan—a farmer’s senator—should be happy.

Yet he opposes the bill. He is one of the senators who intends to demand a roll call on every one of 84 amendments.[41] It’s he who shouts, at another senator on the Senate floor: “I can stay here as long as you can!”[42]

What explains his opposition? “I don’t see what Los Angeles is all het up about,” he tells the Bee.[43]

This is the regional dimension of the conflict. The Sacramento Bee’s front-page session preview framed reapportionment as a coming North-South fight. Under the heading “Reapportionment Battle,” it warned that Los Angeles County would seek increased representation because of its population growth, while San Francisco, “with the support of the Northern Legislators,” would fight the Los Angeles contingent “to the last ditch.”[44]

Los Angeles has its own distinct interests. It is more dry than San Francisco. San Francisco is the most unionized city in the state; Los Angeles is famous as an open-shop city. But more than any policy issue, reapportionment is a power struggle between the old northern coalition and the young southern metropolis.

McDonald says as much: “If we permit a reapportionment on the proposed basis that would give Los Angeles county twenty-one Assemblymen and ten Senators we may as well divide the State.”[45]

And the divide runs both ways. San Diego’s district is entirely unchanged. But San Diego is in southern California, and its senator confronts the San Francisco delegation: “What’s the matter with you San Franciscans?... Why do you block everything in this way?”

Crowley fires back: “What’s the matter with you Southerners? . . . You want to grab everything; why don’t you divide the State?”

“We love you too much.”[46]

***

The Senators return, “with reapportionment in the same condition as before feeding time.”[47]

Boggs still has the votes. What he does not have is a vote. “I have enough votes to pass my bill if I can ever get it to a vote,” he says. “If I cannot get it to a vote, why I have done my best, that’s all.”[48]

Several Senators try to reach the governor. If the governor promises a special session, just for reapportionment, perhaps they can find a way out of this wretched chamber.[49]

It’s 5:15 now. We’ve been locked in for six hours. The Senate “killed time all day long,” reports The Chronicle, with Senators “amusing themselves in various ways while enduring their confinement.”

Over the day, three additional senators have arrived in the chamber. Four absentees remain.

McDonald moves to end the call of the Senate. Perhaps he was hoping the newly-arrived senators would help. The Senate Journal records: “The Secretary was directed to call the roll, on Senator McDonald’s motion, of the Senators who had not answered to their names.”

McDonald loses 16 to 20.[50] Two of the newly arrived Senators vote against his motion. Boggs appears a single vote away from having enough votes to pass S.B. 1.

Has McDonald miscalculated?

McDonald rises again. He moves for the bill to be re-referred to committee.

This would delay final vote by another day. There are only four days of the session left.

Boggs, the bill’s sponsor, says sending the bill back to committee would mean its defeat. Another senator offers a similar prognosis: “If the Senate sends this bill back to committee, it will be evading its constitutional duty.”[51]

The Secretary calls a vote. One by one, the Senators respond.

McDonald’s new delay motion is on the brink of passing. Several senators have changed their vote.

Senator Chamberlin, who favors reapportionment, interrupts the vote and moves to freeze the Senate.

It’s the same tactic McDonald used six hours earlier. But this time it’s made by the other side. The Senate Journal records: “Pending the announcement of the vote, Senator Chamberlin moved a call of the Senate.”

It continues: “Time, five o’clock and forty-five minutes p.m. The President directed the Sergeant-at-Arms to close the doors.”

The Senate is sealed again, but now the pro-reapportionment side is scrambling. Over the next ninety minutes, two more Senators arrive.

At 7:10 p.m., Senator Chamberlin releases the call. The Secretary calls the roll.

***

A few hours ago, 20 Senators voted against McDonald. During the call, one more pro-reapportionment senator entered the chamber. They have an absolute majority. Boggs appears correct: if they can get it to a vote, they will prevail.

But can they hold together?

Boggs is from the San Joaquin Valley. This sprawling region between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges is neither northern nor southern California. This geographic neutrality makes Boggs a suitable author of the bill.

The day after Boggs introduced S.B. 1—on January 6, 1921—the four senators from the San Joaquin Valley met at the Hotel Land in Sacramento, and pledged their support for the bill.[52] This may be what gives Boggs confidence in the bill’s passage—if the North locks horns with the South, Central Valley Senators break the tie.

Prohibition is the other major issue on the 1921 legislative agenda. Reapportionment and prohibition, reports the Appeal-Democrat, are the “grim spectres” of this legislative session.[53]

Senator Harris is one of the four San Joaquin senators who pledged their support for S.B. 1.

The same day Boggs introduced S.B. 1, Harris introduces S.B. 4. It’s a dry bill, instructing California officials to enforce federal prohibition law.

Harris’s bill has not yet had a second reading in the Senate.[54] Harris has every reason to fear that a prolonged filibuster over reapportionment will jeopardize it.

On the other side of both fights stands the same man. McDonald is the floor leader of the wet bloc, the man who will orchestrate the opposition to Harris’s dry bill.[55] Perhaps McDonald can kill two bills with one stone.

Harris switches his vote. He cannot afford more delay.

***

The motion passes. Twenty-two to sixteen.[56] S.B. 1 goes back to committee. Officially, only until tomorrow. In practice, Boggs believes, the bill has just been killed.

Five senators have switched. Harris is joined by three more drys: Dennett, also of the San Joaquin Valley, Nelson,[57] of the state’s far north, and Newton Allen, of Los Angeles.

Inman of Sacramento switches too. Inman is a wet, but he is fed up with the delay. “We are rapidly getting into a jam,” he says, “and literally hundreds of bills will die in committee.”[58]

But it is Allen who takes the blame, because he is from Los Angeles.

“All Blame Allen” reads an L.A. Times subhead.[59] The article continues, “L.A. city and county legislators joined in warm denunciation of Senator Newton M. Allen of L.A.”

Assemblyman Lyon says, “I lay the blame . . . at Allen’s door.” Senator Chamberlin goes further: Allen, he says, has “proved his disloyalty to the south.” [60]

The pro-reapportionment side manages one last gesture. The Senate votes that S.B. 1 must be returned from committee no later than noon the next day.[61]

But several senators already understand what has happened. Sending the bill back to committee, Boggs says, “meant its defeat.”

***

The Reapportionment Committee meets the next morning and tries to redraw the map one more time.[62] The committee tries to win back Ventura by leaving it alone and moving Kern elsewhere. But Kern has to go somewhere, and now the senator from neighboring Kings County objects. It’s a one-for-one trade; S.B. 1 is no stronger than before.

At noon, a meeting takes place at the Governor William Stephens’ office.

For months, the governor had maintained a “hands-off policy” on reapportionment.[63] He was from Los Angeles, and the southern delegation hoped for his support. But support would mean choosing Los Angeles over San Francisco, South over North. Stephens stayed out.[64]

McDonald’s delay tactics create a new problem. If the filibuster continues, the governor’s own economic and government-reorganization bills may die on the calendar.[65]

The governor offers an exit. He promises to call a special session for reapportionment.

Publicly, Stephens keeps his distance. Redistricting, he tells reporters, is “exclusively the Legislature’s concern.”[66] Privately, his representatives inform key senators of the promise.[67]

It’s an off ramp.

At 5:00 p.m., a pro-reapportionment senator introduces a resolution. It reads, in part:

WHEREAS, It is the constitutional duty of the Legislature to pass legislation reapportioning the State . . . in this session . . .

WHEREAS, This Senate is of the belief that any attempt to reapportion the State . . . in this session . . . will probably result in the defeat of very important legislation . . .

Therefore, be it Resolved . . . . That further consideration of all reapportionment matters be postponed . . . and that the Governor . . . is hereby requested to call a special session . . . [68]

The resolution is adopted, 26 to 6. Boggs himself advocates in favor. He, too, wants to get to other matters.[69]

The bill is referred back to committee—this time, permanently.

***

In 1689, John Locke described what would become the problem of redistricting. As populations shift, a town where “more inhabitants than a Shepherd is to be found” can send as many legislators “as a whole County numerous in People, and powerful in riches.” If representation is fixed by the Constitution, this creates an “inconvenience . . . incapable of remedy.”[70]

American constitutional law tried to answer Locke’s problem with the census: count the people every ten years, then reapportion and redraw. In theory, courts could complete the design: if legislatures fail, courts can compel compliance.

John Hart Ely would describe reapportionment as exactly the type of democratic failure that corrupts the political process and deepens over time. When beneficiaries control the instruments of repair, judicial intervention may be necessary to break institutional capture.

But there is a rising academic chorus questioning the wisdom of judicial supremacy. Niko Bowie—who taught me constitutional law—argues that the Supreme Court should not have the power to strike down federal law. He cites a long history of the Supreme Court invalidating laws that banned the spread of slavery, protected voting rights, prohibited discrimination, and outlawed child labor, among others.[71] Elected institutions, then, would bear the ultimate constitutional responsibility. Bowie is arguing principally about federal courts striking down federal law. But he might say that state courts’ long failure to stop malapportionment shows that courts, too, are unreliable arbiters of political process.

If courts are unreliable and legislatures self-interested, who remains?

***

The L.A. Times runs the headline “DODGING THE POINT.” “Surely the property owner in the roaring town is entitled to a representation equal to the man in the field or forest.”[72]

The S.F. Chronicle quotes the Constitution verbatim, concluding: “Sectional differences are no justification for violating the Constitution.”[73]

The off-ramp was the promise of a special session. It never takes place.

For months, a special session seemed “very probable,”[74] although the governor, reported the L.A. Times, is “taking his time on the matter.”[75]

The political problem is the same: the governor worries that a special session would force him to take a sectional position. One journalist describes the governor as “somewhat nonplussed.”[76]

Ten months after the lock-in, the governor publicly polls legislators, asking whether a reapportionment measure “could be enacted.”[77] Turning a decision into a consultation—the oldest trick in the book.

On March 4, 1922, the governor announces that his poll demonstrated reapportionment to be “hopeless.”[78] There will be no special session.

The L.A. Times has the last word: “The apportionment is mandatory, but what is a mandate between politicians?”[79]

[1] Kenneth C. Adams, Redistricting Bill Sent Back To Committee, S.F. Chron., Apr. 19, 1921, at 2, col. 2.

[2] California State Senate, 1935, Calisphere, http://calisphere.org/item/ade91fb4f1f7ecf01bff6c553b5a4a3c/ (last visited June 9, 2026); California Legislature, Senate Chamber, Calisphere, https://calisphere.org/item/385e7c8d9a3ab8b0c2bcbfb672f5e7a1/ (last visited June 9, 2026).

[3] Associated Press, Want Another Farm School, L.A. Times, Jan. 05, 1921, at 2.

[4] Journal of the Senate During the Forty-Fourth Session of the Legislature of the State of California 1542 (1921).

[5] Edward W. Hamilton, Apportionment Deadlocks Senate; All Work Stopped for Hours; North Lacks Votes to Kill Bill, S.F. Examiner, Apr. 19, 1921, at 4, col. 1.

[6] Adams, supra note 1, at 1.

[7] Senate Journal, supra note 4, at 1542.

[8] Reapportionment Causes Deadlock in Upper House, Sacramento Bee, Apr. 18, 1921, at 11.

[9] Reapportionment Causes Deadlock, supra note 8, at 11.

[10] U.S. Dep’t of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Population: California (1921).

[11] Id.

[12] William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32 225 (1958).

[13] U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Population, Volume I: Number and Distribution of Inhabitants 51 tbl.16 (1921).

[14] Leuchtenburg, supra note 12, at 2.

[15] Id.

[16] Id. at 229.

[17] Id. at 209-10.

[18] Pamela S. Karlan, Reapportionment, Nonapportionment, and Recovering Some Lost History of One Person, One Vote, 59 Wm & Mary L. Rev. 1921, 1935 (2018) (quoting Walter Lippmann, Men of Destiny 28 (1927)).

[19] Senate Journal, supra note 4, at 1542.

[20] Paul Mason, Mason’s Manual of Legislative Procedure §§ 190-191, at 155-156 (2010 ed.).

[21] Cal. Legislature, Rules of the Two Houses of the California Legislature 75 (1921).

[22] Hamilton, supra note 5, at 4, col. 1.

[23] Rules of the Two Houses, supra note 21, at 184.

[24] Reapportionment Causes Deadlock, supra note 8, at 1.

[25] Hamilton, supra note 5, at 4, col. 2.

[26] Id. col. 1.

[27] Id. col. 2.

[28] Adams, supra note 1, at 2.

[29] Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice 1, in Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives, H.R. Doc. No. 107-284, at 125-128 (2003).

[30] Sujit Choudhry, Opposition Powers in Parliamentary Democracies 40 (Apr. 22, 2026) (unpublished manuscript), https://ssrn.com/abstract=6628138.

[31] Id. at 14-15.

[32] Hamilton, supra note 5, at 4, col. 2.

[33] Reapportionment Causes Deadlock, supra note 8, at 1.

[34] Hamilton, supra note 5, at 4, col. 2.

[35] Edward H. Hamilton, Young Praised for Impartiality; 3 S.F. Solons on HIs Committee; Senate Favors Boggs’ Measure, S.F. Examiner, Jan. 6, 1921, at 2.

[36] Another example of legislative self-interest is District 4: one of the least populated districts in the state, awkwardly combining agricultural and timber counties, and thus an obvious target for elimination. Its senator, naturally, saw the matter differently.

[37] Arbuckle and Hume are Making Fight on Reapportionment, Ventura Weekly Post, Jan. 21, 1921, at 6.

[38] Butte County Fight Looms In Assembly, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 19, 1921, at 11.

[39] The Gridley Chamber of Commerce argues that, since “timber, mineral and hydro-electric interests, are controlled mostly by large corporations with headquarters in the larger cities,” they are sufficiently represented, and District 6 should be made up of Valley farm districts. Sutter and Butte Best District, Gridley Herald, Jan. 19, 1921, at 1.

[40] Yolo would be swapped for neighboring Glenn. They vote similarly—in 1920, 62 percent of Yolo and 64 percent of Glenn voted for President Harding. Cal. Sec’y of State, Statement of the Vote at General Election Held On November 2, 1920 (1920) Both Chico, the city, and Gridley, the farm town, were open to the addition of Glenn. Sutter and Butte Best District, supra note 39; Butte County Fight Looms, supra note 38.

[41] Bill on State Districts May Fail In Senate, Sacramento Union, Apr. 19, 1921, at 2.

[42] Adams, supra note 1, at 2.

[43] Duncan Sees No Reason for Excitement In the South, Sacramento Bee, Sept. 17, 1921, at 30.

[44] Forty-Fourth Legislature to Open Monday, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 1, 1921, at 1.

[45] Associated Press, supra note 3, at 2.

[46] Hamilton, supra note 5, at 4, col. 2.

[47] Id.

[48] Id.

[49] Reapportionment Causes Deadlock, supra note 8, at 11; Hamilton, supra note 5, at 4.

[50] Senate Journal, supra note 4, at 1572.

[51] Boggs’ Measure Sent Back To Committee, Sacramento Bee, Apr. 19, 1921, at 11.

[52] San Joaquin Valley Representatives Meet, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 7, 1921, p. 11.

[53] New Assembly Lineup Also Scheduled By Legislature, Marysville Appeal, Jan. 6, 1921, p. 1.

[54] Senate Journal, supra note 4, at 1619.

[55] Franklin Hichborn, Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1921 284 (1922).

[56] Senate Journal, supra note 4, at 1581.

[57] Hichborn, supra note 55, at 283-284 nn.220 & 222.

[58] Reapportionment Bill Attacked, Bakersfield Morning Echo, Apr. 19, 1921, at 4.

[59] Kyle D. Palmer, Boggs Measure is Dead Issue, L.A. Times, Apr. 20, 1921, at 2.

[60] Id.

[61] Senate Journal, supra note 4, at 1581.

[62] Boggs Bill, Amended, Reported out Again By Senate Committee, Sacramento Bee, Apr. 19, 1921, at 6.

[63] Kyle D. Palmer, Extra Session Seems Likely, L.A. Times, Apr. 18, 1921, at 2.

[64] Id.

[65] Chronicle Bureau, Redistricting Bill Is Chloroformed; Senate to Request Special Session, S.F. Chronicle, Apr. 20, 1921, at. 3.

[66] Id. at 1.

[67] Special Session of Legislature is Expected, Sacramento Bee, Apr. 20, 1921, at 1. But see Palmer, supra note 59 (”Yes,” replied Inman, “I did talk with Mr. Madsen, but I have absolutely no agreement or understanding of agreement with the Governor’s office.”).

[68] Senate Journal, supra note 4, at 1621.

[69] Special Session, supra note 67.

[70] John Locke, Second Treatise of Government ch. XIII, § 157 (1690).

[71] Nikolas Bowie, The Contemporary Debate over Supreme Court Reform 4 (June 30, 2021), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Bowie-SCOTUS-Testimony-1.pdf.

[72] Dodging the Point, L.A. Times, Apr. 20, 1921, at 22.

[73] Redistricting the State, S.F. Chronicle, Apr. 20, 1921, at 22.

[74] Special Session May Be Called Before June 1st, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 4, 1922, at 1.

[75] News of the Capital, L.A. Times, Jan. 22, 1922, at 4.

[76] Id. at 84.

[77] Governor Asks Views Of Legislators on Re-Apportionment, Sacramento Union, Feb. 27, 1922, at 1.

[78] Governor Decides There Will Be No Special Session, Sacramento Bee, March 4, 1922, at 1.

[79] The Artful Dodger, L.A. Times, March 7, 1922, at 22.