A Rural Alternative

More than 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court looked at the way Tennessee spread its legislative representation by county without regard to the population of its counties and declared the state violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Two years later, in 1964, it declared Alabama had a similar problem and set the judicial standard of “one person, one vote.” The Maine Legislature’s State and Local Government Committee is expected to hear LD 440 tomorrow, a resolve to set the state’s constitutional clock to a time before these decisions, something the court is unlikely to look upon favorably.

The committee cannot support the measure, but it might sympathize with the motive behind it. The motive is the same one that played out all those decades ago in Tennessee and Alabama and that was the motivation for the great constitutional compromise of the U.S. Senate more than 200 years ago: to give rural areas more clout in lawmaking.

LD 440 would reduce the size of the Legislature from 35 to 32 and give each county two senators. The smallest Maine county is Piscataquis with about 17,000 people; the largest is Cumberland with about 270,000. Both would get the same number of senators under the resolve. Lawyers in Portland would draw straws to see who got to argue against a state constitutional amendment that created such a disparity.

Rural legislators might note, how-ever, that the U.S. Senate has yet another device for allowing minority voices to be heard – and, if necessary, heard and heard. It is the filibuster under the Senate’s Rule XXII, informally known as the cloture rule. It allows a minority to keep open debate unless a supermajority – three-fifths of senators – agree to end discussion.

The benefit of the standard is that it requires the parties to work together so that the business of the Senate can be conducted. That demands communication, a balance of interests among senators, a responsibility of the majority to consider the minority’s reaction to legislation and the responsibility of the minority party to seek compromise over mere protest. As a 2003 study by the Congressional Research Services says, “the possibility of filibusters creates a powerful incentive for senators to strive for legislative consensus.”

Rather than considering legislation that leads to lawsuits, the committee would do better to consider an amendment that would lead to consensus.