Brad Smith's listserv  message  on  1P1V reminds me of the thought that the literal one person congressional district deviation, (spawned by the 1990s  Hastert v. Illinois Bd of Elections map case, and followed through to Vieth's dozen plus person PA rejection) may be ripe for review and fine tuning.

 I often  counseled redistricters  to go down to 1 person congressional district deviation, even if for no other reason than to eliminate it is a possibility for court rejection. States had to split precincts and other political geography to do so.

We are also left with the differing GA and NY district court decisions on the state legislative 10% deviation window
Again, do you stretch your deviation window to 10% or stay closer to zero?

These are just 2 areas where 1P1V is not likely to be overturned by any stretch, but where the application is in question.

And where a Justice Alito may have something to add to the debate.

Jeff Wice
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Smith, Brad" <BSmith@law.capital.edu>
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 06:56:12 
To:<election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Subject: RE: 1p1v

The odds of Reynolds being overthrown by are about 1 million to one.  If
Sam Alito were cloned and nominated to fill all 9 Supreme Court seats, I
suspect that those odd might drop to about 100,000 to one.

Relax, not gonna happen, folks.

Bradley A. Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Columbus, Ohio

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu
[mailto:owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu] On Behalf Of J. Morgan
Kousser
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:26 PM
To: election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Subject: 1p1v

   I think Dan Lowenstein is being too sanguine on what would happen if 
Reynolds were overthrown.  In Texas, if Tom De Lay survives, I can
easily 
imagine his packing urban and rural Democrats into 5 or 6 congressional,

and state senate districts (Austin, D/FW, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso,

the rest of the Rio Grande Valley).  That would give the Reps 26 
congressional and 25 state senate seats, and he could make the same
voting 
rights argument (partisan motives) that he made in Sessions v. Perry.
In 
Georgia, the fact that the Republicans have been willing to state so 
unqualifiedly after Judge Murphy's opinion that they never, never had
any 
racial motives in requiring a voter id for in-person voting, while 
weakening protections against fraud in absentee voting implies to me
that 
they'd be very happy to draw maybe 3 packed Democratic districts -- 
Atlanta/De Kalb, Augusta, Macon -- leaving all the rest of the suburbs
and 
rural areas for the Reps.  According to Rep. Sue Burmeister (R,
Augusta), 
blacks only vote in Augusta if they're paid to, so there won't actually
be 
many voters in these packed, heavily Democratic districts, 
anyway.  Burmeister is proof that the New, non-racist South is still a
fond 
dream.
   In the current bitterly partisan environment, 1p1v puts very
important 
constraints on partisan gerrymandering, and I fear the experiment of 
removing the constraints and hoping for fair play.
Morgan

Prof. of History and Social Science, Caltech
snail mail:  228-77 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125
phone 626-395-4080
fax 626-405-9841
home page:  <http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/Kousser.html>
to order Colorblind Injustice:  http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-388.html
           "Peace if possible, Justice at any rate" -- Wendell Phillips