A New Look at the Constituencies: The Need for a Recount and a Reappraisal

Well-established “facts,” scholars know, are sometimes overtoppled by research. The “Piltdown man” is a recent case in point. So is the “Jukes family,” whose value to hereditists has collapsed under scientific scrutiny. Of considerably smaller magnitude is a case, just discovered, relating to the putative election of state legislators in single-member districts.“Popular election from single-member districts is the prevailing method by which individual legislators are chosen,” a Committee of the American Political Science Association reports. Every other authority concurs. Multi-member elections, all agree, are atypical.“With few exceptions,” Ogg and Ray informed students, “senators and members of lower houses are chosen in small, single-member districts.” Among other writers of the older texts, John Mathews cited “the prevalent system of … single-member districts.” Charles Beard asserted that “the rule of one member to each district is generally applied.” The same assertion was made by the Willoughbys, Lindsay Rogers, James Garner, and others. “For the purpose of choosing their own legislatures,” Willoughby and Rogers noted, “the states are divided into senatorial and representative districts from each of which one senator or one representative is elected.”