I’m assuming, if you made it this far, that you’ve already taken the ungraded “Political Awareness Survey/Quiz”. If you haven’t, you should stop reading these, go to “Assessments”, and then “Surveys”, and then complete that ungraded survey. Don’t worry: it’s not graded (although you’ll see the same questions again on your first graded quiz, at the end of this unit).
One of the things that you’ll hear me say a lot in this class is that is that there is no such thing as “the government.” We’ve all heard people say: “The government did this”, or “I don’t like it when the government does that.” My question to people that say those types of things is: “Which government?” Was it a state agency, a local government employee, one member of the federal Congress, etc? As mentioned in your textbook, there are more than 90,000 governments in the United States alone (states, counties, school boards, townships, "special districts", etc). In each of those governments, there are different branches, different agencies, and different people, each with their own agenda, their own attitudes, and their own goals. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that many times (if not most of the time), one governmental agency will issue a rule or pass a law, and another governmental agency (maybe even one with part of the same jurisdiction), will issue a rule or law that does completely the opposite. What we’re going to study in this course is how all of these governments manage to co-exist, and how (perhaps even more surprisingly) they manage to enact, enforce, and administer public policy in this country.
Note that during the course of the semester, I will frequently use terms like “most of the time”, “in most cases”, and “usually” when talking about how state governments operate. This might sound frustrating, but when we look at just about any procedure, process, or organization, there’s going to be some exceptions. For example, up until 2014, in 49 states, the Governor appointed the Adjutant General (the head of the National Guard in the state). In South Carolina, that person was elected (that’s now changed; since the voters in South Carolina approved a Constitutional Amendment in 2014 to make that office now appointed, which is the norm in every other state). If you live in North Dakota, you might be aware that the voters there elect the Tax Commissioner (the office that manages tax collections for the state). However, that's the only state where that's true (in the other 49, the person who leads that office is appointed, usually by the Governor). A more commonly-elected statewide official is the State Attorney General (the state's chief lawyer). However, that person is only elected in 43 states; he/she is appointed by the Governor in five (Alaska, Hawaii, New Jersey, Wyoming, and New Hampshire) and selected by some other method in two of them (by the State Supreme Court in Tennessee, and by the State Legislature in Maine). So, if I asked (on a quiz), "True or False: most State Attorneys General are elected by the public", that would be true (43 out of 50 is a strong majority). If I asked "True or False: All State Attorneys General are elected by the public", that would be false (I just mentioned that there are seven exceptions). We'll see lots of examples of this as the semester progresses.
One of the first examples that I want to call your attention to is the survey/quiz that you just took. On the last question, you might have noticed that there were two spaces for State Representatives, with a note that Minnesota residents will only list one name, with North Dakota or South Dakota residents having two. This question points to a perfect example of what I was just talking about above. MOST states (of which Minnesota is one) use single-member districts to elect the members of their State House of Representatives (the people who go to St. Paul to vote on STATE laws). In six states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, and New Jersey), the legislators from the State House of Representatives are elected on a “multi-member at-large” basis (in other words, more than one is elected from each district). In a few other states (Maryland, New Hampshire, Vermont, and West Virginia), some House members are elected “at-large”, while others are elected from single-member districts. In all of the other states, all House members are elected from single-member districts.
Let's do a comparison. Here's the map of the Minnesota legislative districts (Senate on the left; House on the right):
https://www.gis.leg.mn/pdf/leg2012/senate/statewide.pdf | https://www.gis.leg.mn/pdf/leg2012/house/statewide.pdf |
Minnesota uses what they call sub-districts. The state is divided up into 67 Senate districts of roughly equal population (about 79,000 people each). Each of those districts elects ONE State Senator, who then represents that area in St. Paul. Then, for the State House of Representatives, each of those districts is divided into two halves of equal population (so, for example, here in the Moorhead area, Senate District 4 has been divided into House Districts 4A and 4B); each of those districts has about 39,500 people each. Like with the Senate, each of those districts elects ONE State House Rep, who also goes down to St. Paul to sit in the State House of Representatives.
Focus for a moment on District 4 (you can look any district you want, but I'll just use 4 as the example here). Notice that, in terms of land area, House District 4A is a LOT smaller than House District 4B. Remember that these are of roughly equal population to each other. District 4A is most of the city of Moorhead (an "urban area", at least when compared to the rest of western Minnesota). District 4B is more spread out because it has a much lower population density (Detroit Lakes, which has about a fifth of the population of Moorhead, is the largest town in District 4B). You'll also notice that the districts in "outstate" Minnesota are much larger than those in the Twin Cities (neither map can actually capture ALL of the districts in the Twin Cities; we'd need to have a scaled-in "inset" map in order to see ALL of them). There's a Supreme Court decision from 1964 (Reynolds v Sims) which says that legislative districts WITHIN a state have to comply with the "one-man, one-vote" rule. That's why those urban districts are much smaller in land area than the rural ones.
If we take a look at the two Dakotas, we'll notice a similar relationship between urban and rural districts (North Dakota is on the left; South Dakota on the right):
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https://www.legis.nd.gov/files/district-maps/2013-2022/population.pdf | https://sdsos.gov/elections-voting/assets/LegislativeDist2011.pdf |
North Dakota, as well as South Dakota, uses "at-large multi-member districts" (in each District, one Senator and two Representatives are elected, and every voter gets to vote for all three positions). In North Dakota, each of those districts (there are 47 of them) has an average of 14,000 residents (so, each Senate represents 14,000 people, and the two House members from each district ALSO represent those 14,000 people). South Dakota has chosen to have fewer districts (35, with an average of 23,000 people per district). In case you're wondering if this violates some principle of "one-man, one-vote", IT DOES NOT. As long as, WITHIN THE STATE, the ratio of residents per member is equal (they can vary within a state by about 5% either way from the average), there's no violation.
One thing to point out (very attentive students often notice this): on that South Dakota map, you might notice that two districts (26 and 28) have an "A" and "B" component. In those two situations, each full District elects a Senator. But, for the House, each has been split up into two sub-districts, where each sub-district elects a single House member (it's the Minnesota system, basically, but only in those two parts of the state). This is because those areas have significant numbers of minority voters (in both cases, Native Americans). As we'll learn in the unit on Elections, the Courts tend to frown on multi-member districts in places with large percentages of racial minorities (there's a history of Southern states using that method to make it difficult for African-American voters to have influence). And in case you're wondering, yes, each one of the those sub-districts (26A, 26B, 28A, 28B) has about 11,500 people (remember I said above that every other South Dakota district has about double that number), so the ratio of 1 House member per 11,500 (or 2 per 23,000) still holds, regardless of the method. If you want to explore this further, I'd recommend looking up the legislative maps in Vermont and West Virginia; you'll notice some districts with very large populations, and others with much smaller populations. But, if you do the math, and figure out the number of residents PER legislator, you'll see that the ratios are still consistent (at least WITHIN each state).
Even WHAT the states call those chambers might be a little different. All fifty states call their upper chamber the “Senate”. However, in lower chambers, there are some different terms used. Most states (like Minnesota and North Dakota) call the lower chamber the “House of Representatives” (the same term used to identify the lower chamber in the national Congress), and the individual members hold the title “Representative”. However, New York, New Jersey, California, Wisconsin, and Nevada call their lower chamber the “Assembly” or “State Assembly”, and individual members are usually called “Assemblymen” or “Assemblywomen”. Three states (Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia) call it the “House of Delegates”, and individual members hold the title “Delegate”. So, even though the terminology, the number of members elected per district, the number of members, and the organizational structure of the body is going to vary from state to state, we can say that all 50 states have an elected legislative body, and all but one has a “bi-cameral” legislature (Nebraska is the exception: they ONLY have a State Senate; there is no lower chamber).
The other thing I want you to take away from that quiz is a realization that there is a significant difference between the federal and state governments. Your United States Senators and US Congressman represent you at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, and vote for FEDERAL laws. Your State Senator and State Representative(s) represent you in St. Paul, Bismarck, Pierre, Madison, Des Moines, or wherever your state Capitol is, and they vote for STATE laws. I used to work for the North Dakota House of Representatives in Bismarck as an administrator, and members used to relate stories all of the time of sitting in coffee shops back home, and being asked “Hey, Joe, how are things in DC?”. Of course, Joe Legislator has no idea of how things are in DC, because he represents those people in Bismarck (or St. Paul, or Helena, etc). Before you kick yourself too hard about not knowing the answers to all five of those questions in the survey the first time around, be assured that you’re not alone. If you randomly polled 1000 people and asked them those five questions, about half would probably know who their Governor and US Senators are. Maybe 25-30% (depending upon how close to election time it is) would know their US Congressman. No more than 10% would probably know who their State Senators and/or Representatives are, and fewer than that could explain to you what the difference is between federal legislators and state legislators.
Federal representation is based upon population for the US House (your Representative is commonly referred to as a “Congressman”). Each state is given a certain number of Congressmen, depending upon population (California and Texas have the most; the states with very small populations, such as Wyoming and North Dakota, only have one). Minnesota, with just over 5 million people, has eight Congressmen. In states with more than one, the individual Representatives are elected within separate districts (so, Minnesota is divided up into eight districts of about 660,000 people each – as you might imagine, the districts down in the Twin Cities are quite a bit smaller geographically than they are up in Northern Minnesota, since they all have equal population). The average congressional district across the country has about 710,000 people. Because every state HAS TO HAVE at least one member of the US House, the ratios aren't exactly equal (the biggest disparity currently is between Rhode Island, which had 1,050,000 people and two Congressmen at the last census, and Montana, which only got one Congressman with a population of 990,000). These two maps show the national (and Minnesota-specific) picture (again, these are for the US House of Representatives [Congress], NOT the State Legislatures):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:113th_US_Congress_House_districts_color.svg | https://www.gis.leg.mn/pdf/leg2012/congress/statewide.pdf |
Representation for the United States Senate, HOWEVER, is somewhat unique within US government. The US Constitution of 1789 established equal representation in that body for all states (what American Government textbooks commonly call the “Great Compromise”). This was done to convince the smaller states that they wouldn’t be dominated by the larger states (a huge issue at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia). So, every state, regardless of population, has two United States Senators.
The only graded activity for this unit is to retake that "Political Awareness" quiz (but this time, you'll take the QUIZ version, for points). It's the same questions that you had in the ungraded survey (with a few extras, based on some things I said above). Now that you understand the difference between STATE Legislators and FEDERAL legislators (US House and US Senate), you should look up who represents you in each of those bodies. I've put some links to useful tools in the "Links" area of the "Unit One Overview" page. If you live in a state OTHER than Minnesota or North Dakota, you'll want to do a Google (or similar) search for "Wisconsin State Legislature" or "Find My State Legislators in Iowa". Almost all states have a "Find My Legislators" or "Who Represents Me?" tool on their webpages.