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

[David Ely]

I should have been more clear.  I meant within a single member district system.  If the court were to replace the equal population standard with an equal voter standard, then the single member system would lose all legitimacy as I see it.  I remain to be convinced that minority rights can be protected as well in some other system, but without population equality, single member districts would lose that advantage.

 

From: tomjcares at gmail.com [mailto:tomjcares at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Thomas J. Cares
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 1:44 PM
To: David Ely
Cc: Andrew M. Grossman; Jon Roland; Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] The Supreme Court's Decision to Decide Whether It's One Person, One Vote or One Voter, One Vote

 

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:28 PM, David Ely <ely at compass-demographics.com> wrote:

The only way to achieve equal voters and equal population is to combine areas with a high ratio of voters to population with other areas with low ratios of voters to population.  This would produce deliberately dilutive districts, making a bad situation worse.

 

Is that a reply to my proposition? Because, if you divided, say, the State of California into 8 districts (perhaps with 10 representatives, elected through single transferable voting, for the Assembly), you can have very nice compact districts, which match on both. California's areas with low voter proportions - downtown LA, east LA, etc, - tend not to be too far from those with the very highest ratios - West Hollywood, Malibu, Santa Monica. You can put them together just fine. The single transferable vote will proportion representation to voters just fine.

 

We're just not a creative enough of a society. Maybe we should do that but also let parents cast votes for their children (which has been proposed), but I digress. I mean there's a fundamental issue of whom we consider to be members of society, and whom we consider to be guests. Are felons guests? Are non-citizens guests? Are children guests, until they turn 18?

 

However, the imbalance of proportioning power but then not letting everyone vote the power they were proportioned, does seem to create problems.

 

Neighbors of non-voters get super representation in the legislature, and then often get spited by their regional neighbors in gubernatorial outcomes and ballot propositions. That's not healthy. We probably don't have the creative fortitude to solve that.

 

 

-Thomas Cares

 

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