Subject: Reapportionment and citizens (was "news of the day 8/25/05)
From: Rob Richie
Date: 8/25/2005, 12:22 PM
To: election-law


Thanks for flagging this editorial, Rick. Congresswoman Miller's amendment proposal to reapportionment according to citizens rather than people and the editorial in its support have a certain logic only because of general misunderstanding about the "one person, one vote" cases. In reality, these cases have nothing to do with "one person, one vote". They are about Members of Congress (and, to a lesser extent, lower offices) having equal constituent service demands. Districts having the same number of constituents has no bearing on how many of those constituents might vote or be eligible to vote.

The federal courts' fetish for exact population equality thus is founded on the rather bizarre belief that it's constitutionally unfair if some representatives have a few more constituentsthan others - thus it was a constiututional violation for Pennsylvania's 2001 congressional districts to vary in population by a handful of people (because, golly, those extra people just might be really demanding), but not a problem that the plan was a typical 2001 partisan gerrymander from hell. Tell that to the people of Montana, who have more than twice as many people with their one House member as neighboring Wyoming. It gets comparably distorted in states like Nevada with uneven population growth.

If Rep. Miller really doesn't want Michigan to lose House seats, she should talk about increasing House size, which could be done with a wave of a statutory wand, as it was decade after decade until the wand froze in mid-stroke in 1911. She at least should support Congressman Alcee Hastings' bill to study House size and the merits of proportional voting. See
http://www.fairvote.org/index.php?page=863

Rob Richie
.

"A Fair Count for Congress"

See this editorial from the Grand Rapids Press. Thanks to Jeff Wice for the pointer.



-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
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-- 
Rob Richie
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The Center for Voting and Democracy
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