I admit this question should probably be in the “Stuff You can’t believe some people don’t know” but hey, we’re fighting ignorance and I’m a little ignorant here.
I thought every state of the Union had a little version of the federal goverment. The Governor is President. There is a state Surpeme Court. And I thought there was always a house of representatives and senate in every state.
My dad tells my I’m wrong. Some states have only one house in their congress. It’s sorta like having only a Senate. Is this true? Where is this the case? Is it common? Is it because of low population or is it when there is low area size(Wyoming or Rhode Island, per se).
By the way, I live in Michigan, where we have everything just like the federal government. Wouldn’t it have been sad if you had to point out I live in a state where we only have one house?
Minnesota’s governor, the esteemed :rolleyes: Jesse Ventura, chose to make a unicameral legislature the cornerstone of admission. For some reason, the idea died in the last legislative session.
His argument is that it levels the playing field for third-party governors, of which he is the only one right now.
There was a strong push for unicameral legislatures in the early 1930’s; the issue was part of the great philosophical debate that erupted between the populist Democrats and those who felt that government shouldn’t be radically altered just because of the Great Depression.
As it turned out, only Nebraska adopted a unicameral legislative branch. As many as 33 states debated unicameralism during the period 1933 to 1937. California might have adopted such a measure if a voter approved initiative calling for a constitutional convention (state constitution) had been accepted by the state legislature; instead the legislature refused the request (I’m not sure why). Californians have voted on constitutional amendments calling for unicameral legislature on at least seven occaisions, always rejecting such amendments.
The arguments for a bi-cameral legislature aren’t really all that convincing. Of course, one can always think of them as miniatures of the Congress, but since the Senate in Congress has no true parallel in any state, nor any particularly analogous reason for existing (there are no ‘small’ states to protect in a state legislature), having a bi-cameral legislature at state level simply because the nation does is more a typical example of acting like lemmings than of acting reasonably. Still, James Madison in The Federalist, No. 62 makes a strong argument that ALL legilatures should have two houses, the second house acting as a check on the first.
Nebraska has one house, as has been pointed out. More amazing to me is the size of the New Hampshire legislature. A huge legislature to govern such a tiny state. Why not just make every citizen a member of the legislature and be done with it?
The bicameral Congress is itself modeled on the bicameral English Parliament, with our Senate equating to the British House of Lords. It seems quite likely that this is where the Founders got the idea. The British House of Lords in the late 18th century acted mainly as a check on the populist House of Commons, occasionally squelching ideas that seem popular but are not in the best interest of the realm. (The actual power of the House of Lords has waxed and waned over history; it has even been abolished at various times.) The Senate was expected to act the same way, which is in part why Senators were originally appointed by the state, rather than popularly elected. This is also why the Senate has far more relaxed rules on debate than the House, and why the Senate tries impeachments.
It would be interesting to look to see which, if any of the 13 states which preexisted the Constituition had bicameral legislatures at the time of the Constitution Convention. I would suspect that many of them did, modelling after the only legal system most of them were familiar with.
There are other echoes of the British system in the American; the most obvious (to me) is the President’s power to veto, which is clearly modeled after the British requirement of royal assent. Royal assent today is pro forma, but in 1780 was not. Our Founders constrained formally a power which is, in the British system, constrained only by custom.
In the defense of a bicameral state legislature, you can look at Florida. The Florida House went ahead with its special session and passed the resolution appointing electors fairly quickly. The Florida Senate hadn’t acted yet and was taking more of a wait and see attitude.
Vermont also has a fairly big lower house relative to its population. I think it has over 100 members.
Meanwhile, California pokes along with 80 members in its lower house, the Assembly and 40 in the Senate. California has not been quick to add any more members to its layers of government. The 8+ million people of Los Angeles County are represented by a Board of Supervisors which has only 5 members. The 3.5 million City of Los Angeles has a City Council with only 15 members.
If California adopted a unicameral legislature now, the California Republicans would really have to get a move on to avoid disappearing off the political map. The present Assembly consists of 50 Democrats and 29 Republicans with 1 vacancy and the Senate has a similar breakdown.
Of course, within a state there are small counties.
Now, since Baker v. Carr (IIRC) required, rightly or wrongly, that all houses of a state legislature must be apportioned according to population, we can argue that in recent decades a bicameral state legislature has been made superfluous.
Are there states that apportion state legislative district by counties? We’ve not had such an allocation in Indiana for as long as I can remember (which goes back into the early 70s). With 50 Senatorial districts and 92 counties, there’s no way they could do otherwise.
Unless some state has all of its counties of equal size, you can’t apportion any house of a legislature by county. It would violate the “one person, one vote” standard of Baker v. Carr.
Take California for example. There are 8.5 million people (roughly) in Los Angeles County. Alpine County has about 3,000 I believe. I can’t see any reason why those counties should receive equal representation.
Most of California’s counties were set up to accommodate people coming West for the Gold Rush. There hasn’t been a new one created in the state since WWI and the borders of them have not been adjusted to account for population shifts.
Of course, the same could be said for the Federal government and Congress, but the Federal Constitution says that the present configuration of the Senate is the way it is and it’s pretty much impossible to change it.
As a proud citizen of New Hampshire, I thought I’d point out a couple of things about the large legislature of New Hampshire.
* It’s the 3rd largest legislature in the world. (by proportion of representatives to citizens)
* it’s a voluntary, part-time body. Members receive $100 per year plus mileage, plus a way cool license plate and discounts at Blockbusters :).
There are a number of reasons why a large, part-time legislature is beneficial.
* There is a more direct link between the electors and the elected. Most citizens either know a rep, or have acces to one. My friend’s college roommate was a state rep. Pretty neat! This makes the legislature very responsive.
* A large legislature is less corruptible and incestuous than a smaller one because the power of any one member is vastly diluted. You’d have to bribe lots of people to accomplish anything. This style of government has the added benefit of dissuading the power hungry from running for office.
* It provides a very balanced representation of the state’s population, including everyone from college students, housewives, the retired, but most of all - since they’re volunteers, Democrat or Republican, they’re committed to honest, responsible governance.
* Campaigns are more homegrown with the average campaign costing between $500 and $1500 - well within the reach of your average Granite Stater. People aren’t buying power, they’re running for the privilage of service.
I know this was somewhat of a hijack… so I’ll repost under a new thread entitled “Which is better - large or small legislatures?”
I do not believe Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) either enunciated the ‘one person - one vote’ standard (see instead Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963), nor did it invalidate the concept of apportioning legislative seats by counties. Baker simply found the issue of the unconstitutionality of such a scheme to be a justiciable constitutional question, rather than a political question forclosed to the Court.
Which is not to say that such a scheme is constitutional; I’ll have to do some more digging; I have a faint memory that it is not.