Districts, Wards, and Precincts

A congressional district is the geographical area represented by a single member of the House of Representatives. For states with one representative, the entire state is the congressional district. As of 2003, seven states had only one representative (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming). These members are elected at large by voters of the whole state.

The 435 seats in the House are allocated on the basis of population after each ten-year census. In the forty-three states with two or more representatives, the state legislature divides the state into congressional districts, depending on the number of House members the state is entitled to. Under the Supreme Court's one-person, one-vote rulings, each district must be as nearly equal in population as possible. (See Reapportionment and redistricting.)

Computer technology enables redistricters to make congressional districts almost exactly equal in population. After the 1990 census, for example, each of Colorado's six congressional districts had roughly 549,000 residents, with a variance of only sixteen persons from the largest district to the smallest.

Although the Supreme Court requirements for population equality have made redistricting much less arbitrary than it used to be, the process is still largely political. Parties try to win the state governorships and legislative majorities so that they can control the redrawing of district lines following the decennial census. Even within the confines of the Court rulings, it is possible to draw district lines to benefit the political party in power. This practice is known as gerrymandering.

In recent years legislatures also have used a type of gerrymandering, called racial redistricting, to achieve a racial balance in the state's representation in the House. In such cases, lines are drawn to create districts where the racial minority is in the majority and therefore more likely to elect someone from that group to represent them in Washington. Several of these districts have been created to satisfy Justice Department [Page p145]mandates. The Supreme Court, however, has rejected some oddly shaped minority-majority districts, requiring the lines to be redrawn.

States also are divided into districts for the election of state legislators. Only one state, Nebraska, has a unicameral (one chamber) legislature. All the others are bicameral, with one body usually known as a senate and another body called a house or assembly. Unlike the U.S. Senate, where both senators represent the entire state, state senates are elected from senatorial districts much like house districts, but larger. About a fourth of state legislatures still have multimember districts, which are no longer permitted in U.S. House elections.

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