The U.S. Supreme Court will consider on March 29 whether to hear Lepak v City of Irving, Texas, 12-777. The issue is whether the old “one person, one vote” precedents mean that districts should be relatively equal in population, or relatively equal in number of eligible voters. This issue doesn’t normally make a big difference, but it does make a big difference in jurisdictions with a relatively large number of non-citizen residents. The New York Times here covers this case and seems to feel there is a good likelihood the Court will accept the case.
The case started when federal courts required the City of Irving to stop using at-large elections for city council. After the city complied and districts were drawn, on the basis of population, some residents of Irving noted that some of the districts have twice as many registered voters as other districts. They sued to overthrown the equal population districts in favor of districts that have equal numbers of eligible voters. However, the city’s equal-population plan was upheld in U.S. District Court and in the Fifth Circuit.
Again for recent folks –
In a REAL Democracy, a legislative body exists ONLY because ALL of the ELECTORS-Voters can NOT assemble in person and enact bills into law.
Census stats inside a State are instantly obsolete.
Each regime belongs to the living and NOT the dead and moved out.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
–been there, done that, SCOTUS could care less about vote dilution involving non-citizens used for districting in such covered counties as Kings County in NYC. 2/3 less voters are needed to be elected than in non-covered counties/districts upstate.
All Sotomayor and Kegan cert petition conferences must be voided first.
The district court and 5th Circuit ducked. The appeals court said that they had decided a similar case, and could not overturn their own decision barring being overridden by the SCOTUS. The district court said that it was OK for Irving to voluntarily use total population.
When Irving was sued to force the use of district elections, they had argued that Citizen Voting Age Population should be used to determine whether there was a compact area that could permit Hispanic voters to elect a candidate of their choice. It will probably be argued that even if that test were used, that districts of equal population have to be drawn.
When the 14th Amendment was first proposed, it would have based apportionment on the adult male citizen population, excluding those disqualified from voting (felons, rebels, and disenfranchised). But the easterners realized that this would shift representation to the west, because a large share of settlers were male, with relatively few children.
Younger sons who would not inherit the family farm, would migrate. Daughters would marry other farmers in the area, and given the high maternal mortality rates, marry widowers. And children would remain with their family until some migrated in their 20s when they had no economic future.
So the 14th Amendment was re-written in its current awkward form, where the apportionment population is based on total population, with an adjustment for disenfranchisement.
Had congressional apportionment been based on the electorate, it would be likely that congressional districts, legislative districts, and city council districts would be based on electorate.
Since the purpose of the census is for congressional apportionment, then in order to correctly apply the apportionment provisions of the Constitution, the census should ask citizenship, age, sex, whether they are felon or rebel, and whether they are qualified to vote. In states where pre-registration is a qualification, there would be a big effort to register voters.
As it is, the census does not ask a citizenship question because it is feared that illegal immigrants won’t participate.
One reason that Port Chester, NY agreed to the imposition of cumulative voting was because they realized that there would be large variations in the number of voters between districts.
If Irving were to attempt to switch to cumulative voting at this point, the USDOJ would most likely not preclear it.
# 3 See the 1870 Census questions.
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How many ILLEGAL INVADERS are in the U.S.A. and have been counted in ANY census ???
See the 2012 election results for U.S.A. Reps.
Gee – which districts have the lowest vote totals — with both a D and a R in such districts.
Duh – CA, TX, NY, etc. — the usual suspect regimes.
Of course the New Age Donkey communists LOVE having illegal invaders (counted in each census, etc.) and future illegal voters to be made legal ex post facto.
— combined with minority rule gerrymanders makes it even easier to less than 25 percent minority rule with below average numbers of voters in Donkey districts
1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4.
P.R. now in all regimes.
I’m in favor of any change that recognizes that corporations are persons too, are entitled to vote, and should be given a number of votes equal to the number of common stock holders they have.
One shareholder, one vote.
How about you, Richard? Are you still with me on this issue?
No U.S. court has ever ruled that corporations are persons. Even the infamous 19th century case involving the 14th amendment didn’t say that. Instead some law clerk whose duty it was to summarize the decision said that.
6 –
Neither is the word “corporation” found in the Bill of Rights.
See Blackstone’s Commentaries [one of THE major works of Western Civilization — about the laws / legal system in England in the 1760s
— used to create the State and U.S.A. Consts and Bills of Rights in 1776-1791 and was THE major law work up to the 1861 Civil War — MULTIPLE English and American updated editions – even up to the early 1900s.
Book I Chap. 18 [???] Of Corporations
BUT the New Age brain dead MORONS in SCOTUS appear never to have heard about B.C.
#4 Congress considered adding questions to the 1870 Census, but did not. The director of the Census then told the people conducting the census in the various states to report the number of males citizens over 21 who were not eligible to vote. The quality of the data received was haphazard and was not actually determined by a census. Some states did report the official number of idiots, insane, and illiterates, others claimed no one was ineligible.
And of course the 1870s apportionment is not actually based on the census population, but was dictated by politically concerns.
# 9 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 is still in the nearly dead U.S.A. Const. — regardless of its NON-enforcement since 1868 — a mere 145 years — esp. in a class action.
Sorry females – only males mentioned in such section — due to male voters in 1866.
This is a losing issue because the Federal Constitution MANDATES that Congressional and other Districts be drawn by population. SO, we have situations occurring like California. With nearly 10 MILLION residents born outside of the United States and its dependencies counted in the 2010 census, California’s Districts DO have a wide variation of voters.
For example, in the January 3, 2012 registration update (the first using the most recently approved Boundaries) ideally each of the Assembly seats would have 212,854 people. A variation of 5% more or less would be understandable based on civic and other interest in the various parts of the state.
However, at THAT time there were 6 Assembly Seats with at least 125% of that number registered. There were the 16th covering Alameda & Contra Costa Counties, the 17th which is wholly within San Francisco, the 50th in Los Angeles County and the 72nd, 73rd and 74th all in Orange County.
There were also 6 Assembly Seats with less than 75% of that number registered. They were the 26th covering Inyo, Tulare and part of Kern Counties. The 32nd covering Kings and MORE of Kern County. the 53rd and 59th wholly within Los Angeles County, the 56th covering Imperial and part of Riverside County and the 69th entirely within Orange County.
So we can see that just within Metro Los Angeles (in a relatively close geographic area) there exists Assembly Districts with over 100% more voters than others. Of course, we have no way of knowing if drawing boundaries from registered voters would have made much difference in the Democrat Party gaining its 2/3 legislative majorities last November, but it would have been very interesting to see if California could end up with MORE relatively competitive Districts than it currently has for this decade.