The Placer Herald

THAT APPORTIONMENT.

1874

We have before us Evans' bill in regard to re-districting the State into Senatorial and Assembly districts. To be brief and to the point, we don't like it. In fact, we consider it not only a little one sided, but an incomprehensible mixture, that would never be approved by the people on account of the inconvenience it would occasion, had it no other faults. In the first place, it centers little too much legislative power around San Francisco Bay. According to this bill, nearly one-half of each House would come from the Bay counties, and if this bill should become a law we fear, and think our fears are justly founded, that the Legislature would soon forget that California extended any further than the salt water line. Then, again, the idea of associating Placer county with Alpine in the election of a member of the Assembly, as provided in the following section: Sec. 22. The counties of Placer, El Dorado, and Alpine shall be the Twenty-second Senatorial District. Placer shall elect one Senator and one member of the Assembly; El Dorado and Alpine shall jointly elect one Senator and one member of the Assembly; and the three counties jointly shall elect one member of the Assembly. Why, the idea is preposterous to any one who knows anything about the difficulties of communication between Placer and Alpine. It would be as well to associate Siskiyou with us, and even better as regards the means of getting from one place to the other. Provided a candidate from Placer should wish to go on a electioneering tour through the various portions of his district, or to see his constituents after elected, he would have to first go by railroad to Carson City, in Nevada, thence take the stage and ride a long wearisome distance over rough roads, and through a wild tract of country to the county seat of Alpine. True, there is connection much nearer, but the Lord pity any light-toned politician who attempts to make the trip. Then, this mixture not only applies to Placer, Alpine, and El Dorado, but it extends all the way through. There is hardly a county in the State but what is mixed up with some other county. These mixtures occasion inconvenience and misunderstandings among the masses, and the fewer we have of them the better. While we admit that a new apportionment is necessary in accordance with justice, we think it can be done on more equitable and simple terms than is provided in this bill. Even Evans himself, we think, can do better, and we would suggest to him to "try again."