Supreme Court Agrees to Settle Meaning of ‘One Person One Vote’

[jimmy olsen]

I could see the court going either way with this one.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/us/supreme-court-to-weigh-meaning-of-one-person-one-vote.html?referrer=

Supreme Court Agrees to Settle Meaning of 'One Person One Vote'

By ADAM LIPTAK
MAY 26, 2015
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a case that will answer a long-contested question about a bedrock principle of the American political system: the meaning of "one person one vote."

The court's ruling, expected in 2016, could be immensely consequential. Should the court agree with the two Texas voters who brought the case, its ruling would shift political power from cities to rural areas, a move that would benefit Republicans.

The court has never resolved whether voting districts should have the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places with large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally, including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants, children and prisoners. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic.

A ruling that districts must be based on equal numbers of voters would move political power away from cities, with their many immigrants and children, and toward older and more homogeneous rural areas.

Such a decision, said Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, "would be most significant in border states, like California, Texas, Arizona and Nevada, that have the largest proportions of noncitizens."


The Supreme Court over the past nearly 25 years has turned away at least three similar challenges, and many election law experts expressed surprise that the justices agreed to hear this one. But since Chief Justice John G. Roberts has led the court, it has been active in other voting cases.

In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, a closely divided court effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act.

The new case, Evenwel v. Abbott, No. 14-940, concerns state and local voting districts. But "the logic of the decision in Evenwel will likely carry over to congressional redistricting," said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.

The case, a challenge to voting districts for the Texas Senate, was brought by two voters, Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger. They are represented by the Project on Fair Representation, the small conservative advocacy group that successfully mounted the earlier challenge to the Voting Rights Act. It is also behind a pending challenge to affirmative action in admissions at the University of Texas at Austin.

In the new case, the challengers said their voting power had been diluted. "There are voters or potential voters in Texas whose Senate votes are worth approximately one and one-half times that of appellants," their brief said.

In a statement issued after the Supreme Court accepted their case, Ms. Evenwel and Mr. Pfenninger said they "hoped that the outcome of our lawsuit will compel Texas to equalize the number of eligible voters in each district."

Professor Hasen said their lawsuit was in tension with some conservative principles.

"It is highly ironic that conservatives, who usually support respect for precedents and states' rights, are bringing a case that if successful will not only upset decades-old case law but also restrict the kind of representation states may choose," he said.

In November, a three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Austin dismissed the case, saying that "the Supreme Court has generally used total population as the metric of comparison." At the same time, the panel said, the Supreme Court has never required any particular standard. The choice, the panel said, belongs to the states.

A 1964 Supreme Court decision, Reynolds v. Sims, ruled that voting districts must contain very close to the same number of people. But the court did not say which people count.

Most state and local governments draw districts based on total population. If people who were ineligible to vote were evenly distributed, the difference between counting all people or counting only eligible voters would not matter. But demographic patterns vary widely.

Federal appeals courts have uniformly ruled that counting everyone is permissible, and one court has indicated that it is required.


In the process, though, several judges have acknowledged that the Supreme Court's decisions provide support for both approaches. The federal appeals court in New Orleans said the issue "presents a close question," partly because the Supreme Court had been "somewhat evasive in regard to which population must be equalized."

Judge Alex Kozinski, in a partial dissent from a decision of the federal appeals court in San Francisco, said there were respectable arguments on both sides.

On one theory, he said, counting everyone ensures "representational equality," with elected officials tending to the interests of the same number of people, whether they are voters or not.

On the other hand, he said, counting only eligible voters vindicates the principle that voters "hold the ultimate political power in our democracy." He concluded that the Supreme Court's decisions generally supported the second view.

Even if counting only adult citizens is the correct approach, there are practical obstacles. "A constitutional rule requiring equal numbers of citizens would necessitate a different kind of census than the one currently conducted," Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford, wrote in 2011 in the Cardozo Law Review.

For now, he said, "the only relevant data available from the census gives ballpark figures, at best, and misleading and confusing estimates at worst."

In 2001, the Supreme Court turned down an opportunity to decide the question, in another case from Texas.

Justice Clarence Thomas objected. "We have never determined the relevant 'population' that states and localities must equally distribute among their districts," he wrote.

"The one-person-one-vote principle may, in the end, be of little consequence if we decide that each jurisdiction can choose its own measure of population," Justice Thomas added. "But as long as we sustain the one-person-one-vote principle, we have an obligation to explain to states and localities what it actually means."

In the new case, the Supreme Court may decide that states can determine for themselves which standard to use. Even such a ruling could have a major impact, Professor Pildes said.

"If the court leaves it to states to decide, we could see the politics of immigration come to affect the politics of redistricting even more," he said. "State legislatures would be given a green light to locate more power or less power in areas that have large geographic concentrations of noncitizens. Those areas would have more power if the rule is equality of residents and less power if it's equality of eligible voters."

[Valmy]

Texas strikes a blow for democracy once again!

Wait why do cities have large numbers of prisoners and children? Aren't prisons usually in rural areas? Are cities known for having vast amounts of children? Weird.

[PJL]

If anything the current system is more undemocratic than the proposal. Had the OPOV system been used from the start, it would have greatly weakened slave states power within Congress. Not to mention it gave them no incentive to widen the franchise to slaves.

All in all, I support the proposal.

[Tonitrus]

We could make things even worse by counting only those registered to vote.

[MadImmortalMan]

I think there's more to districting than number of people or voters. Size of territories matters too, as well as a number of other things. Canada's districting method for rural areas is better than ours, on the whole.

[Admiral Yi]

I think there's more to districting than number of people or voters. Size of territories matters too, as well as a number of other things. Canada's districting method for rural areas is better than ours, on the whole.

I don't see why empty space should be entitled to more representation in Congress.

[LaCroix]

 

[Eddie Teach]

Wait why do cities have large numbers of prisoners and children? Aren't prisons usually in rural areas? Are cities known for having vast amounts of children? Weird.

Young people move away from rural areas for jobs. Old people retire to rural areas to free up money from their houses.

[Razgovory]

I think there's more to districting than number of people or voters. Size of territories matters too, as well as a number of other things. Canada's districting method for rural areas is better than ours, on the whole.

I don't see why empty space should be entitled to more representation in Congress.

Well, duh, you don't live where MiM lives.

[MadImmortalMan]

It's difficult to represent a district where you have to travel 600 miles between your constituents. It's too much to ask of someone.

[The Minsky Moment]

I could see the court going either way with this one.

This is the same case you posted about a couple weeks ago ...

[sbr]

I could see the court going either way with this one.

This is the same case you posted about a couple weeks ago ...

He can't spend any time reading the "articles" he posts here if he is going to keep up with his shit-thread starting quota.

[Tonitrus]

It's difficult to represent a district where you have to travel 600 miles between your constituents. It's too much to ask of someone.

Alaska has gotta be tough. 

[Admiral Yi]

It's difficult to represent a district where you have to travel 600 miles between your constituents. It's too much to ask of someone.

I don't see any traveling between constituents by my rep.  Maybe a couple TV ads, a couple flyers and a robocall come election time.

[jimmy olsen]

I could see the court going either way with this one.

This is the same case you posted about a couple weeks ago ...

I'm on so many forums it's hard to remember what I've post where.