Yesterday the Supreme Court (ruling only on a narrow procedural issue, not the merits) gave the go-ahead to a suit challenging Maryland’s outlandish Congressional districting map, and three other pending merits cases indicate the Court’s renewed interest in redistricting and allied topics. I’ve got a post at Cato tying together the latest developments with my own work on redistricting reform in Maryland (earlier on which). Meanwhile, my colleague Ilya Shapiro counters the editors of USA Today on the just-argued case of whether population equality among districts should be based on numbers of persons, including such groups as children and non-citizens, or on numbers of persons eligible to vote, allowing him a rare chance to work the old term “rotten boroughs” from parliamentary history. More on the Evenwel oral argument from Ilya and from Andrew Grossman.
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Even without reform, the worst abuses of gerrymanders can be restrained by the open primary, as in California. In one -party districts the important date is no longer a party primary dominated by extreme activists, but rather the general election, when one of the two run-off candidates will show interest in centrist and even opposition voters.
Instead of party primaries, party conventions can decide who has the right to display a “Democrat”, “Republican”, or “Libertarian” label next to their ballot listing.
I have seen some Libertarian Party activists complain that their party gets less visibility under California’s open primary; nevertheless, it is a better deal for previously impotent small-L libertarian voters.
Two points: One: Parliamentary Constituencies in the United Kingdom are based entirely on the number of voters. There is close to universal registration there with the voting officials being active in updating the rolls so it reflects the true number of eligible citizens.
There are somewhat minor glitches: someone with two houses is often registered at both (but can only vote at one of them) which overpopulates areas of second homes such as the Cotswolds–David Cameron’s constituency as it happens. Also, people who move are often left on the rolls for a long time which tends to “overpopulate” areas of declining population.
The other point is that single member districts are inherently subject to democracy distorting situations both intended (gerrymandering) and happenstance (no representation for a diffuse minority). A solution, certainly not mainstream today, is some system of proportional representation (there are several varieties). I wrote a long essay on the problems with both single member districts and varieties of proportional representation “Of Wasted Votes and No Influence” 35 Houston Law Review 1119 (1998) if anyone wants to explore the issues further.
Amendment 14, Section 2, says this:
“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
The language looks pretty clear to me. Persons, not voters. How is this even debatable? The specific language here trumps any other general notion of fairness that people might invent. You can’t change this without an amendment any more than you can unilaterally dissolve the electoral college because it gives certain voters more influence.
And if you’re going to say that’s fine for federal districts but not for state ones – I have to ask about how much hypocrisy it would take for the federal government to deny the states the ability to choose to do things the exact same way the Constitution says the federal lines should be drawn.
You can argue that we SHOULD do it based on voters, but there’s no way the Supreme Court should be forcing states to do that. Heck, when the Court enforces its opinion as binding law like that, the elections barely even matter anyway.
Any chance they will put an end to gerrymandering?