Harris v. Anderson

The opinion of the court was delivered by In this original action sounding in quo warranto (K.S.A.,
20-101a), it is alleged and claimed that the apportionment
provisions of the Kansas Constitution, Article 2, Section 2, and
Article 10, Section 1, and Chapter 2, of the 1964 Special Session
of the legislature, apportioning the seats of the House of
Representatives, were rendered unconstitutional and void by the
decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Reynolds
v. Sims (June 15, 1964), 377 U.S. 533, 12 L.Ed.2d 506,
84 S.Ct. 1362, holding that,

". . . as a basic constitutional standard, the
Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats in
both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be
apportioned on a population basis. Simply stated, an
individual's right to vote for state legislators is
unconstitutionally impaired when its weight is in a
substantial fashion diluted when compared with votes
of citizens living in other parts of the State. . .
." (12 L.Ed.2d 531.)) Subsequent quotations from Reynolds will be found in 12
L.Ed.2d. The holding was based on the premise that the right to vote for
the candidate of one's choice is of the essence of the
representative form of government, and that "the right of
suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight
of a citizen's vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting
the free exercise of the franchise" (pp. 522, 523); that
"Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators
are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests"
(p. 527); that "our legislatures are those instruments of
government elected directly by and directly representative of the
people" (p. 527); that "all voters, as citizens of a state, stand
in the same relation regardless of where they live" (p. 529);
that "diluting the weight of votes because of place of residence
impairs basic constitutional rights under the Fourteenth
Amendment
[194 Kan. 304]