On December 13, the U.S. Supreme Court released the results of its December 10 conference. At that conference, the Court sent Clemons v U.S. Department of Commerce, 10-291, back to the U.S. District Court, and told the U.S. District Court to dismiss the case for want of jurisdiction.
This is the case in which voters from certain states had argued that “one person, one vote” principles are being violated by the fact that some U.S. House districts have almost twice as much population as certain other districts. For instance, Montana and Wyoming each have one seat, but Montana’s population is almost twice Wyoming’s population. The plaintiffs had also argued that the only method for curing this problem is to increase the size of the U.S. House. The Supreme Court’s action today seems to mean that the Court feels this case is one which the courts could not even legitimately entertain.
Technically, SCOTUS did not dismiss the case as your title suggests. It vacated the lower court’s ruling and then remanded the case back to the lower court and ordered them to dismiss the case due lack of jurisdiction. Remand is different than dismiss.
Thanks, I have now chosen another verb for the title.
Lyle Denniston has a pretty clear explanation on the SCOTUS blog (the cases is discussed in two separate places in this article). Apparently, there are two possible explanations:
I find this unsettling. I wish the Court had a rule that they have to explain these things, at least briefly.
As usual SCOTUS screwed up.
Should have affirmed the District Court in dismissing the case.
Case arose under a screwed up idea about 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 and some sort of one person- one vote AMONG the States for U.S.A. Reps.
Sorry – NOT so (at the moment).
Due to current Method of Equal Proportions math there will ALWAYS be 2 States having *almost* a 2 to 1 ratio —
Square root of 6 / square root of 2 — do the math (too difficult for even 4 of the Supremes and their clerks — to hear the case).
——-
Uniform definition of Elector in ALL of the U.S.A. NOW
P.R. and App.V. NOW — before it is too late
— i.e. the 3 EVIL gerrymander systems in the U.S.A. regime — House, Senate, Electoral College — cause Civil WAR II and/or World WAR III to happen.
NO limit on the EVIL in the New Age gerrymander party hack so-called brain in Dumb City.
I worked a bit on this case. I have a close view of it. The ruling is quite interesting. There is room to bring this case back. I think with a tweak it can happen.
This ruling has surprised a lot of people. I am waiting to see if there are any opinions in dissent or anything else. More than anything else, this has raised peoples interest in the issue.
An open question I shall pose is, what is magical about 435? Nothing really. In fact, if you freeze the size of the house and population keeps growing, representation becomes diluted in a passive manner. There is something to this.
Also what happens is the reps start adding more Assistants which I find completely repugnant. This matter will be coming up more in the future. I believe that.
# 5 How much extra space in the House wing of the Capitol Building ??
How about having a D.C. stadium be used for the meeting of a zillion Reps ???
See the old Roman Coliseum — have the folks who enact unconstitutional laws get eaten by lions for the entertainment of visitors ???
P.R. = Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner.
How about a 3 (repeat 3) seat legislative body to include the major pro and anti-govt factions ???
Somewhat shocking that the SCOTUS folks did NOT impose sanctions of the lawyers for bringing a totally FRIVOLOUS case — 14th Amdt, Sec. 2.
The problem with the lawsuit was that the increase in the US population has absolutely nothing to do with interstate inequality in representation.
The plaintiffs note that the population has more than tripled, while the number of representatives has remained constant at 435. They then make note of the current level of representation inequality. They juxtapose these two, and let people draw an erroneous conclusion that they are related.
But there is no causality; moreover there is not even correlation. Interstate representation inequality has generally declined over the last century.
The example that the plaintiffs provided that would result in less than 10% variation between the largest and smallest district, is probably an anomaly, unless there is some phenomena that results in a quantization of state populations; and had a distinct small state bias. Give a bunch of small states a little bit of extra representation, and they stop their jealous squabbling.
The plaintiffs in their appeal generally abandoned the idea of greatly increasing the size of the House to produce a higher level of equality under some quantitative measure, and instead suggest a modest increase, or that Congress make an active decision to set the size of the House after each apportionment, in the expectation that the size would creep as states are protected from loss of representation, which would have come as surely as earmarks.
If every state has been protected from a loss of representatives in every apportionment since 1910, there would now be 1786 House members.
The better solution is to apportion fractional representation, similar to the system that Ohio once used for its legislature.
States would be apportioned representatives to a resolution of 1/5 of a representative. States with a fraction of a representative would have an additional representative in some of the five congress in each decade.
So for example, Montana would be apportioned 1.4 representatives, and would have 2 representatives in two of the 5 congresses (108th through 112th), and one in the other representatives.
The extra representatives could be temporally distributed so that there would always be 435 House members, with assignment done so that the extra representatives would be distributed throughout the country. For example, California with 52.4, Washington 9.2, and Oregon 5.4, would have 67 representatives collectively in all congresses, but the 67th member would be assigned to California for 2 congresses, to Oregon for 2, and Washington for 1. Compare this to the current system where California has been apportioned a 53rd representative for all 5 congresses, though it not warranted by its population.
A state could elect the extra representative by a variety of methods:
(1) Vary the number of districts. Probably not workable to switch between 52 to 53 districts in California, but a possibility for Montana (1.4) or Nebraska (2.6) representatives, to switch between 1 and 2; or 2 and 3 districts.
(2) Elect the extra representative at large. So in 2 of 5 elections, California would elect a 53rd representative statewide.
(3) Choose a lucky loser. Candidates who lost a district election would be placed in a lottery, with their chances of winning, proportional to the number of votes they received in the election.
(4) Residual election. Similar to (3), but instead of lot, the losing candidates would elect the final representative.
(5) Multi-member districts, elected by STV.
DUMP the AREA fixation — since the DARK AGE.
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner — via pre-election candidate rank order lists — to transfer excess votes down and loser votes up.
ALL voters directly or indirectly elect a legislator = REAL Democracy = majority rule and minority representation
— to END the nonstop gerrymander EVIL party hack minority rule regimes in the U.S.A. since 4 July 1776.