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

Tue May 26 13:29:51 PDT 2015

The district court in the recent Yakima decision explicitly rejected the
FairVote's multi-member district plan submitted to the court on the account
that it would not permit the minority community an opportunity to elect
candidates of their choice. I would like to see these hypothetical
multi-member plans before rendering a judgment as to their compliance with
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Gaddie,
Ronald K.
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 4:21 PM
To: Thomas J. Cares; Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] The Supreme Court's Decision to Decide Whether It's One
Person, One Vote or One Voter, One Vote

I can get on board with that idea, for certain.

  _____  

Ronald Keith Gaddie, Ph.D.
President's Associates Presidential Professor & Chair
Department of Political Science <http://psc.ou.edu> 
Associate Director, Center for Intelligence  <http://cins.ouhsc.edu> &
National Security
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
<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>
[law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Thomas J. Cares
[Tom at tomcares.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 3:08 PM
To: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] The Supreme Court's Decision to Decide Whether It's One
Person, One Vote or One Voter, One Vote
I'd imagine Rob Richie* and I would both like to see larger multi-member
districts, using the single transferable vote, wherein these larger
districts are able to be drawn to match each other equally BOTH in
population and (the unambiguous) number of registered voters. If the
California Assembly, for example had 8 districts with 10 members each,
elected using single transferable voting, You could probably draw 8 good
districts that have both roughly equal residents and roughly equal
registered voters. 

-Thomas Cares

*I don't know if Rob would take issue with making it a goal to match both
those things. I'm confident he supports MMDs and STV. I'd imagine he
wouldn't mind tossing in that goal; it creates a selling point to those who
live in districts with lots of voters, but might detract STVMMD interest
from those who live in districts with relatively few registered voters. Of
course, my belief is that government is most healthy when its an arm of the
electorate, otherwise, the electorate is forced to do things like switching
between republican and democratic governors to try to maintain balance, or
use ballot propositions to tie legislatures' hands, etc. If you can
harmonize the electorate with government, it makes for a healthier society.

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:49 PM, Jon Roland <jon.roland at constitution.org
<mailto: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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