Supreme Court Hears Arguments on ‘One Person, One Vote’

[Triana]

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a voting rights case that has the potential to shift political power from urban areas to rural ones, a move that would provide a big boost to Republican voters in many parts of the nation.

The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, No. 14-940, will address a question many thought had been settled long ago: What is the meaning of the principle of “one person, one vote”?

The principle, rooted in cases from the 1960s that revolutionized democratic representation in the United States, applies to the entire American political system aside from the Senate, where voters from states with small populations have vastly more voting power than those with large ones. Everywhere else, voting districts must have very close to the same populations.

But the Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on who must be counted: all residents or just eligible voters?

The difference matters, because people who are not eligible to vote — children, immigrants here legally who are not citizens, unauthorized immigrants, people disenfranchised for committing felonies, prisoners — are not spread evenly across the country. With the exception of prisoners, they tend to be concentrated in urban areas.

THE REST:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/us/politics/supreme-court-to-hear-arguments-on-one-person-one-vote.html?_r=1

MY COMMENT: Republican'ts already have the voting system rigged to Hell and back (gerrymandering, Voter ID etc.) and have gutted any working voting rights laws but that's not enough for them apparently, they want a ONE PARTY nation and are going to rig everything in such a way that it's guaranteed.

[shraby]

1. I would think they should all be counted because whether they can vote or not, they ARE

represented by the people in office, and many may not be on the voting rolls this year, but could possibly be in future years. The census is only taken every 10 years. To deny they are people living in a district is ludicrous. They live there, may become voters before the next election, and are represented by the people who have been voted into office by the ones who can vote now.

[2naSalit]

3. I think that each district

should contain the same number of humans. That's the model used by the census bureau, if the districts are dependent on that data, they should follow through in Congressional representative district assignment. Any other criteria not requiring even representation should be unconstitutional, if it isn't already. No Rep. in the House should have a larger population than any other to represent thus leveling the playing field, or so I interpret it.

There are 435 congressional districts in the United States House of Representatives,[1] with each one representing approximately 700,000 people.[2] In addition to the 435 congressional districts, the five inhabited U.S. territories and the federal district of Washington, D.C. each send a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives. The Census Bureau within the United States Department of Commerce conducts a decennial census whose figures are used to determine the number of congressional districts within each state. The 2012 elections were the first to be based on the congressional districts which were defined based on the 2010 Census data.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_district

[2naSalit]

2. Certainly looks like it. nt

[Democat]

4. If American really had a one person one vote policy, Republicans would be out of power forever

The Senate's 46 Democrats got 20 million more votes than its 54 Republicans
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/3/7482635/senate-small-states