Posted on 05/26/2015 7:52:50 AM PDT by GIdget2004
The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear an important case about whether states must count only those who are eligible to vote, rather than the total population, when drawing electoral districts for their legislatures.
The case from Texas could be significant for states with large immigrant populations, including Latinos who are children or not citizens. The plaintiffs claim that redrawing electoral districts based on the population of citizens and non-citizens alike violates the constitutional requirement of one person, one vote.
The challengers claim that taking account of total population can lead to vast differences in the number of voters in particular districts, along with corresponding differences in the power of those voters.
The Project on Fair Representation is funding the lawsuit filed by two Texas residents. The group opposes racial and ethnic classifications and has been behind Supreme Court challenges to affirmative action and the federal Voting Rights Act.
The court's 1964 ruling in Reynolds v. Sims established the one person, one vote principle and means that a state's legislative districts must have roughly the same number of people. But the court has never determined whether the state must count everyone or just eligible voters — or have some leeway to choose.
A ruling for the challengers would shift power to rural areas and away from urban districts in which there are large populations of immigrants who are not eligible to vote because they are children or not citizens.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
If you are not a citizen then you are not a member of the POPULATION.
College students are transients.
So are tourists.
So are migrant workers.
Illegals should be considered invisible as far as calculating is concerned...as well as their children who were illegals born in the us. The children have dual citizenship and should be shipped back home with mamma and papa.
This will have more effects than just redistricting for state elections. Allotment of congressional seats would also be affected.
The same issue which at one time caused slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person.
Is it constitutional to count voters instead of population when drawing up congressional districts? I thought the constitution wanted it by population. So in theory you could have a congressional district with 0 eligible voters. I side with the constitution over common sense.
Not all college students are transients. Some are fully emancipated adults. Some are dependents on their parents’ 1040, others are not.
The Constitution as written doesn’t enter into it much. This seems to be about one-man-one-vote, which isn’t in the Constitution but is an invention of the Supreme Court in the 1960s.
That said, the original two-thirds rule for slaves might be used by both sides of this argument.
If people aren’t registered to vote, what percent of them would be assumed to eligible until they did register?
The question in Texas is whether, when cobbling together legislative districts, for the purposes of meeting federal voting rights standards, the new legislature counts total populations or total eligible populations, i.e., voting age populations.
To cite one of many possible examples, and though the Court is now rumored to be having second thoughts, in Indiana a few years ago the criteria set for qualifying as a "Majority Minority" district in many states became 50 percent "plus one" voting age Black/Non-Hispanic.
The Democrats and their auxiliary cadres, the Sorosistas tried very hard (particularly in the South) to advocate what they call "an Influence District," with standards far below 50 percent TOTAL VOTING AGE BLACK POP, e.g. 40 percent and lower, for the purposes of spreading this dependable voting block over a greater number of districts, and secondarily to allow White socialists to win Democrat primaries to go on to be elected to represent large and dependable black populations.
The self-appointed Black Ruling Classes and grievance hustlers argued in favor of this criteria out of loyalty to the Democrat-Socialist party interests over and above any "race consciousness."
This case is a hair-splitting attempt to dilute the 50 percent-plus one definition of a minority-majority district, to create "influence districts" yet again, by getting the Court to redefine their criteria.
The Socialists and their cadres will do anything... Anything.
60 colleges in the Boston area, many are not locals. Some register to vote at home and in Boston.
College students are not exclusively transients, no, but in “college towns” their numbers are artificially boosted by those who do not live there during the summer or week long holidays. They can even come from someplace else in the state.
These cities are noticeably empty when the visitors have left.
Arizona’s congressional delegation is usually 5 Democrats and 4 Republicans.
RINO McSally won by 300 votes to make it 5 Republicans.
The ultimate decision is the swing vote Independent (usually closet something else) on the committe of 1 GOP, 1 Dem and 1 Independent.
“Not all college students are transients. Some are fully emancipated adults. Some are dependents on their parents’ 1040, others are not.”
Agreed.
If students are dependents, they should be counted as residents of the state in which their parents live.
If not, they are residents of the state in which they go to school. Even if they moved there just to attend it.
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