bbauska wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/us/politics/supreme-court-to-hear-arguments-on-one-person-one-vote.html?_r=0I must say that this is a surprise that the case is even before the Supreme Court. Should voting districts be based upon eligible voters or everyone (Children, disenfranchised felons, illegal aliens et. al.) that is in a district? As much as I feel that the representative is responsible for all in his/her district, the districts need to be based upon all who can legally vote.
To give more representation based on those who cannot vote is to imbalance the electorate.
A felon who is disenfranchised is that for a reason of their own choosing.
A child get vote at 18 (Amendment).
Illegal aliens get the vote when naturalized.
To base voting representation upon something that is not yet achieved is "sliding the scale" prematurely.
It is a bit of a surprise as the Constitution is crystal clear on this for the Federal districting for the House:
Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 wrote:Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse [sic] three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
"Persons", not "Citizens" and certainly not "Voters". "free" meant non-slaves, and I believe that the 3/5 rule is now moot following Emancipation. Not sure where untaxed Indians come into it - I suppose that's the deal with many reservations?
I understand that this case is about the Texas Senate, but of course there is the rub - If the "equal protection clause" applies, but can't override the explicit use of total persons at a Federal level, would that not be inconsistent? And so potentially unequal?
The way I see it, a representative would usually have case work that comes from non-voters. Also, all of those children who are citizens will become voters later (and some will do during the period before the next apportionment). The real distortion to equal weighting of votes is the use of the first past the post system of elections, which means that differential turnout and the number of districts that are "safe" or "swing" has much more of an effect on whether a voter in one place has more or less influence than a voter elsewhere.
If you really want all votes to count equally, then you would need a proportional system, which would be completely based on the number of actual voters, rather than the electorate in total or the population. But again, that would not be in any way consistent with the clause in the USC above.
[additional as I cross-posted with my compatriot...]
Sass is correct that in the UK we work on voters rather than population, but that was only at a local level until recently. For the Parliamentary elections the current boundaries were based on population rather than the size of the electorate. The boundary review that was carried out a few years ago and then dropped was the first to use electorate instead. So if that is resurrected (or, as I suspect due to the passage of time, another review is carried out), that would be the first time for the General Election that follows.
The EU base parliamentary seats for each country based on population rather than electorate - although it is regressional so larger countries are under-represented. Within the UK, our multi-member regions are now allocated seats from the UK total based on electorate.