There's absolutely no constitutional problem. There is a long history of
states using at-large elections for U.S. House races, sometimes in
conjunction with single-member districts. In the pre-Baker vs. Carr era,
one common tactic for a state gaining seats but not wanting to redistrict
House seats was to have the additional representative(s) run at-large. One
relatively recent example was in Maryland in the 1950s, when Charles "Mac"
Mathias represented an at-large U.S. House seat before later winning a U.S.
Senate seat.

I know this list has been concerned about political gerrymandering. There's
no comprehensive solution that doesn't include states using at-least some
mult-seat districts. The first step is repealing the 1967 law that tied
states hands by requiring them to use single-member districts -- this new
DC voting rights legislation would exempt Utah, but we should go further.
In public testimony before the House Constitution subcommittee in 1999 on
Mel Watt's "States' Choice of Voting Systems Act" that would have repealed
the 1967 law, backers included then-Congressman Tom Campbell (R-CA), Anita
Earls on behalf of the Department of Justice and Nate Persily.

As an aside, I think this proposal for a representative for DC would
greatly lessen the chance of one of the stupidities in our electoral rules
-- the possibility of a tie in the Electoral College. If Utah gains one
more electoral vote, as it seemingly would, that would mean there would be
a total of 539 electoral votes. That means we only would have a tie (and
the resulting chaos of the U.S. House picking the president, with one vote
per state, and the U.S. Senate picking the vice-president) if there were
faithless electors. In 2004, a shift of fewer than 21,000 popular votes in
the presidential contests in Nevada, New Mexico and Iowa would have
resulted in a tie.

- Rob Richie, FairVote

Original Message:
-----------------
From:  JMWice@aol.com
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 08:37:34 EDT
To: election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Subject: Plan to give D.C. a Vote in Congress Advances


Today's Washington Post reports that legislation will be introduced in 
Congress giving the District of Columbia a full vote in the House of 
Representatives. The bill would increase the size of the House from 435 to
437, also giving 
Utah an additional district (Utah would have received   district 436 under
the 
congressional reapportionment formula based on the 2000 census). To avoid a 
Utah redistricting process eliminating the Utah's current Democratic
member, 
Utah's new district would be "at large" until the next reapportionment.

The article can be accessed at www.washingtonpost.com

I'd be interested in comments on whether giving a state an "at large" 
district presents constitutional problems, as residents would have 2 votes
in 
Congress, that of the district representative and of the "at large"
representative.

Jeff Wice


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