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Show Let the people decide EDITORIAL You can help win the most important battle that Americans have faced on the home front in 100 years the reapportionment fight. If we don't win this fight, we and our children are going to lose one of the most fundamental guarantees of freedom and self-government that has been handed to us by our forefathers. The question is simply this: Will you, and the other citizens of your state, be able to decide by open, free, majority vote, how you wish to be represented in your own state legislature? Or will a federal court do it for you? The people have had the privilege of deciding this matter since our constitution was founded. It has been re-affirmed and re-guaranteed to you through the years by political practice and by eminent court justices, including those of the U. S. Supreme Court itself. By a six-to-three decision on June 15, 1964, the U. S. Supreme Court suddenly reversed itself and took this right away from us. From now on and almost at once, the court said, each house in state legislatures must be made up of districts "equal" in population. Nothing else would do. JUWliO UltlCUJ Ulll JOl JfWU UU V.11UV., left you no opportunity even to discuss or debate the question! Yet it's your legislature they're shaping for you. What is really at issue here is not whether "equal" population districts are, or are not, better. The Issue is simply whether the people can continue to make the choice. The people created our form of government; only they should have the right and power to change it. To deny the people of a state the right to decide how their legislature shall be established, is to strike down the basic tenets of democratic government. If government as we know it is to survive, that right and power must remain in the people. Sen. Everett M. Dirksen has co-sponsored a bipartisan Constitutional Amendment in the Senate, Senate Joint Resolution Res-olution 103. The amendment would permit the people in this state, as well as in each state if they wished to apportion ap-portion one house of their state legislature on factors other than population alone by giving weight to geography and political subdivisions. If they preferred the court's system of reapportionment, they could choose that. Under the proposed pro-posed amendment SJR 103, the method of apportionment would be offered the people of each state at a state-wide lection. They could choose it or reject it. As an individual who believes in letting the people speak, you can discuss the problem with those around you, in your groups, your clubs. Then see that both you and your organizations write, telegraph or phone your representatives repre-sentatives and senators immediately voicing your desires. If enough people desire and believe in the right of the people to decide on this issue success can be achieved through your conveying your decision to legislators now about to act on the amendment coming before Congress. |