What was Reynolds vs Sims about?

Answer 1

It was about boundaries of districts for State Legislatures. The lawsuit, which began in Alabama, reached the Supreme Court, which ruled that State Legislatures had to draw their constituencies so they had equal populations (unlike the US Senate). Prior to this, Most states drew them so they had equal areas. This caused a number of anomalies:

• In the Connecticut General Assembly, one House district had 191 people; another, 81,000 (424 times more).
• In the New Hampshire General Court, one township with three people had a Representative in the lower house; this was the same representation given another district with a population of 3,244. The vote of a resident of the first township was therefore 1,081 times more powerful at the Capitol.
• In the Utah State Legislature, the smallest district had 165 people, the largest 32,380 (196 times the population of the other).
• In the Vermont General Assembly, the smallest district had 36 people, the largest 35,000, a ratio of almost 1,000 to 1.
• Los Angeles County, California, with 6 million people, had one member in the California State Senate, as did the 14,000 people of one rural county (428 times more).
• In the Idaho Legislature, the smallest Senate district had 951 people; the largest, 93,400 (97 times more).
• In the Nevada Senate, 17 members represented as many as 127,000 or as few as 568 people, a ratio of 224 to 1.