SCOTUS unanimously rejects challenge to "One Person, One Vote"

[Civil War Man]

Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Challenge to "One Person, One Vote"

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected an effort to change political boundaries and reduce the voting strength of the nation's Latino population on Monday.

Two residents of Texas urged the court to rule that in drawing legislative boundaries to create districts with roughly equal populations, states should count the voting population, not the total population.

Using the total population figures, the challengers said, dilutes the voting power of residents in districts with large numbers of people who are not eligible to vote, violating the one-person, one-vote requirement.

But not a single justice ruled for the challengers.

"Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 states and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries," wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the court.

The challengers, she said, "have shown no reason for the court to disturb this longstanding use of total population."

Ginsburg's opinion was joined by Justices John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each wrote separate concurring opinions.

Relying instead on voting population could result in fewer districts in areas that elect Hispanic representatives. Opponents of the idea said it would shift political power away from urban areas with large minority populations, which tend to vote for Democrats, and toward rural areas, where Republicans do better at the polls.

The nation's founders, Ginsburg said, understood that "representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote."

In a concurring opinion, one of the Supreme Court's conservatives, Justice Alito, said Monday's decision holds only that states are not required to count total population. The ruling does not bar states from instead counting the voting population, which he called "an important and sensitive question that we can consider if and when" such a case comes before the court.

The challenge did not involve the drawing of congressional district boundaries, because the Constitution requires that to be based on the total population figures derived from the census.

Texas opposed the challenger's attempt to change the state's method for drawing its state legislative districts, arguing that using either total population or voting population is allowed. The U.S. government argued that only total population is allowed.

Some voting rights advocates worried that a court ruling in favor of Texas' position, though technically a victory, might lead Texas and other red states to switch to a voter-based system on the next round of redistricting after 2020.

But Ginsburg wrote that the court wasn't required to address the question of whether only total population was allowed, and did not do so. That's likely to mean states continue to use total population to draw their districts.

"Some expected that if the Court gave Texas the green light to choose, as Texas argued it had the right to do in this litigation, then in the next round of redistricting, it would have done so in order to increase the number of Republican districts in the state," wrote the election law scholar Rick Hasen. He called the court's decision not to reach the issue "a big victory for the federal government's position."

Ginsburg wrote that both the debate over the 14th Amendment and legal precedent support the view that total population is permitted as the basis for drawing districts. And she added that holding the opposite would throw elections into chaos.

"Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 States and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries," Ginsburg wrote. "Appellants have shown no reason for the Court to disturb this longstanding use of total population."

And she added that non-voters, too, need representation.

"Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates—children, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system—and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies," Ginsburg wrote. "By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation."

Before the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia, some voting rights advocates and commentators had feared that the Supreme Court might use the case to deal another blow to voting rights, after weakening the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

But Richard Pildes, a leading election law scholar and practitioner who has worked for numerous Democratic candidates, had predicted that the court would easily reject the challenge. Pildes wrote Monday that the ruling represented "an overwhelming consensus...for the straightforward resolution of the issue, despite the wildly exaggerated fears that had been stoked up about this case."

Sanity does sometimes prevail.

[Ralin]

"One person, one vote."

Including the people who cannot legally vote.

That seems like a very misleading slogan, I'm just saying.

[Borgholio]

That seems like a very misleading slogan, I'm just saying.

Yeah I actually agree it could be misleading if you just go by the title. But the logic behind it is sound. Representation in the House has always been based on total population, not total population that is eligible to vote. That's how it was even in the slave-owning south, where blacks were considered 3/5 of a person for the purpose of calculating representatives in Congress even though they certainly could not vote themselves. So changing things so that only eligible voters are counted will fly in the face of more than two centuries of constitutional law and tradition.

[Ralin]

Tradition and precedent are important in law, yes. But the example of slave-owners getting better representation because their slaves were partially counted isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the precedent.

That said, procedural reform is never neutral and looking at the article there would be bad consequences to the system being changed.

[Borgholio]

But the example of slave-owners getting better representation because their slaves were partially counted isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the precedent.

Sorry, I wasn't using slavery as an endorsement of the system, just an example of the fact that it's been legal and in common use for centuries. As stated in the article, even people who don't have a vote deserve representation.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The logic the plaintiffs used is backwards; they say that using total population for district boundaries dilutes the voting power of voters in districts with large numbers of non-voters. Doesn't it do the exact opposite? If you're a voter in a district of 10,000 where only 1,000 are eligible to vote, then your vote is much more powerful than a vote in a 10,000-strong district where everyone is eligible.

[SCRawl]

The logic the plaintiffs used is backwards; they say that using total population for district boundaries dilutes the voting power of voters in districts with large numbers of non-voters. Doesn't it do the exact opposite? If you're a voter in a district of 10,000 where only 1,000 are eligible to vote, then your vote is much more powerful than a vote in a 10,000-strong district where everyone is eligible.

The issue is that the plaintiffs would prefer to draw the boundaries so that there would be (according to your example) 100,000 people in a district which had only 10,000 voters. Each district would have 10,000 voters, so there would be fewer districts if only voters were to be counted.

[Edi]

Besides, the biggest problems with the US election systems are elsewhere. As in, everywhere else except how district size is determined.

The voter registration system is fucked up
The district boundary determination system is fucked up (gerrymandering)
The voting procedures setup is fucked up state by state
The controls on election results verification is fucked up
Campaign finance is fucked up (thank you Scalia, now burn!)

Just off the top of my head. The US ranks dead fucking last of all the western nations in integrity of election legislation, procedures related to it and other various and sundry shit it entails, according to a recently published study by the Electoral Integrity Project. The placement worldwide is in 47th place, so congrats, the US barely makes it to the top 25%

Washington Post article

[Eternal_Freedom]

The logic the plaintiffs used is backwards; they say that using total population for district boundaries dilutes the voting power of voters in districts with large numbers of non-voters. Doesn't it do the exact opposite? If you're a voter in a district of 10,000 where only 1,000 are eligible to vote, then your vote is much more powerful than a vote in a 10,000-strong district where everyone is eligible.

The issue is that the plaintiffs would prefer to draw the boundaries so that there would be (according to your example) 100,000 people in a district which had only 10,000 voters. Each district would have 10,000 voters, so there would be fewer districts if only voters were to be counted.

Yeah I get that's what they wanted to do, I was questioning the logic they used to support their case.

[SCRawl]

Yeah I get that's what they wanted to do, I was questioning the logic they used to support their case.

Ah, sorry.

Well, their logic is that the status quo leads to situations where there are more districts which will be effectively be decided by majority minority constituents.

Consider this example, which follows along from yours (and is absurd, mathematically, but shows their point): I live in Texas, and I have a family which has 10,000 members, but I am the only citizen in my family. I am the only voter, so I decide the election by myself, and I have my very own representative. I end up with the voting power of 10,000 people, whereas someone in a "normal" district has a regular amount of influence which is further reduced because there are more representatives.

The plaintiffs' argument is that in my example, it isn't "One person, one vote", it's "one brown person, ten thousand votes".

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah but I don't see how, in your example or mine, having more non-voters per voter in a given size districts "dilutes" the voting power of those voters, if anything it concentrates it. Unless they are referring to it in terms of "number of voters per 1,000 total population" in which case, yes, it dilutes the numbers, but the voting power is still increased, not lessened.

[SCRawl]

Yeah but I don't see how, in your example or mine, having more non-voters per voter in a given size districts "dilutes" the voting power of those voters, if anything it concentrates it.

...unless you're not in a district with someone like me.

Let's expand the example more. Let's say that there are ten districts in Texas, each of which has 10,000 people in it. If everyone in your district is a voter, you are represented by one ten-thousandth of a representative. But I'm represented by a whole representative. If, say, five families like mine move to Texas and the districts get divided as they are now, then there will be fifteen representatives, and your ten-thousandth of a representative is now worth even less than before.

If districts are instead divided up by voters, not by people, then there will be fewer representatives, but they will be more evenly distributed among the voters, so each person is more or less equally represented.

Please note for the record that I'm not on the side of the plaintiffs, I'm just trying to tease out their logic.

[Civil War Man]

I think one thing that really undermines the plantiffs' arguments legally is that the number of districts granted to a state is based on total population, not eligible voters. So their proposed solution actually artificially inflates the voting power of people living in states with a high percentage of people rendered unable or ineligible to vote.

Borgholio bringing up the 3/5th compromise is actually fairly pertinent, since the 3/5th compromise was actually the result of slave-holding states trying a similar tactic to the plaintiffs here. The slave owners wanted their slaves to count as a full person in terms of determining how many representatives their state got, but not count as a person in any other aspect.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah but I don't see how, in your example or mine, having more non-voters per voter in a given size districts "dilutes" the voting power of those voters, if anything it concentrates it.

...unless you're not in a district with someone like me.

Let's expand the example more. Let's say that there are ten districts in Texas, each of which has 10,000 people in it. If everyone in your district is a voter, you are represented by one ten-thousandth of a representative. But I'm represented by a whole representative. If, say, five families like mine move to Texas and the districts get divided as they are now, then there will be fifteen representatives, and your ten-thousandth of a representative is now worth even less than before.

If districts are instead divided up by voters, not by people, then there will be fewer representatives, but they will be more evenly distributed among the voters, so each person is more or less equally represented.

Please note for the record that I'm not on the side of the plaintiffs, I'm just trying to tease out their logic.

I can see what your saying, but I don't think that fits what they were trying to say. Which is fine, since what they are saying is bollocks.

[Esquire]

Care to expand?

[Eternal_Freedom]

The fact that the entire SCOTUS shot it down is pretty telling that their argument is a shit one, and a fairly transparent one for "we want our votes to count more than others." So, prima facie, it's bollocks.

[Civil War Man]

If districts are instead divided up by voters, not by people, then there will be fewer representatives, but they will be more evenly distributed among the voters, so each person is more or less equally represented.

I know you are just trying to figure out their logic, but this wasn't what the plaintiffs were arguing, for the record. They voiced no objection to continuing to assign the number of representatives based on total population. They just wanted to only count registered voters when drawing the jurisdictions of those representatives, which heavily skews voting power in favor of voters living in states with a high percentage of residents who cannot vote.

Which, if SCOTUS had hypothetically found in favor of the plaintiffs, would have provided even more incentive for states that have been actively enacting measures to disenfranchise voters that they consider undesirable (i.e. racial and ethnic minorities and young people).