[EL] one person, one vote and uneven population growth

[Rob Richie]

Very good question. Three things relating to it:

* On terminology, we should keep in mind that population equity has little
to do with "one person, one vote" -- that's just spin. The number of
eligible voters can vary widely in districts of exact population equity.
What equal population  really means is that we rather oddly have established
exact equality in number of constituents for Members of Congress in a given
state at the start of a decade as a constitutional imperative.

* Underlining Chris' point about the dynamic quality of changes in
population very quickly undermining this supposed constitutional imperative,
congressional districts in fast-growing states like Nevada in the 1990s can
see some fast-growing districts by decade's end have several hundred
thousand more people in them than other slow-growing districts -- and it's
often relatively easy to anticipate.

* Matthew Hoffman wrote an intriguing law review article in the 1990s
suggesting that voters in a state like Nevada should have the right to some
remedy to particularly gross distortions in population equity through a
mechanism like multi-seat districts /proportional voting. I couldn't find
the cite, however.

Rob Richie

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Justin Levitt <levittj at lls.edu> wrote:

>  No examples about jurisdictions actually drawing lines based on your
> precise question come immediately to mind, though I'd also be curious if
> others have examples.
>
> As for courts passing on the theory, *Kirkpatrick* and *Karcher* suggested
> that this *might* be a permissible reason to deviate from precise equality
> if it were consistently applied, and if the deviations at the time of the
> redistricting were nevertheless still within constitutional bounds when
> assessed by best-available census data (e.g., decennial census data).
> Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U.S. 725, 740-41 (1983) (citing *Kirkpatrick*).
>
>
> In the racial/ethnic vote dilution context, the Illinois commission charged
> with drawing state legislative lines in the 1980 cycle did use a version of
> the projection argument, though it was hardly "consistently applied."  The
> commission justified its decision to divide Chicago's Hispanic community by
> claiming that "these districts were designed to accommodate future growth
> and migration patterns which [are allegedly] characteristic of these
> Hispanic communities. Commissioner Murphy analogized this justification to
> buying a snowsuit for a young child -- purchasing a suit several sizes
> larger than the growing child's present dimensions is warranted in order to
> allow the child to grow into the suit and thus prolong its use."  I think
> it's fair to characterize the reviewing court's description of the strategy
> as considerably disdainful (not least because other growing communities were
> not treated similarly).  But because there was a settlement ("fortified by
> instructions from the court"), there was no final opinion on its legality.
> Rybicki v. State Bd. of Elections, 574 F. Supp. 1082, 1122-24 (N.D. Ill.
> 1982).
>
> Justin
>
>
> On 8/10/2011 4:27 PM, Elmendorf, Christopher wrote:
>
> Does anyone on the list know whether any state or local government has
> tried to defend departures from population equality among legislative
> districts on the ground that the inequalities were created in anticipation
> of geographically uneven population growth over the projected 10-year
> lifespan of the map?
>
> A map that achieves perfect population equality at the time of its adoption
> may of course result in less inter-district equality over time (averaged
> across a sequence of five legislative elections) than a map that
> underpopulates districts in high-growth areas.  Time-of-enactment
> inequalities, when in service of "dynamic population equality," would seem
> to me prima-facie reasonable when there are geographically concentrated
> demographic groups with larger-than-average family sizes, or when zoning
> restrictions channel most of a city's population growth into a particular
> area.  But I don't know whether any redistricters have self-consciously
> pursued the dynamic equality strategy, or whether courts have passed on it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
> Christopher S. Elmendorf
> Professor of Law
> University of California at Davis
> 400 Mrak Hall Drive
> Davis, CA 95616
> tel: 530.752.5756
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing listLaw-election at department-lists.uci.eduhttp://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>
> --
> Justin Levitt
> Associate Professor of Law
> Loyola Law School | Los Angeles
> 919 Albany St.
> Los Angeles, CA  90015213-736-7417justin.levitt at lls.edussrn.com/author=698321
>
>
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>



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