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posted by martyb on Thursday December 10 2015, @11:14AM   Printer-friendly
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?)


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by scruffybeard on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:20PM

    by scruffybeard (533) on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:20PM (#274434)

    In my view, the 3/5ths clause is the strongest argument that demonstrates that the framers had intended that all people should be counted, regardless of their ability to vote.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:00PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:00PM (#274456)

    Except the fact that women (or, you know, half of the citizens of this country) counted for purposes of apportionment and districting but not for purposes of voting seems to put that into question.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by scruffybeard on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:24PM

      by scruffybeard (533) on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:24PM (#274473)

      Not sure I follow what you are saying. One of the questions before the court is what was the framers intended. How did they want the population counted for purposes of representation. From article one, "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." Women were free persons, and while they could not vote, they were to be counted for purposes of assigning representatives to congress from that state.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by fishybell on Thursday December 10 2015, @05:08PM

        by fishybell (3156) on Thursday December 10 2015, @05:08PM (#274519)

        Women were free persons, and while they could not vote, they were to be counted for purposes of assigning representatives to congress from that state.

        Exactly. The framers explicitly included all children and women who could not vote, and all slaves (or at least, 3/5ths of every slave) in the "respective Numbers." That not only implies, but is direct evidence that the constitution's final version (which was very much a compromise, which is often lost in today's discussions) explicitly included non-voters in the tally of how much representation a state would have.

        The 3/5ths argument may be a very strong argument for the framers wanting to give representation to non-voters, but the women and children argument is a fully 2/5ths stronger argument, which is what I believe the grandparent post was trying to explain.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:44PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:44PM (#274571)

          I think that they should give representative count to all citizens, of any age, prisoner or not. BUT they should NOT count illegal immigrants.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:51PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:51PM (#274579)

          explicitly included slaves

          FTFY, and it was the slavers that benefited from that particular clause. it doesn't help determine whether "free persons" should include non-voters.

      • (Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:39PM

        by curunir_wolf (4772) on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:39PM (#274623)

        That was superceded by the Fourteenth Amendment:

        But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

        So it's not as simple as you seem to think. You have to look at that, and the 19th (which gave women the right to vote). That is, after the War of Northern Aggression created a stronger central government, representation counting changed to eligible voters, not simply "persons".

        --
        I am a crackpot
        • (Score: 2) by Nollij on Friday December 11 2015, @04:32AM

          by Nollij (4559) on Friday December 11 2015, @04:32AM (#274805)

          representation counting changed to eligible voters, not simply "persons"

          Does that mean the next act of electioneering could be allowing convicted felons to vote in certain states?

  • (Score: 2) by Nollij on Friday December 11 2015, @04:30AM

    by Nollij (4559) on Friday December 11 2015, @04:30AM (#274804)

    the framers had intended that some people should be counted

    (I hate to do this, but FTFY)
    Remember, it was a compromise [wikipedia.org]. I'm not sure either side was on the right side of history there.