Discussion for article #237981
Another good decision. I am not sure how this is evasion. If it was put on a ballot than most states acknowledge that as law equivalent to the legislature acting. So, they should pretty much have equal weight, so long as they are not in violation of civil or religious freedoms.
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One for the good guys, two for the bad.
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YAY!
I was worried that the supremes would give license to gerrymander the districts back to our loser gop/bag legislature.
Itâs been a good week!
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WASHINGTON (AP) â The Supreme Court on Monday upheld Arizona congressional districts drawn by an independent commission and rejected a constitutional challenge from Republican lawmakers.
Kicks just keep gettinâ harder to findâŚ
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I think that the emphasis in the Constitutional provision at issue here is that the STATE rather than the FEDERAL government made decision on districts. The Constitution does not even require that a state have a legislature. Doesnât it seem strange that the court would interpret this provision in a way that would actually undermine the original intent of keeping the stateâs decision free from federal interference? Or that they would view the term legislature so narrowly and technically yet somehow interpret the term person broadly to include juridical creations of state law known as corporations?
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Personally this is a great decision. I live in AZ. Our leg. as you are aware is vindictive. Example: When the budget talks were going on in Nov.-Jan into this year the democrats were closed out. Not only were they not told when the meetings were gonna be held, they werenât told where. And Gov. Ducey had the gall to publicly say âWeâve been talking about this for weeks, everybody knows whatâs being discussed.â
The Leg. wants to control the completely. A super majority in the state legislature isnât enough for them. They also want only republicans send to Congress. Itâs like itâs illegal to be a democrat here.
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Love to see similar in all statesâŚ
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Iâd forgotten about this one and am very pleased. Many of us fought hard to get this initiative through in CA. I canât say whether itâs âworking,â but Iâm glad that this process is at least one step removed from sausage-making of the legislature.
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You are confusing the Court with the persons on it. The Conservatives are the ones who interpreted the term âpersonsâ so broadly and who are now demanding that the âtime,place and mannerâ also be interpreted broadly to thwart the will the people by allowing the state legislatures to engage in gerrymandering. Nothing in that provisions states that the state legislatures are to have power over districting.
And the principles of democracy trumps statesâ rights.
Because of their exclusionary, self-serving, compassionless policies and proclamations, Republicans have not been able to garner significant percentages of the votes from key demographic sectors of the electorate. Therefore, they have opted for a different approach â reduce the number of these citizens who are able to vote and/or minimize the impact of their vote.
To that end, we have already seen â and, despite the ruling of the SCOTUS, expect to continue to see â Republican-controlled state legislatures renew their efforts to create voter eligibility roadblocks and engage in the deliberate manipulation of election districts so that white conservative, sparsely populated rural regions have a disproportionately larger impact on elections than do multi-ethnic, heavily populated urban centers.
Basing voting district borders on a regionâs land area rather than its population size is not only unethical, it defies logic ⌠unless your motivation is to rewrite the rules of American democracy to give your party an unfair advantage.
Using aforementioned gerrymandered districts to determine Electoral Vote allocation in a presidential election is an affront to the fundamental tenets upon which our Great American Experiment is based. Enter the modern Republican Party, a shining beacon of Machiavellian methodology.
In states with an initiative processes, the voters on an initiative ballot proposition are the legislative body. Should have gone 9â0.
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Can anyone explain what the conservativesâ argument was here? Whatâs the claim that an independent commission, however roundabout its members were appointed, are not part of the state deciding boundaries? The governor could draw them all by himself and that would still be a Constitutional method of doing it.
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The main argument was the independent commission (4 republicans, 4 democrats and one independent) were biased such that they chose to favor democrats running for Congress. In the 1st election using this system AZ sent 5 democrats and 4 republicans to Washington. In 2014 it was 5 republicans and 4 democrats so I believe their argument that the system as voted on by the people of Arizona is wrong to be specious and without any logical merit whatever. The commission is proven to be unbiased. What our state legislature wants is 100% republican representation in Washington, nothing less will do. In actuality registered voters here in Arizona are 34% republican, 29% democrat and the balance independent
Whatâs interesting is that the conservative version would actually remove freedom from states and their legislatures in the matter of regulating elections. If you rule against nonpartisan commissions (canât call them entirely independent, because the legislature could abolish them by vote, after all), then you have the federal government saying âyou can regulate the manner of elections, but only within the bounds we set.â And once you start down that roadâŚ
No, they werenât arguing the merits of the boundaries themselves; they were claiming that because the board was set up as a result of a citizen initiative rather than by the legislature, and the legislature or governor didnât directly select the commissioners, that meant it wasnât âthe stateâ determining how the election was run and the whole process was unconstitutional. Which seems so absurd on its face that itâs amazing they even got the whackos on the court to go along with it, let alone Roberts.