906
Thomas, J., dissenting
In an attempt to neutralize the significance of the district residency requirements, respondent Hill asserts that "there is no evidence that any state legislature focused, when it created these requirements, on the fact that it was adding to the constitutional qualifications." Brief for Respondents Bobbie E. Hill et al. 20. But this claim is simply false.
In Massachusetts, for instance, the legislature charged a committee with drafting a report on election methods. The fourth article of the resulting report called for the State to be divided into eight districts that would each elect one representative, but did not require that the representatives be residents of the districts that elected them. Joint Committee Report (Nov. 4, 1788), in 1 First Federal Elections 481. When the members of the State House of Representatives discussed this report, those who proposed adding a district residency requirement were met with the claim that the Federal Constitution barred the legislature from specifying additional qualifications. See Massachusetts Centinel (Nov. 8, 1788) (reporting proceedings), in 1 First Federal Elections 489. After "considerable debate," the House approved the committee's version of the fourth article by a vote of 89 to 72. Ibid. But the State Senate approved a district residency amendment, 1 First Federal Elections 502, and the House then voted to retain it, id., at 504.
Although we have no record of the legislative debates over Virginia's election law, a letter written by one of the members of the House of Delegates during the relevant period indicates that in that State, too, the legislature considered the possible constitutional objection to additional disqualifications. In that letter, Edward Carrington (an opponent of the district residency requirement) expressed his view that the requirement "may exceed the powers of the Assembly,"
been Tennessee residents for three years and district residents for one year before their election. Act of Apr. 20, 1796, ch. 10, in Laws of the State of Tennessee 81 (1803).
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