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Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Speaker of Nebraska Legislature proposes increasing number of state senators to help rural districts

Jim Scheer, the Speaker of the Nebraska Legislature, has proposed increasing the number of senators in the state's unique, unicameral body, Paul Hammel reports for the Omaha World-Herald.

The state legislature now has 49 senators, the smallest number of such representatives in the nation. Scheer "said that allowing the body to expand to up to 55 senators would not only ease the process of redistricting after the 2020 Census but would also ensure that some rural districts don’t grow so large geographically as populations shift that constituents lose contact with their state senator," Hammel reports.

The state constitution requires districts to be evenly divided by population and calls for counties to be left as whole as possible, which can make for huge rural legislative districts that sometimes dip into suburban or urban areas. Scheer said some legislative districts in the central and western parts of the state spread over hundreds of miles, and that the problem is expected to worsen when the Legislature draws up new districts in 2021, Hammel reports.

While increasing the number of senators would not necessarily preserve rural influence, the mere fact that more individuals are in the Legislature could avoid a possible reduction of rural voices. 

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