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

[Andrew M. Grossman]

Note that the Evenwel jurisdictional statement (at 10) describes three
possible measures: Citizen Voting Age Population, Total Voter Registration,
and Non-Suspense Voter Registration. The first, of course, would not run
into problems regarding voter registration or the "political activism" of
different groups. The complaint claims a constitutional right "to a vote of
approximately equal weight to that of all other electors in the same
state," and it may well be that any of those measures would satisfy that
right.

It may also be worth noting that the plaintiffs do not ask the Court to
choose between equal voting weight and equal representation. The complaint
alleges that Texas could achieve approximately equal voter weight "without
departing from the goal of equalizing total population."

--
Andrew Grossman

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Jon Roland <jon.roland at constitution.org>
wrote:

>  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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