Posted on 06/30/2004 10:40:47 AM PDT by BlessedByLiberty
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that redistricting plans for Georgia's state legislature violated the constitutional "one person, one vote" principle in a defeat for state Democrats who put forward the proposal. The justices affirmed a ruling in February by a three-judge federal court panel that threw out the legislative map for the state House of Representatives and Senate as unconstitutional.
The lower court found a deliberate and systematic policy of favoring rural and inner city interests in the redistricting plans at the expense of suburban areas around Atlanta.
It also found an intentional effort to help Democrats maintain or increase their numbers in the state legislature by underpopulating districts held by Democrats, overpopulating districts held by Republicans and pairing numerous incumbent Republicans against one another.
Under landmark Supreme Court rulings, every person's vote must essentially count equally, something that would not happen if voting districts were redrawn so that the number of voters in each would favor one party over another.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
The use of "one person, one vote" and "Democrats" in the same sentence is an oxymoron...
I think it refers to the GA State Constitution.
At first glance, it seems as though the Court may have gotten something right.
See...now, what we have here is a failure to communicate. Now, if you'll just refer back to the decision of the U.S. Soo-preme Court, and get your'n head out of your butt, then I'll think we'll get along just dandy!
If Georgia House districts are drawn fairly, the GOP stands a good chance of taking over the House as well as the Senate. Its the Democrats last ditch effort to stave off the inevitable.
Wesberry v Sanders 1964
Actually, according to the Constitution originally, senators were not voted on, but were appointed by the states. As someone on another thread pointed out, the original plan was for the people to elect the House of Representatives, the state governors to appoint the Senate, and the state legislators to elect the President (through the appoinment of the electors to the Electoral College). The founders were very big on separating powers...
Did that ruling say that the number of Democrats and Republicans must be perfectly balanced in each district?
It's based on the Equal Protection Clause and was originally ruled in Baker v Carr which involved Tennessee's failure to reapportion legislative districts for over 60 years. Two years afterward it was extended to congressional apportionment via Wesberry v Sanders.
no, just one man one vote. The case came out of Georgia. The court noted that Article I, Section 2 declares that representatives shall be chosen "by the People of the several States" and shall be "apportioned among the several States.....according to their respective numbers...." This meant "as nearly as practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's."
"Does anyone have a pointer to the decision where they decided that the Constitution required "one man, one vote"? Given that the US Senate violates this principle, I'd like to see where they found it."
A case name has already been posted. The first case involved Tennessee, where the state constitution specified that there should be a reapportionment of the state legislature every ten years based on the national census. That hadn't been done for roughly 50 years if I recall correctly. The Tennessee courts refused to do anything about it. So the US Supreme Court created the "one man, one vote" doctrine whole cloth. The best rationale might have been based on the ability of the Federal government to assure a republican form of government to the various states, but my recollection (now very stale) is that it did not.
The problem was not that they had more Dems than Republicans in particular districts - that is done all the time, on both sides. The problem was that they did not keep substatially equal population in each district. For example, they might have only have 50,000 people in a district that was 55%-45% Dem -Rep, but put 150,000 in a district that is 90%-10% Rep-Dem. By packing more Republicans into fewer, larger districts they reduced the number of possible seats the republicans could win. (My numbers are exaggerated to illustrate the point.)
Switched to Mozilla Firefox and all was well. Guess I need to delete all the shortcuts to IE to avoid this happening again.
Extending the courts ruling (if I'm understanding it correctly) to a logically historic conclusion Therefor we should ban the Repubican Party -- any third or fourth or moreth party -- from the ballot -- from any official allowance whatsoever. Why? Only WHIGS and FEDERALISTS are allowed. Sorry.
No one is requiring that the parties be balanced within districts, only that the total population be balanced between districts. I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make, but whatever it is almost certainly involves some misunderstanding on your part..
My take on the decision is that the deviation in population per district was not small and random, but was substantial and correlated with rural/urban, white/black and other factors. Therefore, there was a purpose to the deviation in population per district.
It is well established that the U.S. Constitution allows for gerrymandering districts, so that almost any shape district will be allowed (there is a limit), BUT ... the districts must have substantially the same number of persons. (State constitutions might impose other requirements.)
The Georgia state legislature not only gerrymandered districts, they systematically over-loaded Republican districts. Hence the ruling.
Hmm.. Well, I'm uncertain whether that decision was based on New Jersey law or the U.S. Constitution so I can't give you a clear answer. In most states, Assembly and Senate districts do not overlap at all so something is going on with New Jersey that doesn't apply nationwide.
Moreover, court rulings have left a whole lot more leeway when it comes to legislative districts than they do when it comes to congressional districts. Legislative districts can differ by as much as 10% in population whereas congressional districts need to adhere as closely as possible to one-person/one-vote.
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