Slice 'N Dice: Smaller legislative districts will yield more lawmakers, more accountability and better decision making.

Last November, many California voters went to the polls and chose a state senator for themselves and nearly 900,000 of their closest neighbors. In practical terms, this meant working-class Californians living in small, rural, mountainous towns near the Oregon border are represented by the same person advocating on behalf of voters living in wealthy Sacramento suburbs. Can this one legislator truly be accountable to the needs and interests of hundreds of thousands of people living in such disparate circumstances?

Of course not. California's legislative districts are too big and their unwieldy proportions seriously obscure the real diversity in California's lifestyles and politics.

When America's founders devised our republic, they envisioned districts that each contained around 30,000 people. There was no magic to this number. Even the architect of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, recognized the hopelessness of imposing science on such schemes. He recommended only that legislative districts should be neither too big nor too small. He also assumed they would be "augmented from time to time."

California, however, has not augmented the number of representatives in its Legislature since 1879, when its total population was about 1 million. Now, a single state Senate district contains nearly this number.

California has the largest legislative districts in America. The state's 80 Assembly districts each average a whopping 423,000 people. And there are twice as many constituents in each of the state's 40 Senate districts. By comparison, lower house districts in other states range from 3,000 people in New Hampshire to 139,012 people in Texas.

California's upper house districts, by population size, are nearly seven times the national average. If California's Senate districts matched just the large-state average, its Senate would have 94 members instead of 40.

Further, while no state compares to California in population size, the populations of Texas and Florida combined are a rough equivalent. The Legislatures in those states contain 341 members; nearly triple the 120 serving in California. Citizens in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio -- again, a combined population approximately equal to California -- are represented by 562 state legislators. In fact, if you tally up the 21 smallest states, the number of residents is roughly equal to California's population. Residents of those states, however, are represented by a combined total of more than 3,000 state legislators.

California's super-sized districts are not just harmless mathematical curiosities; they contribute to political alienation, a fatal condition for representative government. Voter turnout has been on the decline for the past 40 years, and polls show three-quarters of Californians think the state Legislature is doing a fair or poor job when it comes to working for the "best interests of people like you." The gap between representative and represented is dangerously wide in California, which limits the authority and vision of officeholders and causes voters to turn to ballot box policymaking or disengage all together.

The idea of curing California's political ills by decreasing the size of legislative districts inevitably elicits howls from political insiders. They know smaller districts mean more legislators in Sacramento. The objection is obvious: How will more politicians solve our problems?

But Madison anticipated the need for such adjustments more than 200 years ago. The performance of the California Legislature today affirms his predictions. "Too big" legislatures, he noted, will succumb to confusion and the "intemperance of a multitude." With a "too small" Legislature, Madison warned of a lack of diversity in policy discussions and the ease of "combination for improper purposes."

California's Legislature clearly exhibits the symptoms of a governing body that is too small, both in its lack of diversity in policy discussions and the so-called ease of combination for improper purposes. In other words, purposes that put special interests over the public's interest.

Only two voices count in the California Legislature: Republican and Democrat. This is outrageously narrow representation in a state where nearly 21 percent of the population declines party affiliation. Further, there's little diversity of opinion even within party ranks. In 2003, 21 of 25 Senate Democrats voted with labor unions over 90 percent of the time. All 15 Senate Republicans, on the other hand, unanimously backed 100 percent of the legislative positions of the California Taxpayers' Association, an antitax group, in 2004. How's that for diversity?

As for the "ease of combination for improper purposes," examples of this kind of malady are common in Sacramento. One example is the disastrous vote in 1996 to deregulate the state's energy market. Key stakeholder groups and a small group of legislators quietly crafted the bill, then passed it through the Legislature without a single "no" vote. The subsequent energy crisis jeopardized the state's business climate, bankrupted its public utilities, sent electricity bills soaring and, eight years later, is still unresolved. If the Legislature contained a greater quantity and diversity of voices, it is logical to assume the chances of heading off this foreseeable crisis would be greatly improved.

As it is California's Legislature is clearly not working as it is currently structured; so, what size should the Legislature and its districts become?

California is far too big to accommodate districts approaching the national average. Even matching Texas, with the nation's second largest districts, would more than triple the size of the California Assembly to about 252 seats.

Some have suggested merging the Legislature's two chambers into one body of 120 districts in a unicameral arrangement. This option has the benefit of decreasing the size of districts without changing the size of the Legislature. Bills would also pass more efficiently because they would only go through one chamber and one set of committees.

Unicameralism, however, was rejected by the state Constitution Revision Commission about a decade ago for reasons no less relevant now. Bicameralism is critical to maintaining checks and balances.

The best design for the California Legislature would be to retain the bicameral structure while reasserting the original conception of the two chambers. Let the Senate be the smaller, deliberative body, and the Assembly be the larger house, where the passions and will of the people are expressed. This means Assembly districts should be as small as possible and Assembly seats most susceptible to challenge and competition. Senators, on the other hand, must be able to withstand unpopular votes, which means they need larger districts and longer terms. These conditions can be met by expanding the ratio of senators to Assembly members from the current 1-to-2 distribution to a 1-to-3 relationship.

Under this model, for example, the Assembly might have 150 members representing 233,000 persons each, while the Senate would have 50 members, representing 700,000 persons each. These dimensions are consistent with the recommendations of a 1970s study of state legislatures by the non-partisan Citizens Conference on State Legislatures.

So, what do citizens get from this design? A lot. For starters, citizens will have better access to legislators who are more interested in their concerns. A lawmaker representing urban, suburban and rural communities is forced to consider a myriad of often conflicting needs for schools, health care, public safety and other services. Many interests are left out without ever being heard in the Legislature. A lawmaker focused on a more concentrated population can be a better advocate.

Smaller districts will also improve the representation of moderate and third party voters. Independent candidates have a greater chance of winning a smaller district, and independent voters are more likely to be heard in a district where they make up a greater share of the electorate.

More citizens will be able to take part in government, too -- both because there will be more seats available and because campaign costs will be more manageable. Campaign costs in California's Senate districts currently hover around $600,000. By comparison, the average campaign in a Massachusetts' state Senate district -- containing around 160,000 people -- costs about $120,000.

Inside the Capitol, smaller districts would also cause dramatic change. Lobbyists and special interests would lose power since they would be forced to persuade more lawmakers with closer ties to their voters. Leadership power, diminished by the restrictions of term limits, may also grow as the voice of each individual lawmaker assumes a smaller share of the total body.

With more eyes watching and questioning government decisions, Californians could also expect better oversight and higher quality legislation. As president Woodrow Wilson noted "... it is not far from the truth to say that Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in committee rooms is Congress at work." The same can be said of the state Legislature. The real work occurs in committees where legislators develop bills, study issues and make law.

Yet, committees produce good policy only when legislators have the time to become experts in the issues or there are many hands to manage the workload. Prior to term limits, committee members had years to gain expertise. Since term limits, however, studies have shown a drop in work quality. Most legislators now have a broad, but usually shallow, understanding of policy. A larger Legislature will mean more people to do the people's business, mitigating one negative impact of term limits.

In recent decades, Californians have adopted increasingly stringent political reforms in an effort to curtail corruption and increase accountability in government. But even after dramatic changes, such as term limits and budget mandates for taxes and schools, polls indicate that confidence in California government continues a dangerous decline.

With frustration growing, voters may be ready to consider even more aggressive change.

A recent opinion poll found most voters don't think smaller districts will make a difference, but 40 percent believe they would be "better represented."

Ultimately, Californians cannot manage the direct democracy our state is fast becoming. Californians must restore their trust in government and turn over the vast majority of policy decisions to elected representatives.

It is time to think creatively and boldly about new designs for a government that will reflect the new generation of California's diversity of ideas. The changes must make our representatives more accountable to voters and reflective of their ideas. That is only possible when the governed are closer to their government.