State Legislative Apportionment in the 1960s

In response to Reynolds v. Sims, a constitutional amendment was proposed by Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican Minority Leader. The proposal said:

The right and power to determine the composition of the legislature of a State and the apportionment of the membership thereof shall remain in the people of that State. Nothing in this Constitution shall prohibit the people from apportioning one house of a bicameral legislature upon the basis of factors other than population, or from giving reasonable weight to factors other than population in apportioning a unicameral legislature, if, in either case, such apportionment has been submitted to a vote of the people in accordance with law and with the provisions of this Constitution and has been approved by a majority of those voting on that issue.

This one stands out for a couple of reasons. First, there was still a limited role for judicial review, as the state apportionment method for unicameral legislatures such as Nebraska's included a reasonableness requirement. Second, the proposal required a state referendum on any apportionment that was not one-person, one-vote, even in states that (I suppose) did not provide for referenda. The majority of a state could decide to base representation on a minoritarian basis, in a sense.

Of course, this was just an initial proposal. It might well have been changed. And there were other proposals besides this one. But this gives a good feeling for the ideas of the Warren Court's critics at the time.