Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2018 4:54 PM

Subject: California is no longer a republic

Currently, as few as 63 individuals can completely control the legislative process in California thanks to the lopsided balance of political power. While in a sense this has always been the case, it was not until the Supreme Court overruled the will of the people in 1964 case Reynolds v Sims that the balance of power was shifted, such that one party gained what appears to have become a permanent monopoly over the legislature and governorship.

As a result, the State of California is no longer a republic, but instead an oligarchy. The politicians wield power due to disproportionate representation given to the large metropolitan areas of the state. Under the current scenario, the democratic process is a sham that has completely undermined the concept of a functioning representative republic.

The original California Constitution provided for 80 assembly districts and 40 senate districts each based on population.

In the 1920’s, in order to rectify a situation where Los Angeles and other large metropolitan areas had acquired exorbitant control over the political process, the electorate changed the dynamics of the State Senate to mirror the U.S. Senate, via a 1926 ballot proposition 28. This limited any county from having more than one Senator (in 1911, Los Angeles County had 8 Senators, and three bay area counties combined had 13 Senators, giving majority control to those 4 heavily populated counties in both house of the legislature).

After proposition 28 passed, those same 4 counties had 4 Senators total instead of the previous 21, and the balance of power in the state was restored—the Assembly still represented the population, but the Senate represented the diverse interests of the various counties (similar to the U.S. Senate).

Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution provides: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…” Other than guaranteeing each state a republican form of government, it gave the federal government no authority to otherwise interfere with the composition of its legislature. Yet, the U.S. Supreme Court exceeded its authority under the Constitution and destroyed that guarantee.

As a result of the Warren Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), the California Senate was required to revert to the pre-Proposition 28 configuration. While I challenge that the Warren Court had any jurisdiction to interfere with the internal configuration of a state legislature—to me an example of judicial overreach—it did usurp authority over the States and unfortunately the States complied. 

As a result, Los Angeles County now has 14 of the 40 State Senators, and the large metropolitan centers of the bay area and Los Angeles combined have enough seats to control both the Assembly and Senate once again.  Due to the dynamics of today’s urban culture, these large metropolitan areas are dominated by the Left leaning Democratic Party political agenda. Politicians from these few counties can control the show, the rest of the State be damned.

California is no longer a republic, but a one party state, a political oligarchy where as few as 63 individuals (41 in the Assembly, 21 in the Senate, and the governor) are sufficient to have monopoly control over the politics of the state.

As a result, a few state legislators can (and do) act independent of the best interests of the public, creating law to suit their whims and ideological agenda.

Dumbed down and naïve people may think they have a choice in California, but they don’t.