Posted on 05/03/2011 6:14:52 PM PDT by americanophile
In one of its first acts, the new Citizens Redistricting Commission has decided to ignore the United States and California Constitutions by in effect repealing the historical “one person one vote” rule that has been law in America for 47 years.
They did this by telling their staff to draw districts that will clearly violate constitutional population standards. This is so their final maps can over represent liberal areas of California that are losing population, such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and then under represent the more conservative inland areas of California that are growing.
(Excerpt) Read more at fairthelines.org ...
Who’s job is it to see that the constitution is not violated during redistricting?
Apparently no one. I’m sure we’ll have to litigate, as usual.
Wow. 47 whole years.
Eric Holder.
The one person, one vote decision has nothing to do with the constituion.
The one person, one vote decision distorted representative government. It did not enhance it. Before it, in representative legislatures, towns were represented in at least one house, with even representation, the big cities even with the small towns. After it, the heavily populated areas had clout with nothing to balance them. Towns were no longer represented, but became part of “districts.”
... that was unconstitutional and anti-republican since its inception.
BTTP, for later read
There is something a little odd about my fellow FReepers, many of whom want to repeal the 17th Amendment, objecting to repealing the one-man-one-vote decision. The main import of that decision was to impose a Federal judge’s idea of democracy on states whose constitutions had the same sort of anti-democratic, republican structure reflected in the equal representation of the states in the U.S. Senate. Prior to that decision, some states, notably the states whose proper name begins “The Commonwealth of” (Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Virginia) had upper houses with an equal number of representatives from each county (or town in the case of Massachusetts) irrespective of population. The prevented Pennsylvania politics (the one I’m most familiar with, having grown up there) from being dominated by Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to the detriment of the rural part of the state.
Usually the courts.
That is correct. There was a series of Warren Court rulings that directed all state senates to have equal population on the basis of "one man, one vote," notably Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims Prior to that time, the State Senate was apportioned by region, much the way the US Senate is divided by states.
Needless to say, the constitutionality of the ruling was absurd and functionally damaged representation in much the same fashion as the 17th Amendment, but given your snarky comment, I'll leave it to you to figure out why.
Long time no see Carry_Okie. I think you should go ahead and explain why this latest fraud is small potatoes compared to the SCOTUS fraud.
the Constitution does not give anyone a right to vote. It only says in what ways the right can not be denied someone.
You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.
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