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leadership in the House brought a constitutional amendment on the subject to the full
chamber. It secured a majority, but not the two-thirds required to pass.
In 2007, political action was under way in California, Pennsylvania, and Missouri to trim or
eliminate existing term limits on state legislators. However, U.S. Term Limits Inc. remains
active in supporting initiatives, filing related lawsuits, and publicizing the issue. Opponents
of term limits argue that they are an unnecessary and unreasonable restriction on the
rights of voters and candidates alike, insisting that voters should be able to decide for
themselves whether to back an incumbent or one of the alternatives on the ballot.

Enhanced Fairness in Redistricting and Reapportionment

One man, one vote. Notwithstanding the real and imagined advantages that decision
makers seek to extract in the course of redrawing district boundaries, the American system
has seen a clear improvement in many dimensions of fairness over several decades, often
due to the intervention of the courts. Since the Supreme Court handed down Baker v.
Carr in 1962, the level of both partisan bias and malapportionment within the electoral
framework has decreased markedly, at both the state and national level. Prior to 1964,
when, in Reynolds v. Sims, the Supreme Court applied its “one man, one vote” principle
nationwide,27 legislative districts in many states were seriously malapportioned, and a
strong bias favoring rural over urban areas prevailed. In the 1962 Alabama state
legislature, for example, a majority of state senators represented just 25 percent of all
Alabamans, and the rural county of Bullock (population 13,500) had two House seats
while Mobile (population 314,000) had just one.28 Similarly, based on the 1960 census,
the most populous district in Vermont’s General Assembly had 33,000 residents, while the
least populated district contained only 238.29 Other egregious examples include
Connecticut, where the population ratio between the most and least populated districts
was 424 to 1; California, where the ratio in the state Senate was 428 to 1; and Utah, with
a 196 to 1 ratio in the state House. In the U.S. House of Representatives, the level of
malapportionment was much less extreme, but ratios of 2 to 1 were not uncommon.
The redistricting revolution that followed Baker v. Carr and other decisions in the early
1960s shifted the balance of power from rural to urban and suburban voters, and greatly
reduced malapportionment at both the state and federal level.30 Subsequent court
decisions outlined more specific standards and have worked to further reduce
malapportionment. By the conclusion of the 2002 round of redistricting, the deviation
between the most and least populous U.S. House district of any state was less than two-
thirds of one percent. In short, Supreme Court decisions and the redistricting efforts of the
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s have nearly eradicated malapportionment and, as a result,
greatly increased representative equality in the United States. A recent study by leading
political scientists concludes that population equalization altered the flow of state funds,
diverting approximately $7 billion annually from formerly overrepresented to formerly
underrepresented counties.31 The authors concluded that “as long as people have equal
representation, they will get a fair share of public expenditures.”32
Declining partisan bias. By examining the effect of change in the proportion of the vote
received by each party on change in their respective shares of House seats, scholars have

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