ABSTRACT
Mississippi, Vermont, and Montana, like many rural states, have large legislative bodies despite their skimpy populations. In most other respects, however, these bodies are structurally indistinguishable from other American state legislatures. The best way to compare the legislatures of Mississippi, Vermont, and Montana is to use a technique specifically designed for the task by the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures. In the legislature that met between 1976 and 1980, about 17 percent of the members were over fifty-five years old and about 26 percent were under thirty-five. Mississippi’s legislature had more farmers and fewer businessmen and lawyers than Kentucky’s, more professionals and fewer farmers than Kansas’s, more lawyers and fewer farmers than South Dakota’s, and equal percentages of lawyers, fewer professionals, and more farmers than Ohio’s. Reapportioning the Mississippi legislature on a one-man-one-vote basis has been a slow, tooth-pulling affair.
