The Commonwealth shall be divided into fifty Senatorial District and two-hundred and three Representative Districts, which shall be composed of compact and contiguous territory as nearly equal in population as practicable. Each Senatorial District shall elect one Senator and each Representative District one Representative. Unless absolutely necessary, no county, city, incorporated town, borough, township or ward shall be divided in forming either a Senatorial or Representative district.
Article II is concerned with the composition, powers and duties of the legislature. Nothing in this article even remotely suggests the conference of jurisdiction upon the *353 courts to test the qualifications of the members of the General Assembly. Indeed, Section 9 of Article II expressly states that each body of the General Assembly shall be the judge of the qualifications of its members.
**141 An elected office is a public trust, not the private domain of the officeholder. A member of the Legislature has a profound responsibility to represent his constituents in the formation of public policy in this state. He holds office for the benefit of his constituents ... [and] is periodically accountable to his constituents through the electoral process.... A member of the Legislature is thus subject to the political process at all times.... This is properly so for the public interest in the office far outweighs any private interest of the officeholder. An elected official can never have tenure in the same sense as an ordinary public employee.
[F]irst, the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single number district.... [S]econd, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.... [T]hird, the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate.
Senate | House | |
---|---|---|
1991 | 1.87% | 4.94% |
(237,633) | (58,531) | |
1981 | 1.93% | 2.81% |
(237,334) | (58,456) | |
1971 | 4.31% | 5.45% |
(235,949) | (58,113) |
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