The 2002 Wyoming Legislature conducted the state's first legislative redistricting with little fanfare. Ten years earlier, Wyoming citizens for the first time elected state legislators from districts, after a lawsuit invalidated the former system of electing legislators at-large by county.
      Legislative districts must contain approximately the same number of people, to ensure equality of representation. Legislative district boundaries are redrawn every ten years, after the federal census, to reflect population changes.
      The 2002 Legislature retained the legislative districting system created in 1992. The system is built on 30 single-member Senate districts. Each Senate district is then divided to form two single-member House districts, creating a 60-member House of Representatives. Under this system, every Wyoming citizen has one Representative and one Senator in the Legislature to hold directly accountable.
      The 2002 Legislature adjusted district boundaries mainly in the western part of the state, which saw population growth in the Jackson area and population losses around Rock Springs and Green River. Redistricting also moved toward restoring much of the Wind River Indian Reservation to a single district, instead of splitting it between several districts as it was under the 1992 plan.

Accountability
      Single-member districts provide voters the opportunity to examine the voting records of their two legislators on issues the voters feel are important.

Cost
      Wyoming's change to single-member districts in 1992 opened the door to more candidates as many legislative districts became walk-able. Instead of having to pay for expensive advertising to gain name recognition, a candidate could knock on most of the voters' doors in his or her district.
      The ESPC's analysis of campaign finance data compiled from 1992 forward shows it costs approximately twice as much to run for a Senate seat as a House seat, a logical result since Senate districts contain twice the population of House districts.
      During the 2002 redistricting discussions, some legislators and citizens advocated a return to the multi-member districts Wyoming had before 1992, maintaining that fewer people would run for office under the single-member district system. However, since multi-member districts necessarily must cover more ground and include more people than single-member districts, the data clearly show that multi-member districts would mean a substantial increase in campaign costs - hardly an incentive for more people to run for a part-time legislative position.

Majority Rule
      In single-member districts, candidates usually are elected with a majority of the vote. In multi-member districts, the candidate who received the most votes often also received a majority, but other legislators were commonly elected by fewer than 50% of the voters.

Numbers of Candidates and Incumbent Protection
      Critics of single-member districts assert that they discourage candidates from running and protect incumbents. However, the ESPC's comprehensive analysis of Wyoming election data shows that while the number of legislative candidates has declined slightly, the decline began in 1986 - well ahead of the state's change to single-member districts in 1992.
      Moreover, the number of incumbents defeated in any given election has remained remarkably consistent for the past 20 years (with the exception of the 1992 election, when the number of defeated incumbents was higher than usual).