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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: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:15PM
Some of the Texas districts are pretty insane. When I live there, there was one district that basically followed the highway from San Antonio to Austin, and then carved out one Austin neighboorhood. Another was actually broken into separate non-continuous pieces. It's all designed to defend incumbents.
Really, there ought to be a simple rule requiring contiguous districts, and setting an upper limit on the ratio of circumferences to surface area. Of course, the incumbents would have to vote for any such changes, so it ain't gonna happen...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @05:23PM
Yeah, I think we need to put forth state amendments that the redistricting is done by math, not legislative vote:
1) All legislators are allowed to submit maps for each redistricting.
2) All submitted maps are considered for suitability: Must cover entire state with exactly one district, must have the right number of districts, least populous district % (eg. 95%) of most populous one, etc.
3) Final map is the one that is submitted, and suitable that minimizes the total perimeter. Additionally, perimeters can be counted as a lesser percent if they are existing boarders (county lines, previous district boarder, etc.)
No vote, just a committee applying math to the maps, (with judicial oversight if needed) so the map chosen could have been the one proposed by the lone representative of a 3rd party, if they can get the right map. Yes, all parties will still try to get the 'best' map for their party, but they will have to compete with, rather than push out, the minority parties.
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Friday December 11 2015, @04:49AM
And how do you think the committee will be chosen? Or the judges that oversee the committee?
Gerrymandering is not a new concept. We just haven't been able (or willing) to do what it takes to get rid of it.