Discussion for article #236788
These( people?) never sleep.
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What can of worms would a ruling for the plaintiffs open? Would the US be required to conduct two census takings? How would that affect overall Congressional representation? Would Texas lose seats if they are so disadvantaged as alleged? How would a census of voters affect all the allocation formulas for various federal aid? There are just so many aspects of governing that are dependent on the US Census. Also, what are the costs of conducting the in-depth 'prove youāre eligible to vote; census, and who will pay? I can just hear it - a poll tax pay-tp-play.
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Big can of worms! Maybe we can count them as 3/5 of a person? What about underage citizens, they canāt vote?
The census is every 10 years. In ten years, many underage voters will become eligible to vote, how do we handle that?
What about non citizens who become citizens during that time? We also know fairly accurately how many people will die in that 10 year period. Should we deduct for those or is that discriminating against angry old white men?
(Disclaimer- Iām a 60 plus white male.)
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The only part of the plaintiffsā claim I would consider is the part about representation for the sake of electoral districts is with regards to ārepresentationā to the actual legal population ā but, IMHO, that would include ALL legal folks, not excluding all those born on American soil; all age ranges regardless if they are of age to vote as they are legal citizens and still need representation; felons, even if they are ineligible to vote ā they are still legal citizens and worthy of representation; college students in the towns/cities in which they reside most of the year; etc. āLegal folksā most definitely includes children born on U.S. soil, regardless of parentsā citizenship.
To me, representation of a localityās population doesnāt exclude those who donāt or canāt vote (so long as the individual is a legal citizen).
Anyone elseās thoughts?
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Myself, a (nearly) 50-year old white man, I have no problem with leaving it the way itās been. That said, the only real valid point the plaintiffs make is with regards to a personās actual citizenship. I can understand, for numbers and representation purposes, counting those who are counted as ācitizenā ā but, as I explain just below your post, I believe that would include ALL legal citizens, regardless of age, voting history, past felonies, etc. Even the tiniest newborn needs to be counted.
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I would like to know when, or maybe a better question if, the American people are going to wake up to the slo-mo coup by the hard right, that is almost complete in undermining the republic and instituting oligarchy. It was reported yesterday that Jeb Bush listed as one of his main influences a guy who wrote a book calling for the elimination of democracy and a total takeover by the ultra-rich. This has obviously been the program since Reagan, they all support it, but Bush is the first one stupid enough to admit it.
Time is shorter in this arena even than in Global Warming, because the oligarchy is already in place and functioning, just not official.
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As always, I have to ask why your commenting system is so complex. I still havenāt figured out how to reply to another comment. Why reinvent the wheel, and make it more complicated? K.I.S.S.
(Keep it simple stupid.)
the reply button with the arrowy thing always works for me when making simply stupid replies.
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Having seen EVERY commenting system TPM has ever foisted upon itsā readership?
I can point to one aspect that makes it worthwhile.
No trolls. None.
When they arrive? They are exposed and expunged.
This system is proprietary, relying on itsā own login credentials-- not a social media plug-in.
For this reason alone-- it truly is a good system.
jw1
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Indeed! Rightie Cons and Baggers and their political servants are like termites, constantly eating away at the very foundation of our republic.
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Too be fair, I thought this article was just going to list the five justices that might overturn the aforementioned One Person, One Vote principle.
I was reading somewhere that this would give more power to rural areas, but couldnāt wrap my head around the math. If districting is changed to the subset of citizens / eligible voters, apparently aimed at undocumented urban folks, wonāt that a) reduce the size of the overall population for a stateās representation and b) move rural voters into urban areas, thus diluting their power?
Seems like the bigger impact would be to any states with large groups of undocumented people that would lose proportionally to states with more citizen / votersā¦
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The Constitution clearly states that the Representatives are there to ārepresentā ALL residents of their districts, not just the āones who can voteā.
Whatās next? Claiming that Blacks are 3/5 of a person part of the Constitution is still in effect? (the āOriginalistā argument.)
The march of the (John Bircher Billionaires funded) Fascists continues; āWrapped in the Flag and Carrying a Crossā (and an AR-15.)
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How many Representatives and Electoral College votes does Texas want to forfeit under this scheme? They canāt count people for the purpose of inflating their Washington delegation, but not count them for the purpose of who gets represented where. Otherwise theyāre unconstitutionally diluting the votes of people in other states, who donāt hire workers illegally and donāt have Duggar sized families.
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I support āone person, one voteā and would argue to keep the status quo. However, if the nation is eventually forced to go through with these stupid politically motivated adjustments to the House of Representatives, then it will be time to attack the fact that every state regardless of population has two senators with two votes. Let them have two senators, as specified in the Constitution, but give each of them decimal fraction votes based on half the fraction of the total population in their state. That may not have been the intent of the Founders, but neither is this crap of chipping away of the right of persons to vote. (I donāt mean that corporations or fetuses are persons, by the way, nor did the Founders.)
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In Texas, this would doubly affect/dilute the RWNJ-rural vote as the major-metro areas are unabashedly liberal.
The more I consider it-- I might just welcome it.
jw1
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I expressed great alarm about this yesterday. And this is the Roberts Court weāre talking about, so thereās good reason to be alarmed. But there are two very important points Iāve discovered since then only alluded to in this article:
First, this is a direct appeal from a three judge District Court. Federal civil civil rights laws provide for fact finding by a panel of three district court judges rather than by a jury. Thereās no right to a jury trial because the causes of action created by civil rights acts are totally unlike anything in existence in 1787 (and not just because they entail gasp! the horrorgiving rights to women, unpropertied men and slaves minorities).
Even more unique, however, is that the loser in a case tried before one of these three-judge panels has a direct right of appeal to the Supreme Court. This is one of the last vestigial remnants of Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction, i.e cases the Supreme Court is required to take. So this isnāt a case where at least four justices had to vote to hear it. They had to take it even if each and every one of them did not want to do so. Doesnāt mean some of them didnāt want to. Thomas, for example, has filed several concurrences or dissents indicating that heās been itching to fuck the law over in just the way proposed by the assholes behind this lawsuit for years.
Second, the appeal is from a procedural question only: whether these plaintiffs had an individual right to sue about this. Specifically, the plaintiffs are appealing from a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That is the only issue properly before the Court. There is no record before the Court from which it could possibly reach the merits of the case and, in the absence of such a record a strong argument could be made that it lacks jurisdiction to do so because it would be, in effect, issuing an advisory opinion, a thing federal courts may not do under Article III of the Constitution (as interpreted by the Court over the last couple of centuries).
To say a ruling on the merits āis not guaranteedā very significantly understates the case. Any such ruling would be extraordinary, completely beyond the pale, a gross and shocking exercise of raw judicial activism of a kind no legal observer would ever have imagined the Supreme Court doing . . . during the century and a half between the uproar over the Dred Scott opinion that nearly destroyed the Court and the issuance of Bush v. Gore, which did not but should have.
And thereās the rub. Bush v. Gore seems to have led the conservatives to believe that the entire notion that excessive judicial activism would undermine the legitimacy and authority of the Court and that the Courtās credibility must be carefully hoarded for the once in a lifetime cases where raw judicial activism is necessary was all a lot of hooey and they can do any goddamn thing they want.
Remember how shocked Jeffery Toobin was by the dissents in the ACA case and Robertsā refusal to uphold it on Commerce Clause grounds? Yeah, like that. None of us lawyers are really shocked by shit like that anymore. Instead, weāre looking nervously over our shoulder worried about what happens to us and to the entire legal system once the concept of rule of law has finally collapsed.
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ā¦thus proving the SupremeCorporation is bereft of ethics.
People like you, me and others who keep up on things have had this concern for some time. Weāre already in a 2nd Gilded Age. This case could be one that solidifies oligarchy in this country.
Courts compliant with oligarchy is a step toward fascism (and thatās not invoking Nazis or Hitler).
The average person has NO idea of the profound effect these things will have on their lives collectively.
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Thanks. This is great old skool TPM discussion.
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