[EL] The Supreme Court's Decision to Decide Whether It's One Person, One Vote or One Voter, One Vote

[Gaddie, Ronald K.]

Chuck Bullock and Justin Wert and I engaged a lot of these issues in a piece about four years ago; it is a challenge. And, while it is an option for states, I am not confident that can be mandated to apportion in this manner.

https://journals.law.stanford.edu/stanford-law-policy-review/print/volume-23/issue-2-redistricting-2010s/seats-votes-citizens-and-one-person-one-vote-problem

________________________________
Ronald Keith Gaddie, Ph.D.
President's Associates Presidential Professor & Chair
Department of Political Science<http://psc.ou.edu>
Associate Director, Center for Intelligence & National Security<http://cins.ouhsc.edu>
The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019
Phone: 405.325.2061
Email: rkgaddie at ou.edu<mailto:rkgaddie at ou.edu>
On twitter: @GaddieWindage<https://twitter.com/gaddiewindage>
________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Jon Roland [jon.roland at constitution.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 2:49 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] The Supreme Court's Decision to Decide Whether It's One Person, One Vote or One Voter, One Vote

The problem for basing representation on voting population rather than resident population is measuring it. Turnout in the last election doesn't work, because that is a highly volatile subset of qualified voters. About the only measure that might work would be numbers registered to vote, but that number can change quickly from one election cycle to the next, and may include many no longer qualified as of the date the district lines are drawn, so then the issues become how to weed the lists and how to decide the cutoff date for the number. Census counts might not be strictly constitutional, but they are far more practical.

But it would provide an incentive to register more voters, which is not necessarily a good thing. Do we really want even more low-information voters?

Or we could go to the Australian system and register everyone qualified, and perhaps make voting mandatory.

In any case, an expensive proposition.

-- Jon

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