Discussion: Did SCOTUS Protect 'One Person, One Vote' From Future Conservative Attack?

Probably you don’t see the logic because there is none – unless one happens to be a Republiscum.

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this was an exceptionally scummy attempt by the Republican reactionaries to overturn the “one man one vote” decisions of Baker v. Carr and, particularly, Reynolds v. Sims (1964), which held that “Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.”

Sadly, this was not embraced unanimously by the Supreme Court justices, a couple of whom felt that it was perfectly fine for the votes of some people to be worth many times more than the votes of other people, an idea that before the advent of the Roberts court, decent people throughout the world, and even formally if not in practice totalitarian regimes, had cast in the landfill of history.

Somewhat separately, I am somewhat surprised that Justice Uncle Clarence Thomas has not yet called for the reinstitution of Plessy v. Ferguson.

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Well if they’re going to do that they best get in a hurry. You don’t have to be a clairvoyant or have a crystal ball to see what’s in store for America in November. It’s Cruz or Trump on the GOP’er ticket and neither of them has a chance. It doesn’t matter what folks say about a possible “narrow win”…not going to happen. That puts the Democrat in office “after the people have decided” and that Dem’s first order of biz will be to fill that SC vacancy. I don’t think obstruction will be an option given how the GOP’ers have handled the matter to date.

As soon as that Court’s tilt moves to the left the game changes. The GOP’er offense goes to the sidelines and the Democratic one takes the field. It’s always been that way. That puts the GOP grand agenda on hold for a decade or more.

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I agree…but they’d best get to pushing then. That Court is headed for big changes that will not accommodate any of the GOP’er crap it’s been validating for the last 20 years.

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This all looks like a groovy :sunglasses: motivation to boycott the election, if Bernie doesn’t get the Nomination (I’ve already emailed Sarandon).

We boycott
Trump or Cruz get elected
SCOTUS gets more regressive
Our votes count even less

Makes the revolution more pure…(like in them newsreels of other countries…TAKIN’ IT TO THE STREETS!!! :grimacing:)

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I think they are aware that they have a limited window. So they are busy making hay while the sun is shining, so to speak.

Which is my biggest concern with Garland. I would much rather have someone considerably younger in there so that slot is locked down for a few decades, instead of maybe one decade.

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The reporting here on TPM on this issue has been fantastic. I have one nit to pick, though. I really don’t think that “One person, one vote” captures the essence of the struggle.

Regardless of the outcome(s) on this issue, the same number of people will be able to vote in elections.

The effect will be to dilute the representation of those in areas where larger proportions of the population are not eligible voters. Everybody is entitled to equal representation, based on being a citizen, not necessarily an eligible voter, and the “one person, one vote” doesn’t capture this as the root of the problem.

Sadly, the court’s ruling doesn’t seem to have addressed the idea of equal representation, and have left the issue open for state legislatures to adopt other metrics than raw population (which will require further litigation to quash once and for all).

Bottom line, I really don’t think “One person, one vote” is the right way to refer to the issues at hand here.

EDIT: now having actually red the opinion, it uses the phrase “one person-one vote,” which it defines in terms of what I’ve argued above. Why we can’t simply call it equal representation is beyond me. Seems like the clarity would have prevented the rhetorical sniping surrounding the idea of voting as opposed to representation.

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I agree it was an attempt by the GOP to game the vote in their favor, just like voter ID laws and countless other bullshit measures that serve to suppress the vote. I also think “total population” is a valid method of drawing districts, but not necessarily the best way to determine districts, even though using total population helps the democrats (of which I am one).

Here’s my hypothetical. You have 2 districts that were drawn so that they have equal populations of 100,000. Let’s call them district 1 and district 2. In district 1, you have a high percentage of people who are not eligible to vote - 50%. In district 2 you have 100% of total population eligible to vote. In district 1 then, my vote is far more powerful, because it is 1 out of 50,000 eligible voters, as opposed to being 1 out of 100,000 eligible voters in district 2. Why should my vote be more potent than someone else’s just because I live in an area surrounded by ineligible voters?

I agree with “one man, one vote,” and I don’t think trees or acres should play any role in drawing electoral districts, but why should “one man, one vote” include multiple men (or women!) who aren’t allowed to vote? Shouldn’t it really be “one man who is eligible to vote, one vote”? It seems to me that’s the only way to ensure that all votes are equally weighted. By drawing districts based on eligible voters, you can ensure the equity of each vote.

It’s entirely possible I’m missing something here. Again, I get why it’s good for democrats. That doesn’t make it automatically right or equitable. So I guess my upshot is I agree with Ginsburg, we shouldn’t force states to abandon the total population model, but I think I also agree with Thomas/Alito that drawing districts based on eligible voters would also be Constitutional.

No doubt the conservative Koch puppets bringing the suits will keep trying. At this point, it should seem difficult to get certiorari.

If we are going to open up this can of worms, however, why stick to such limited options as total population vs eligible voters? Why not proportional representation? Why not wack the electoral college? Why not make the Senate proportional? Why not ranked or approval voting?

I realize all but the last require constitutional amendments, but why aim so low?

For the simple reason that those non-voting citizens in your hypothetical are still entitled to representation.

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This is actually a pretty weak message that Alito and Thomas were left sending. “Keep trying” or “try again, maybe you’ll come up with something that works” in the face of a 6 justice majority ruling (on just an 8 justice bench) is weak itself, but that majority ruling will pretty much mandate preliminary injunctions to prevent legislation from taking effect until SCOTUS has decided. All but the most exceptionally activist judge-shopped judges would grant them. The problem is all the fucking idiots that Dubya appointed. All they have to do is find one of them to go along with whatever scheme they’ve produced…although that would probably just get the issue fast-tracked to SCOTUSville. Anyhoo, it yet again highlights the fact that this time around it truly is the SCOTUS (stupid). So much else pales in comparison with that one vacancy hanging out there.

Again, television and the entire popular culture apparatus fails us. The two-fisted everyman of humble beginnings is a Hollywood favourite. Even though the “everyman” may not have been able to vote during the historical era the TV Drama places him in (due to property requirements). Sort of makes us more clueless as to the idea of socioeconomic status.

Power for the wealthier few is the Right Wing goal.

If the Right can snooker those whose “racial” consciousness inoculates them from socioeconomic reality, so much the better.

But I would advise people to think a little more like Europeans have had to do in the past.

[“They come for workers, they come for dissenters, they come for rabble-rousers, they come for communists, they come for slavs, they come for Jews, they come for YOU.”]

In denying rights, maybe those “racially” appropriately designated as will have the “upper hand”…but “race” is a variable concept.

And, besides, other separation methods are always available.

And they’d get it…to play my hypothetical out, you’d still have 2 districts. just split them up so that there’s equal numbers of eligible voters in each. 2 districts of 75,000 eligible voters each. You can try to divide up the non-eligible people any way you see fit, they’d still be in a district with access to representation. I guess the difference is, you’re concerned with “equal representation” in which each person, eligible voter or not, has equal representation, whereas I think it’s far more important that everyone who meets our eligibility criteria for voting (over 18 and a US citizen would be my only requirements, eliminating disenfranchisement of criminals) has an equal voting power in selecting their representative. Using total population solves equal representation, but at the expense of diluting the voting power of those in areas with high percentages of eligible voters.

“But her opinion saying Texas could use total population stopped short of addressing whether it could have used some other metric.”

Because there is no other metric!

No matter that cons want to make it about the white vote! There is no other metric!

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Being Conservative - it means never having to admit your wrong.

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Non voting citizens are still guaranteed representation.

Voting roles are constantly shifting and not particularly reliable data to build district maps with

Its a massive shift from how districts have always been drawn

Combine it with aggressive voting suppression techniques…like Alabama shutting down all the DMVs in heavily black districts, and you have a recipe for a complete subversion of elections. Which is the real intent behind this approach. “Sorry, we only count registered voters, and we aren’t going to allow your kind to register”

The founding issue has always been equal representation, not equal power of the vote. Just look at how Senators are elected…WY has just as much “power” in their votes as California. If you shift that principle to “power of the vote” you render the entire Senate invalid. And that pattern continues down to the state level as well.

The overwhelming history of the Constitution was focused on equal representation. In the beginning, it was only landed individuals that could vote…but the representatives were still divvied up by total population…hell, even slaves were counted (at 3/5ths) to determine the number of representatives.

If you want to change that foundational approach, then the Constitution needs to be amended.

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“The issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away,”

Because, maybe, we are equal first, whether we vote or not?

Where does it say “only voters have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.?”

Counting only voters to determine districts is anathema to the very concept of equal citizenship. It requires something other than “being” to qualify for those rights, and that is just wrong on the face of it.

Here’s a plan… an instant fix for all these issues…mandatory voting.

Those two words strike fear into the hearts of Republican elitists and obstructionists, more than any others except “profit control.”

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It figures that this will have a next chapter. The folks pushing to end ‘One person, One vote’ have way too much time on their hands, too much disposable $ and most of all, way too much ego to ever stop pushing their lunacy on to the rest of us.

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I started to write this yesterday after the decision was made and saw that this case is far from a done deal, in that Thomas did indeed indicate there could be other ways to approach this same legal question in the future…and redistricting is clearly one way Republicans have proven they have been able to get away with forever manipulating the voter roles, regardless of total population numbers.

For instance, once this back-assward court decimated the Voting Rights Act when Scalia was alive on a 5-4 vote, they left the door open for the states to come back again and again with new voter suppression schemes that gerrymandered districts at the state level. I suspect that’s what Thomas is alluding to, and is still holding out hope that this can be an avenue to skew the overall total population regarding the voter roles. In other words, go ahead States, try to have another bite at the apple, since they merely left it at not going with this particular challengers’ scheme regarding total population as a metric at this time.

Unfortunately, the rightwing Justices might still entertain total population challenges as a metric if it happened to onerously affect people of color (Blacks and Hispanics particularly) through other vote suppression measures such as politically motivated gerrymandering, which would continue to be a state-based rightwing objective resulting in efforts to benefit Republicans.

Ever since Section 5 of the VRA regarding pre-clearance was abolished in 2013 in Shelby v. Holder by SCOTUS, where certain districts once covered by this section used to have to go through the Justice Department, but which no longer exists, new challengers now can still go ahead with some other vote suppression scheme instead. What will happen then is those challenges may very well still end up in court, as opposed to having to go through pre-clearance and oversight by the VRA under Sec. 5 in advance of any election…and that itself would take time moving its way back up through the courts, still allowing for more shenanigans. Once an election is held, but before a case is heard, which let’s say results in a gerrymandered district thereby diluting the vote, there is very little chance that those election results would be nullified. I should add, that if a lower court does not place an injunction to stop the gerrymandered districting because of political sympathies with those that made up the district, nothing can stop it until it reaches a higher level court such as SCOTUS either. That’s pretty much what happened in Texas in 2003, even when Sec. 5 was applicable and still existed. The court only deemed one district to be illegally configured, but did so under Sec. 2 of the VRA, calling for a special election for that district…in 2006!

Am I wrong? I’m not a lawyer, but it does seem like the court did leave a lot still up in the air on this issue of one person, one vote.

So an election could very well proceed under some new scheme even while a challenge took place because the DoJ could no longer step in ahead of time to prevent it.

Tom DeLay at one time was able to get away with his redistricting efforts, later determined that one of those districts didn’t follow through with pre-clearance under Sec. 5 of the VRA, and even though it wasn’t even a census year. With his “help” and manipulation, he took Texas to a permanently Republican majority legislature…first time since reconstruction from what I read. Now that Sec. 5 is no longer…who’s to say someone wouldn’t try this shit again?

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but, but, but…why should a perfect document be amended?

seriously, the founders certainly must have supposed there might be a tea mob and a Trump someday, which is why they made the constitution amendable, so those idiots couldn’t co-opt it an pervert it for their personal profit.

oh, wait…