Why not just propose a Constitutional amendment?
Rich Christian White Guys: 10 votes
Everyone else: no votes
All you need now is 67 votes in the Senate, 290 votes in the House, and approval from 75% of the state legislatures.
Won’t be a piece of cake, but it would probably come closer to success than logic might suggest, sadly.
Yep.
Your last paragraph should go viral. Absolutely what we are dealing with.
“Plutocrats don’t like to cede influence, and they’re not taking it lying down like progressives so often do. They have long-term commitment, and the patience, strategy, and tactics to get the job done. They are real-life super-genius villains on par with the most vile of those depicted in fantasy comic books, but this ain’t no fucking fantasy.”"
This has been apparent for years, and here we are like little kindergarteners amazed by their accomplishments. We do not do this kind of thing, and we are losing.
And eligible voters do just that. Ineligible voters can’t vote.
District size is constant at about, what, 800,000 people per district? I forget… I think it’s the number of districts at issue, not district size in either population or geography.
EDIT: Let’s see: 320 million people divided by 435 Representatives = 735632.18 people per district. For argument’s sake, we’ll count the 0.18 of a person as a teabagger.
In my very limited understanding of the subject, that’s why one man - one vote was enshrined as a principle and an apportionment of numbers of districts was made in a manner so as to keep district size constant. Before that, places whose district boundaries were made based on criteria other than keeping population constant diluted the influence of each individual voter in more densely populated districts.
My own layman’s thinking is that since Congressional districts have a direct effect on how the Federal government interacts with its citizens, and since even those who can’t vote are subject to those policies, benefits, and taxes, theoretically at least our elected representatives are doing their job for everyone who lives in their district — whether or not a person happens to be registered to vote, is a convicted felon and deprived of that right, or whatever.
Just because you aren’t registered to vote doesn’t mean you aren’t represented. Don’t forget: everyone pays taxes, even the so-called “illegal alien” these people rail against.
It is an odd thing to even consider really. I do not see how this is really even discriminating against anybody. It would be like a conservative suing because they live in New Your and the state goes blue. I just do not understand the logic behind this challenge that much.
I mean this is sort of what the voter ID laws and purges wanted to do all along. It would then create issues among the roles themselves and really mess with districting. Add to that restrictions on voter registrations and this may be the end game for the GOP. If you cannot win at the polls over time than change the rules.
Thanks for a calm, reasoned response. I wasn’t considering the part that all are taxed, legal or not. By the same token, funds being allocated to a district would be by impacted population and not by voters.
The article in TPM is factually incorrect. The challengers propose districts be roughly equal in both total population and voters.
By bringing this challenge under the Equal Protection Clause, if the courts find for the plaintiffs then voters will become a protected class under the Equal Protection Clause. That could mean that the voter ID laws may fall on Constitutional grounds and we will have “an affirmative right to vote” that we do not now possess.
In addition to the reasons given by other replies, “eligible voter count” is readily manipulated. If you create incentives to manipulate eligibility, you will see a lot of manipulation of eligibility.
There is no “official” count of eligible voters equivalent to the census. Voter rolls are generally maintained at the county level, with a wide range of resources, policies, procedures, technologies, and ethics applied to maintenance of the lists.
State legislators have some leeway in determining the rules for eligibility. The easiest item to manipulate is residency rules (great for disqualifying large numbers of college students), but legislators have a lot of other rules they could put in place that would favor certain groups. For example, strict rules about notifying voter registrars when you move would favor homeowners over renters.
Mostly, though, you just need to know that the sole reason the effort exists is to put even more power in the hands of groups that have higher turnout – the wealthier, the older, the more whitened.
There is no way to accurately determine the number of eligible voters in a district. The voter rolls show the number of registered voters, but that doesn’t include those who are eligible but not registered. In addition, how could you check to see if someone is eligible? Take their word for it? That could lead to massive amounts of fraud.
You can, if you want, make the abstract argument. The reality is that Republicans embrace this policy for no other reason than it would reduce the influence of minority voters. If the statistics were reversed and the policy increased the influence of minority voters, Republicans would wrap themselves in the flag and howl bloody murder opposing it.
It’s just like making the distribution of Electoral votes proportional. Not a bad policy maybe, if applied universally, but for some odd reason, the R’s are hot for applying it to states where the D’s are usually the winners who take all, yet get all ho-hum about promoting it in states where R’s are the take-all winners.
Yep – that occurred to me too – the census is prescribed by the Constitution, and it is the basis for apportionment of districts. As it is, people get all freaked out about answering even the simplest questions – one could only imagine adding a question about being an eligible voter!
Consider too that even with using the census, undocumented immigrants are sorely under-reported because of fear of deportation. So while those seeking to redistribute power to the gullible might contend this is about the undue influence of illegal aliens in our government (never mind that Citizens United turns a blind eye to foreign interests dumping unrestricted amounts of money into our elections anonymously) that’s a bogus diversion as it always is.
EDIT: thinking about it some more, we have 435 Representatives, divided among the states by state population, and then divided (i.e., gerrymandered) geographically within the states into Congressional districts. So this affects the Federal level, doesn’t it?
States have been gerrymandering for years, but they do it with the number of Reps they’ve been given to work with. We lost a Dem district locally last census cycle because my state lost a seat, and the right wing state house gerrymandered the remainder to squeeze out the Democrat.
Point being, if apportionment by eligible voters is thought to favor Republicans, they must believe enough people now counted in blue states would be eliminated from the process to yield a net gain in House seats to red states. Seems to me states like Texas and Arizona might lose seats in that scuffle, but it’s said Texas anyhow might be turning blue.
So if you are a 17 year old and you can’t register to vote yet, you are invisible?
Makes you wonder what makes a man devote his life to 18th century evil.
Look at Florida in 2000. They dropped/purged about 180,000 of voters from their list of eligible voters. Thousands and thousands of them were dropped falsely, no felony convictions, a similar name to a felon, etc. So in addition to trying to disenfranchise a certain demographic and not allowing them to vote (because it never seems to be middle class white people that accidentally get purged) the districts they live in are further disenfranchised for not having their constituents even counted as people.
This is all about race. But, it is ironic that they claim that it is having a disproportionate impact on “rural” votes. Last time I looked, everyone from South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming had a lot more voting power in the House (the Senate is out of balance by definition) than residents of larger states given that these small population, predominately rural states get at least 1 house seat when they should get only a fraction of a seat based on population. But, that is not how our system works.
Well he genuinely believes white people are superior and you have to give him credit for trying to fix the American political process to reflect that by political means and so preserve the system by keeping it, in his mind, worth preserving. It’ a pathetic rear guard action however as the superior rational technological world whites have created is breaking down. Just as all empires do because of hubris,vanity, and corruption.
I’m not concerned about this one bit:
I wear Nikes
I’m on social media
I’ll be a millionaire one day
I’m just going to say whoever counts towards parceling out the Representatives, and therefore the Electoral College votes, should count the same when drawing up the districts. I don’t know how traitor state officials drew up their districts when the 3/5 compromise was in effect, but I do know they at least drew them without any sophisticated computer algorithms, which are capable of drawing up whichever boundary the redistricter’s agenda demands.
Only if this goes for US Senate seat distribution too
Non-citizens are not suppose to vote, so how does not counting them elimate their voting rights?