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Page Number: 34.0

30 

ARIZONA STATE LEGISLATURE v. ARIZONA 
INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMM’N
 
Opinion of the Court 

gress  Profiles:  39th  Congress 
(1865–1867),  http://
history . house .gov / Congressional-Overview / Profiles/39th/; 
Biographical  Directory  of  the  United  States  Cong- 
ress:  Trowbridge,  Rowland  Ebenezer  (1821–1881).    Cf. 
Cain,  121  Yale  L. J.,  at  1817  (identifying  legislative 
conflict  of  interest  as  the  problem  independent  re-
districting  commissions  aimed  to  check).    In  short,  Bald-
win  is  not  a  disposition  that  should  attract  this  Court’s
reliance. 

We add, furthermore, that the Arizona Legislature does 
not question, nor could it, employment of the initiative to
control  state  and  local  elections.    In  considering  whether
Article  I,  §4,  really  says  “No”  to  similar  control  of  federal
elections,  we  have  looked  to,  and  borrow  from,  Alexander 
Hamilton’s counsel: “[I]t would have been hardly advisable
. . .  to  establish,  as  a  fundamental  point,  what  would 
deprive  several  States  of  the  convenience  of  having  the
elections  for  their  own  governments  and  for  the  national 
government” held at the same times and places, and in the 
same  manner.  The  Federalist  No.  61,  at  374.   The  Elec­
tions Clause is not sensibly read to subject States to that
deprivation.25 

3 
The Framers may not have imagined the modern initia­
tive process in which the people of a State exercise legisla­
tive  power  coextensive  with  the  authority  of  an  institu­
tional legislature.  But the invention of the initiative was 
in  full  harmony  with  the  Constitution’s  conception  of  the 
people as the font of governmental power.  As Madison put 
it:  “The  genius  of  republican  liberty  seems  to  demand  . . . 
not only that all power should be derived from the people, 
—————— 

25 A State  may choose to regulate state  and national elections differ­
ently, which is its prerogative under the Clause.  E.g., Ind. Code §3–3–
2–2  (creating  backup  commission  for  congressional  but  not  state  legis­
lative districts).