Anybody got a quick list for me

[jimrtex]

of states whose State Senate Districts are composed entirely of whole State House Districts?

Many thanks in advance!

2010 State Profile Summary

Note the Minnesota legislative website typically has pretty comprehensive information on redistricting across the country.

NV, FL, TN, IN, RI, MA, and VT have small integer ratios of seats, but apparently don't have nesting requirements.

HI has a non-integer ratio 51:25, but not only the above table, but the following criteria from Hawaii claims it is true.

2001 REAPPORTIONMENT COMMISSION STANDARDS AND CRITERIA

Hawaii at one time tried to create districts where legislators had unequal voting strength, in order to conform to OMOV, while avoiding inter-island districts, but were blocked by a federal district court.  The above might be residual.

Washington's constitution simply provides that house districts not cross senate district boundaries, and at one time you could have different number of house districts per senate district.  The size of the legislature in Washington is not specifically prescribed in the constitution, and a 3:1 ratio is legally possible, while complying with OMOV.   It is simply current practice to not have single member house districts.  There is a bill that would change that.

I think Arizona and North Dakota are similar.   Notice that SD only has 4 single member house districts.  Without even looking at a map, I bet reservations are involved.

While one of the criteria in California is that senate and house districts nest, this is not an absolute requirement.  I think the following might be a case where it might not be followed.

City A: 104% of assembly district, so legal (within 5% limit)

Cities B and C: 90% of assembly district, so too small for an assembly district.

City D: 201% of assembly districts, so can form 2 assembly districts.

Together A, B, and C have 97% of the ideal senate district population, and D has 100.5% of the population of a senate district.

So:
AD 1: City A (104%)
AD 2: Cities B and C, and Sliver (3.5%) of D: (97%)
AD 3: Part (48.3%) of D: (97%)
AD 4: Part (48.3%) of D: (97%)

SD 1: Cities A,B, and C  (97%)
SD 2: City D (100.5%)

[jimrtex]

of states whose State Senate Districts are composed entirely of whole State House Districts?

Many thanks in advance!

2010 State Profile Summary

Note the Minnesota legislative website typically has pretty comprehensive information on redistricting across the country.

NV, FL, TN, IN, RI, MA, and VT have small integer ratios of seats, but apparently don't have nesting requirements.

HI has a non-integer ratio 51:25, but not only the above table, but the following criteria from Hawaii claims it is true.

2001 REAPPORTIONMENT COMMISSION STANDARDS AND CRITERIA

Hawaii at one time tried to create districts where legislators had unequal voting strength, in order to conform to OMOV, while avoiding inter-island districts, but were blocked by a federal district court.  The above might be residual.

Washington's constitution simply provides that house districts not cross senate district boundaries, and at one time you could have different number of house districts per senate district.  The size of the legislature in Washington is not specifically prescribed in the constitution, and a 3:1 ratio is legally possible, while complying with OMOV.   It is simply current practice to not have single member house districts.  There is a bill that would change that.

I think Arizona and North Dakota are similar.   Notice that SD only has 4 single member house districts.  Without even looking at a map, I bet reservations are involved.

While one of the criteria in California is that senate and house districts nest, this is not an absolute requirement.  I think the following might be a case where it might not be followed.

City A: 104% of assembly district, so legal (within 5% limit)

Cities B and C: 90% of assembly district, so too small for an assembly district.

City D: 201% of assembly districts, so can form 2 assembly districts.

Together A, B, and C have 97% of the ideal senate district population, and D has 100.5% of the population of a senate district.

So:
AD 1: City A (104%)
AD 2: Cities B and C, and Sliver (3.5%) of D: (97%)
AD 3: Part (48.3%) of D: (97%)
AD 4: Part (48.3%) of D: (97%)

SD 1: Cities A,B, and C  (97%)
SD 2: City D (100.5%)

I'm pretty sure that  Ohio senate districts are comprised of 3 house districts rather than subdivided into 3 senate districts.

[jimrtex]

Here are the constitutional requirements:

Washington 63-99 representatives, 1/3 to 1/2 that many senators.  The original legislature had 70 and 35.  No house district may be divided between senate districts.

Because of OMOV and the nesting requirement, the two choices of ratio are 1/3 and 1/2 exactly.   Currently they are at the maximum of 98 and 49.  Washington has in the very recent past had some separate house districts, within a senate district (for example a senate district that stretched from Grays Harbor to Cowlitz had a coastal house district, and a river house district. 

There is currently a bill that would make all house districts separate.  It will go nowhere.  The House members in the hearing were calculating that they might end up in the same district as their fellow representative (in one Seattle case, the boundary would have had to run on an alley).

Oregon Original constitution provided ratio of 16:34 and maintenance of that ratio as near as may be up to a maximum of 30:60 (the current number).  IIUC, the original constitution provided for independent apportionment of the two houses, and did not permit splitting of counties, but did permit combining whole counties.

A 1953 amendment appears to have permitted splitting counties into subdistricts.  It may have been at-large election before then.  This is still part of the constitution Article IV Section 7, but doesn't appear to be followed - with respect to county boundaries.

The current constitution simply requires that each senate district be divided into two house districts.

California The constitution provides 40 senate districts and 80 assembly districts.  Criteria for redistricting says that:

"To the extent practicable, and where this does not conflict with the criteria above, each Senate district shall be comprised of two whole, complete, and adjacent Assembly districts"

The superior criteria include reasonable population equality, respect for county and city boundaries, and VRA.

Hawaii Constitution provides for 25 senators and 51 representatives apportioned among the 4 island groups: (1) the island of Hawaii, (2) the islands of Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Kahoolawe, (3) the island of Oahu and all other islands not specifically enumerated, and (4) the islands of Kauai and Niihau.  Apportionment is by equal proportions (Huntington-Hill), with each island group guaranteed one member in each body. 

I suspect that this may be a special case where districts can go outside a 5% deviation.  Conceivably, other states might have special cases that would warrant similar treatment, but they are likely to applied using ad hoc rules, which might cause a court to overturn them.

The constitution further provides that each island group be allocated additional members so as to have 2 senators and 3 representatives.  These members would have fractional voting rights.  This was the provision that was overturned by a federal district court.

The constitution then provides for districting within each island group.  It says: "where practicable, representative districts shall be wholly included within senatorial districts", and  not more than four members shall be elected from any district."

Current apportionment is:

Hawaii 3:7
Maui, etc. 3:6
Kauai, etc. 1:3
Oahu: 18:35

Current nesting is only on Maui and Kauai.  Conceivably, Hawaii could form a 3-member senate district with 7 nested representative districts, but there is also the following provision: "where practicable, submergence of an area in a larger district wherein substantially different socio-economic interests predominate shall be avoided."

It is a curiosity, that though the overall ratio is 1:2.04, it ends up with two areas over the ratio considerably, and  one area under.  As it turns out this is a rather extreme case of quota violation:

Hawaii    148,676   6.259   3.068
Honolulu  876,158  36.882  18.079
Maui+     128,241   5.398   2.646
Kauai     58,463    2.461   1.206

But I did a little more exploration.  Hawaii does not use the census population for legislative districting.  It instead uses the "permanent resident" population.  But the census bureau does not provide data for permanent residents.  In 2001, the Hawaii redistricting commission excluded non-resident students (based on information from the universities), and non-resident military (based on information from the DOD.  They decided not to exclude dependents of non-resident military, in part because of lack of data.  In addition, they decided not to include aliens, because of lack of data from the INS.

This resulted in the following (notice almost all of the excluded population is on Oahu.  There were repeated appeals from folks on the neighbor islands to exclude more people.

Hawaii    147,877   6.477   3.175
Honolulu  830,176  36.359  17.823
Maui+     128,029   5.607   2.749
Kauai      58,386   2.557   1.253

An interesting tidbit was that one proposal for the congressional redistricting was a so-called North/South plan that would put Kauai and the northern part of Oahu in one district, and the southern part of Oahu with the other islands.  The east/west boundary line would have split windward (northeastern shore) of Oahu.  For congressional districting they do use the census population.

During most of the discussion the commission was convinced that they were going to have to draw "canoe" districts which would link island groups.  A court decision after the 1980 redistricting had seemed to indicate the use of such districts was required, but there had also been the use of registered voters for legislative apportionment at that time. 

The original plan would have drawn canoe districts between Kauai and Oahu; and Hawaii and Maui in both houses, though there was one proposal for a Kauai-Maui canoe district for the senate, where the Honolulu and Hawaii districts would be close enough. 

There were also arguments made that the apportionment between the houses could be made in a way that compensated each other.  For example, Kauai could be given an extra 1/2 house seat, to compensate by being short 1/4 a senate seat.

Eventually, they got an opinion from the attorney general on the issue of excluding military dependents, which said "it depends".  In favor was the past practice of the redistricting commission and also voter understanding of the constitutional amendment that based apportionment on "permanent resident".  Against were Supreme Court decisions favoring more inclusive population bases, and also the difficulty of determining the location of military dependents (whether they even live in Hawaii or where they lived within Hawaii).

The DOD has good information on where military person are stationed, as well as which state they regard as their residence for tax purposes (ie Washington, Texas, Florida or other states without personal income taxes).  They have somewhat less reliable information with regard to residence of dependents because that sometimes lags based on when they needed medical treatment, etc.  And there is some uncertainty whether dependents live with their military sponsor.  Also, any residential information is based on ZIP code only, so there has to be an assignment to blocks used for redistricting on a statistical basis.

On a 5-4 party line vote, except for the chairman casting a tie-breaking vote, the commission reversed its earlier decision to not exclude military dependents.  This resulted in the final apportionment population:

Hawaii    147,806   6.705   3.287
Honolulu  790,233  35.845  17.571
Maui+     128,003   5.806   2.846
Kauai      58,288   2.644   1.296

Honolulu ended up with 10% of its census population excluded, while the other island groups lost a few tenths of 1%.

Under Huntington-Hill, Honolulu would be apportioned 35 house members.  So it turns out that while 17.571 results in 18 senators, 35.845 results in 35 house members.  Incidentally, the same apportionment would result under Deans (harmonic mean divisors) and Websters (arithmetic mean divisors) as under Huntington-Hill (geometric divisors).

Honolulu received only 3 of the 6 last representatives, but would have received all of the next 5.  That is Hawaii would have had 32 of 45; 35 of 51; and 40 of 56.  Its share of the apportionment population was 70.3%.  It received 68.8% of 51 members.  It would have had 71.1% of 45 members, and 71.4% of 56 members.  It turns out for this particular population, 51 members is about the worst possible number to apportion.

Under the census population, there would be a quota violation at 54 members.  Under the original plan to exclude non-resident military and students, there would a quota violation at 52 members.

After they had decided on which population to use for apportionment and redistricting, they decided to use Huntington-Hill after all, just like the constitution requires.  But they then tried to hide the fact of deviation in population in districts relative to state ideal population, by measuring it independently for each island group.  (eg Kauai's senate district is 29.6% over the ideal, but has no deviation at all from the Kauai-average, and its house districts are 11.9% under-populated.

So technically they followed the state constitution, and they might be able to establish a rational basis for such a large deviation, but since it was contrary to what had been done in 1980s and 1990s, it gives the appearance of an ad hoc political decision.

[jimrtex]

Alaska The constitution requires that the 20 senate districts be comprised of two house districts.  It is not an absolute requirement that the senate districts be contiguous (only to the extent practicable).  SD A is barely contiguous, and it possible that HD 2 was drawn so as to provide contiguity with HD 1.  There are some other senate districts that are simply attached to each other (C and H for example).

The original Alaska constitution had vested redistricting authority in the governor, and had not based the senate entirely on population.  After the OMOV decisions, the governor simply started redistricting the senate based on population.  During this time, Alaska had multi-member house districts.  It was somewhat of an accident that the number of senators and representatives were in a 1:2 ratio.  The Alaska Constitution also provided for apportionment based on the civilian population, but after it found this impossible to do, simply started using the census population.

In 1992, voters created a redistricting board, and also codified actual practice by switching to the census population.  It also formalized the requirement that senate districts be comprised of two house districts.  It said that to the extent practicable, senate districts should be contiguous..  After the first redistricting under the new constitutional amendment, the Alaska Supreme Court overturned some districts that were within the 10% limit for state legislative districts that is believed to be acceptable to the SCOTUS, saying that with modern mapping technology and census data, more equal district populations are possible to be practiced.

It is conceivable that the SCOTUS could at some time make a similar ruling, which would force the states to come up with some rational basis for any deviation.

In November 2010, voters rejected (by about a 40:60 margin) a proposed amendment that would have increased the legislature to 44 and 22 members.

Arizona Requires that 2 house members and 1 senator be elected from each legislative district.  Unlike Washington which provides for separate districts that happen to be coincident, Arizona only has provisions for "legislative districts".  I could not find anything that requires the two representatives to be elected in a multimember district where each voter casts two votes, as opposed to by position as is done in Washington.  All legislators in Arizona serve 2 year terms.  So in each legislative district, voters cast one vote for the senator position and two votes for the representative position.

I couldn't really find much about conducting multimember elections in statute.  I suspect it is one of those things where Arizona "knows" how to do it, and they've "always done it that way".  Arizona is covered by the VRA, so it is possible that their use of multimember districts could be challenged.

In 2010, only two house districts had split results.  It appears to be a tactic of the lesser party in a district to only run one candidate, hoping that some voters who want to be bipartisan will split their votes.  Since there is only one nominee of that party, voters would be forced to vote for that candidate if they split their vote.  It also looks like some voters don't use both votes in the representative race (there are rarely 2X as many votes cast in the house race vs. the senate race).  Some voters apparently don't realize that they can cast two votes, or figure that they are splitting their support, or perhaps think they are only voting for the best candidate in their mind, and thinking that will somehow make their vote more influential.

If a senate race is 55:45, you might start off with a 55:55:45:45, but with dropoff votes you might have 52:48:42:38 (assuming that those who only vote for one candidate of their party make a decision as to which on something other than flipping a coin.  The above assumes a 30:70 split).  If you have some cross-over votes, you have to depend on them being predominately from the weak candidate of the dominant party to the stronger candidate of the lesser party, to get a split result.  And there may also be some of your own party supporters who cross over the other way.

But if you only run one candidate, you will start out with a 55:55:45 split, but won't suffer any single vote drop off, which gets you to 52:48:45.  Any cross-over voters will be forced to choose your single candidate, and you can also semi-actively support the stronger candidate of of the major party.


It appears that the tactic was successful in electing one Democratic representative.  In the other split district, it was a single Republican running against two Democrats, but the Republican senator won as well.  It was a somewhat low turnout district, so it may have been the case of a Republican pickup based on low Democratic turnout.  The tactic may have been correct for 2008.  But in 2010, it cost the Republicans a possible sweep.

Hawaii addenda.  Hawaii staggers the election of its senators, but all senators run in the election after redistricting.  So half of the districts have terms of 4, 4, and 2 years; while the other have have terms of 2, 4, and 4 years.   The districts that have terms of 4, 4, and 2 are chosen based on which new districts have the largest share of their population who voted in the previous two elections.

So if your old district had an election for a final 2-year term in 2010, and your new district will likely be electing for a 4-year term in 2012.

Texas uses the same stagger system for its senators, but the determination of which districts are 4:4:2 amd which are 2:2:4 is not determined until the senate meets, and the newly elected senators draw lots to determine who was elected to a 4-year term, and which were elected to a 2-year term.

[jimrtex]

Alaska The constitution requires that the 20 senate districts be comprised of two house districts.  It is not an absolute requirement that the senate districts be contiguous (only to the extent practicable).  SD A is barely contiguous, and it possible that HD 2 was drawn so as to provide contiguity with HD 1.  There are some other senate districts that are simply attached to each other (C and H for example).

HD1 and HD2 were drawn the way they were to put the "larger" Southeast Alaskan towns other than Juneau into the same Senate District, and put the more rural Southeast Alaskan villages in HD5, which then ends up in the same Senate District C as the very geographically large, very rural HD6 in interior Alaska.  Basically, it's an attempt to put communities of similar interest together in Senate Districts.

HD1 is basically Ketchikan, HD2 Sitka, Wrangell and Petersburg - the largest towns of Southeast Alaska not named Juneau.  Both are in SD A.  HD3 is urban Juneau; HD4 is suburban Juneau.  They make up in SD B.  It's the state capital and a government town.  HD5 is the really rural areas of Southeast Alaska, from Haines to Craig to Hyder. And HD 6 is bush interior Alaska - many areas of which are either on far-flung areas of the road network or entirely off of it.  They have more in common for a senate district than Ketchikan, Skagway or Juneau.

There are rational reasons for putting these areas together, especially in the Southeast.  Most Southeast towns are not connected by roads, and putting part of Petersburg in a district with Juneau just to balance population wouldn't make much sense.  You need a plane or ferry to get there from there.  Someone from Juneau probably wouldn't adequately represent Petersburg and vice versa.

A similar arguments can be made in Hawaii - that putting urban or even suburban Honolulu in a district with more rural Kauai just to balance population doesn't make much sense since you can't drive from Oahu to Kauai and their interests aren't even close to the same.

The point is that in Alaska senate districts are comprised of two House districts rather than being subdivided into two house districts.

Senate district C would not have been drawn the way that it was if you drew the senate districts.  Neither would H, and A might not have been drawn exactly the way it was.

Instead you figure out how many House districts can be drawn in the panhandle, and realize that you can draw 5 if you include Cordova.  That's two for Juneau, one for Ketchikan, and two for everyone else.  You put Cordova, Haines, and Skagway in one district; and Wrangell and Petersburg in the other and play around to try to get the population balanced.  Afterward that you start pairing them up, and since you have an odd number of House districts you stick 5 and 6 together. 

The panhandle will likely be down to 4 house districts, you will still have 2 in Juneau and 1 in Ketchikan, but they will likely have to go outside the immediate areas to get enough population.  You have to pick and choose, and throw everything else into the 4 the district.

Alaska does not require senate districts to be contiguous.  And if HD-1 and HD-2 did not connect, they could still be placed in a common senate district.

[jimrtex]

The point is that in Alaska senate districts are comprised of two House districts rather than being subdivided into two house districts.

Senate district C would not have been drawn the way that it was if you drew the senate districts.  Neither would H, and A might not have been drawn exactly the way it was.

Instead you figure out how many House districts can be drawn in the panhandle, and realize that you can draw 5 if you include Cordova.  That's two for Juneau, one for Ketchikan, and two for everyone else.  You put Cordova, Haines, and Skagway in one district; and Wrangell and Petersburg in the other and play around to try to get the population balanced.  Afterward that you start pairing them up, and since you have an odd number of House districts you stick 5 and 6 together. 

The panhandle will likely be down to 4 house districts, you will still have 2 in Juneau and 1 in Ketchikan, but they will likely have to go outside the immediate areas to get enough population.  You have to pick and choose, and throw everything else into the 4 the district.

Alaska does not require senate districts to be contiguous.  And if HD-1 and HD-2 did not connect, they could still be placed in a common senate district.

I think that if you start drawing Senate districts from the Southeast, you'd end up with the same map as the House map.   When drawing the current map, the first order of business would be to keep Juneau together, which would necessitate putting Ketchikan, Sitka, Petersburg and Wrangell together, and leave you with a remainder.  The remainder has more in common with bush interior Alaska than any other territory in the rest of Alaska, so putting those areas together in the same Senate District makes sense.

I agree that the Southeast will likely be down to 4 districts, which will necessitate adding some areas to the Juneau district (Skagway/Haines/Gustavus being the most logical), and extending SD A further into the Southeast Bush.  How much of what's left of old HD5 remains in SD C will likely depend on the extent of population loss in the rest of Southeast Alaska.

I think that if you were drawing senate districts first, you would have one in Juneau, one in Ketchikan-Wrangell-Petersburg, and then the Sitka-Haines-Skagway-Cordova district continues across to Valdez and the Kenai peninsula, and perhaps northward to the Alaska Highway/

The western and northern parts of HD 6 is 76% AIAN, (including AIAN+white)   The eastern arm of HD 6 (say from the Alaska highway south is 28% AIAN).  Overall the district is 56% AIAN.   HD 5 is 36% AIAN, but this is somewhat concentrated in the south of the district, so you have a district nearly 2000 miles long with 30,000 people and you are trying to connect concentrated Inuit areas with Indian areas 1000 miles apart.

[jimrtex]

I think that if you were drawing senate districts first, you would have one in Juneau, one in Ketchikan-Wrangell-Petersburg, and then the Sitka-Haines-Skagway-Cordova district continues across to Valdez and the Kenai peninsula, and perhaps northward to the Alaska Highway

Perhaps.  But if you were to do that, Valdez or (depending on which part of the Kenai you include) Homer would end up being the largest town in the district, shifting the balance of power in the district from small village Alaska to middling towns.  While I haven't calculated the population of every HD 5 town, I'm guessing Valdez is at least double the size of the next closest town.  By attaching HD 5 and 6, you end up with a truly rural Senate district instead of two Senate districts that would likely be dominated by whatever mid-sized towns you put in them, due to greater voter registration and turnout.

By the way, the current SD C Senator is from Angoon in the Southeast.  His predecessor was from Rampart in Interior Alaska.   Given Southeast Alaska's likely loss of population, it will be interesting to see if they can even try to draw a seat to keep the sitting Senator in power.

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I didn't take race into account, but that would be another reason to attach HD5 to HD6 instead of diluting the Alaskan native population in both by attaching each to a more white district.

In 2001 after the redistricting commission drew its plan there was a court challenge, and the Alaska Supreme Court overruled parts of the plan.  They ruled that HD 5 was not compact, but ordered it to be reviewed because it might qualify under the VRA.  The plaintiff's on that segment of the case were from Craig, which is in the tip of the tail of HD-5 as it wraps below Ketcihikan and heads north.  The plaintiffs had agreed that the inclusion of Cordova was required to get enough population (apparently there have been previous court cases that overturned placing Cordova with the panhandle), but the district did not need to go south of Baranoff Island (Sitka).  But a dissent noted that the alternative HD-2 would have included Petersburg and Wrangell, and then included an arm that split Haines borough so it could included Klukwan (NW of Haines).   So apparently, they were seeking to make that be the Tlingit opportunity district. 

Anyhow the redistricting commission made an affirmative finding that they were intending to create a VRA district, which overrode the compactness requirement of the Alaska constitution.  The dissent in the Supreme Court would have upheld HD-5 on socio-economic integration grounds (claiming that the constitution places that and compactness on equal footing).

Senate C might not qualify as a VRA district because it is not compact and combines Athabascans and Tlinglits.

HD-5 currently reaches to the eastern tip of Kenai, and it abuts the boundary of Valdez (Cordova is west of the dividing line between HD 6 and HD 12.  So if you were drawing a senate district, inclusion of Valdez would be trivial. 

Kenai has almost 3 house districts.  One is in the town of Kenai, and the other is in the immediate vicinity.  The other included Seward, Homer, and then jumps across Cook Inlet (I don't think there are many people there).  So between Valdez and Seward you may be getting close to enough population.

The Supreme Court also overturned the Anchorage districts, suggesting that they did not meet the population equality standard of the Alaska constitution (in effect, they said that there might not be the same 10% prima facie presumption of constitutionality, that the SCOTUS appears to have set down, at least in urban areas.

[jimrtex]

Utah The 1895 constitution provided that house member were apportioned by county, with each county guaranteed one member.  Senate districts were comprised of whole counties, but single counties could be apportioned multiple senators.  Since representative districts corresponded to single counties, and senate districts to one or more counties, there was nesting in a sense.

Utah had been settled for 50 years before it was admitted to the Union so they at least had some idea how settlement would occur, and even at that time, it was highly concentrated along the Wasatch Front.  The original constitution provided an apportionment of 18 senators and 45 representatives, with Salt Lake County having 5 senators and 10 representatives.  It said that the number of senators could increase up to 30 senators, with between 2 and 3 times as many representatives.

As time went along, additional senators and representative were added along the Wasatch Front to try to keep balance.  In the 1964 election, the Democrats took control of the legislature, in part due to 2 new senate districts and 5 new house districts.

But some of the rural counties simply never grew beyond a little over 1000.  By the time of the OMOV decision, it would have required a House of 890 members to comply with OMOV and the constitutional requirement of one representative per county.  After Utah was forced to redistricting, they went to multi-county representative districts, and added a few more legislators to cushion the impact on rural areas.  After losing another case after the initial 1970s redistricting, Utah was forced to split counties in districts crossing county lines.  After this redistricting, Utah ended up with 29 senators and 75 representatives (including 32 in Salt Lake County).  Since districts no longer corresponded to whole counties, there was no nesting.

The current constitution simply freezes the senate at 29 members, and retains the original ratio limits of between 1:2 and 1:3.   The current legislature has the same number of representatives as it did after the 1970s, 2nd redistricting.  Utah has 29 counties and 29 senators, but there was never any requirement for one senator per county, but rather that each county have at least one representative.

Nevada The original constitution provided for apportionment by population, a maximum of 75 legislators, and the number of senators between 1/2 and 1/3 of the number of assemblymen. 

By 1915, Nevada had legislatively adopted a system of one senator per county, and at least one assemblyman per county, with 16 senators and 37 assemblymen.  When the 17th county was added, there was one more senator.  The number of assemblymen was gradually increased to recognize growth in Reno and later Las Vegas.  This arrangement was formalized in the constitution in 1950 when there were 17 senators and 47 assemblymen.  In 1961, they realized that by reducing the the size of the assembly to 37, they could reduce the dominance of Clark and Washoe counties, since every county was guaranteed one representative.  In 1961, all counties but Clark, Washoe, and Elko had one senator and one representative.

After the OMOV decision, the legislature was increased to 20:40 which was close to the previous 17:37, but with dramatic changes in the districts.  Apportionment of legislators was among (1) Clark, (2) Washoe, and (3) The rest of the state.  In each area, there was a 1:2 ratio between senators and assemblymen.  In the rural counties, multi-county senate districts were drawn.  These might be split into two single member assembly districts, or kept as 2-member assembly districts.  In Las Vegas and Reno there were large multimember districts ( up to 9 assembly members and 5 senators, or roughly 1/4 of each body).

In the 1970s assembly districts were made single member, while the size of multimember senator districts was reduced, a trend that has continued so that only two 2-member senate districts remain.  This was also the first legislature with a majority from Clark County. 

The legislature was increased to 21:42 in 1981 so that Clark County could have more legislators not at expense of the rest of the state.  In 1991, nesting was largely abandoned.  I suspect it was because incumbents were looking after their own interests, and population growth requiring radical changes.   By 2001 county lines are largely ignored, with 70% of the legislature from Clark County, they are probably little concerned that other districts are not whole counties if that would mean they would have a few 1000 less persons.

So while Nevada has a 1:2 ratio in seats and has had nesting in the past, there is no requirement.

Incidentally, Nevada was not formed to protect the gold and silver for the Union (a myth perpetuated by an episode in Bonanza in which Little Joe, a delegate to a statehood constitutional convention became romantically involved with the daughter of a southern sympathizer).  Lincoln faced an election challenge from John C Fremont, favored by Radical Republicans; and George McClellan, and needed the electoral votes.  As it turned out, Fremont withdrew because he was concerned about a McClellan victory (though McClellan favored continuing the war, the Democratic platform was written by Copperheads).  While Lincoln had a big electoral college victory, his popular vote majority was only 55% to 45%.

Congress provided for possibility of statehood in 3 territories, Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada.  The Nebraska convention did not produce a constitution, and voters in Colorado rejected their proposed constitution.  In Nevada, a constitution was approved by the voters.  Cabinet members opposed to statehood convinced Lincoln, that he should read the constitution before proclaiming statehood.  Versions sent overland and by sea had not reached Lincoln before the 1864 election.  Finally, the constitution was transmitted by telegraph (it had to be relayed through Salt Lake, Chicago, and Philadelphia because there was not a continuous telegraph network), and statehood was proclaimed on October 31, 1864, days before the election.  The telegram of 16,543 words (at a cost of $3400) was believed to be the longest telegram ever, but it has since been determined that the first 6 books of the Revised Version of the New Testament (118,000 words) were transmitted from New York to Chicago in 1881, so that they could be published in the Chicago Tribune

Idaho Before the OMOV decisions, the Idaho constitution provided that each county have one senator, and representatives be elected from single counties.  The legislature in 1965 passed a senate plan that would elect senators from multi-county multi-senator districts, but with individual senators chosen by county.  Apparently these multi-county districts combined large and small counties so as to address equal population concerns (eg a 9-county district would have 9/44 of the state population - since Idaho has 44 counties.  The house plan provided multi-county districts, but left elections within large counties as at large.

After the courts rejected the senate plan, the legislature created a plan where 1 senator and 2 representatives were elected from each legislative district, and county lines would be ignored.  Idaho doesn't regard these to be multi-member districts, but rather would consider districts that elected 2 senators and 4 representatives, or 3 senators and 6 representatives as being multi-member.  Idaho limits the number of representatives to not more than twice the number of senators, and at times has gone below that limit, so that Idaho has had a closer balance in size of the two chambers than other states, particularly when it had one senator per county.

Once the decision was made to divide the state into 35 population-based senate districts, a limit of 70 representative was also required, and this could be easily be met by nesting, and it matched the practice in neighboring Washington.

The 1980s redistricting was particularly contentious, with a Democratic governor who vetoed several reapportionment plans.  There was also a state court decision that said that the state constitution provision of not splitting counties was still in effect so long as equal population standards could be met.  The court eventually crafted a plan using floterial districts.  A floterial district is a district that overlays a number of smaller districts, in which all voters can vote.  So you  might have 4 districts with similar populations, though not within the 10% limit.  But collectively the population of the 4 districts was equivalent to the population of 5 districts within the 10% limit.

Floterial districts are not constitutional in cases where there is a large disparity in population between the areas.  For example, if you had one county entitled to 5.5 representatives, and a neighbor entitled to 0.5 representatives, you can not apportion 5 representatives to the larger county, and one floterial district to the two counties together, since voters from the larger county would overwhelm those from the smaller county.

The Idaho legislature tried to devise a plan that would comply with the state court's decision, but their alternative was rejected, and the court-ordered plan was used through the 1980s.  In 1984, Idaho voters turned down a constitutional amendment that would permit splitting of counties.  In 1986, they approved an amendment that would reduce the size of the legislature AND permit splitting of counties.  This reduction of the legislature size may have been enough sizzle to get an amendment approved.

The 1990s redistricting was also contentious (again there was a Democratic governor), and eventually led to creation of a redistricting commission.  The redistricting commission first redistricted for the 2000s.  And like every plan drawn by the legislature from the 1960s onward was rejected by the courts.

The Idaho constitution provides a senate of 30 to 35 members, and limits combining parts of counties in multi-county districts only to the extent necessary to meet federal OMOV standards.  It is conceivable that a smaller number of districts might result in much fewer county splits, and could force a reduction in the size of the legislature.