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from the non-voting-person-OR-non-person-voter dept.
The LA Times and just about every news outlet has a story about a Supreme Court case which could change how election districts are drawn up.
At issue before the court was the basic question of who gets counted when election districts are drawn: Is it all people, including children, prisoners and immigrants who are not eligible to vote? Or is it only adult citizens who are eligible voters?
The case centers around districts with heavy concentrations of people not eligible to vote (generally illegal aliens). These are counted by the census, and that district gets legislative representation based on their presence, even when there are fewer actual voters in those districts. The plaintiffs claim this give more weight to voters in such district, over an equal number of voters in other districts.
The challengers cited the example of two Texas state Senate districts, both of which have about 800,000 residents. One rural district in east Texas, where plaintiff Sue Evenwel resides, had about 574,000 citizens who are eligible to vote; the other district in the Rio Grande valley had only 372,000 people who are eligible to vote. The lawsuit in Evenwel vs. Abbott argues this is unconstitutional.
Do Soylentils see the allocation of election districts as a process to distribute legislative seats equally over the number of voters, or equally over the number of people (regardless of whether those people can vote or not)? (Or is this where we launch off on the usual discussions of a total redesign of the US Voting system to some totally different mathematical model?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:00PM
The whole problem disappears for a proportional representation system: Then the only thing that counts is how many votes were given for a party, not in which voting district those votes were given.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:23PM
If we're just gonna let kids vote, though, and also let whoever can get in and let them vote as well; then why be a country and have elections at all? Is destroying our national identity and what's left of our economy worth letting the Democrats have a few extra votes?
If I were president I would do away with work visa programs and station the National Guard at the borders with orders to shoot-to-kill anybody who tries to cross illegally. Next, I would round up all non-citizens and move them to labor camps, where their safety and educational needs would be met, though they would have to work 8 or more hours a day without pay in exchange for their basic needs being met. This would allow America to again have a productive and competitive manufacturing base, and all adult aliens who work for 5 years in the camps without trouble are given citizenship.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:31PM
You seem to be obsessed with the idea of kids voting, or else why do you bring it up in replies to posts which do not say anything about that topic?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:33PM
hi donald. I didn't know you were so internet savvy.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:46PM
I think he got lost. The Turkey Farm's down the hall and to the left.
Must have wandered in here by accident....
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:09PM
I found your post flame-bait-y but I'd like to respond to your issue with kids voting:
I don't understand the problem here: the government knows the age and home address of everyone in town, and only the kids parents and (great-...) grandparents get sent a personal voting pass, if they're citizens registered as living in that town.
How can the kids vote?? If they show up with a faked voting pass they get thrown in jail (possibly their parents, instead).
(Obviously I have misunderstood something about this whole article.)
And about your labor camps: that sounds a bit like old-fashioned capitalist industry before social-democracy: like "Batadorp" [wikipedia.org] in the Netherlands.
The "town" gates are usually closed, and the employees/inmates have to do their shopping in the company shop at company prices. Complaints means you're fired.
It's all clean and neat and hygienic, but don't step over the line, slave! Remember the difference between lords and serfs.
That was 1924, ethanol-fueled, I don't think people would like to return to those times?
PS if the whole world *were* allowed to vote in the USA election, I think they wouldn't vote all for the Democrats. Maybe 50-50 between the Democrats and the Green Party :-)
If I plot the center point of the BRICS on this special Inglehart Values Map [wikipedia.org], the world votes like Bosnia.
Social Democrats, who'd have thunk?
I read it's called an "Overton window" [wikipedia.org]: what do you consider normal in your society's politics?