Talk:West Virginia Senate

Changes

• I have modified the listing of Senator's floor titles to conform with their official titles. --Mphamilton 13:52, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• There were a couple of possibly non-neutral lines in this entry, and I have modified the questionable sentences to confirm to a more neutral standard. --Mphamilton 13:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Copy-paste move

For attribution of edits before the article was moved, see this link. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 19:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Districting

The second paragraph is probably almost entirely untrue, since Reynolds v. Sims (1964) found that state legislature districts of unequal population violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here's the paragraph in question:

“ The state's districting system is unique in the United States. The state's most populous county, Kanawha County constitutes two "superimposed" districts. In practical effect, this means that Kanawha County is a single district electing two members every two years. The remaining 54 counties of the state are divided into fifteen districts, with county lines not respected in most cases. Under the unique rule, no district may have more than one senator from the same county, no matter the population. This means, for example, that the 99% of the population of the 5th District residing in Cabell County can vie for only one Senate seat, and the tiny portion of Wayne County in the district acts as a sort of rotten borough, as it must have one senator. ”

SteveSims (talk) 04:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

The explanation provided in the article is correct. A cursory review of the state senate districts [1] and state constitution [2] verifies this information. The districts themselves have roughly equal population, which satisfies Reynolds v. Sims. Brian Powell (talk) 17:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

• The paragraph misuses rotten borough. There would be a rotten borough if the 5th district elected two senators from separate subdistricts: One from the tiny portion of Wayne County within the 5th district and the other from the Cabell County portion. In realty, it is not a rotten borough since the people of Cabell County and the tiny portion of Wayne County within the 5th district elect two members at-large from the entire district, but one of them must reside in Cabell County and the other must reside in the tiny portion of Wayne County.