The author analyzes the challenge - driven by a couple voters in Texas - to the user of total population as the measure of the size of districts. We mentioned in class that they would like Texas to use the population of eligible voters, not total population, which might include non-citizens as well as illegal aliens.
The case is Evenwell v Abbott. The case might lead to a substantive change in the framework developed in Baker v Carr, and was adapted to the states in Reynolds v Sims.
- Click here for the article.
Here's a taste:
The Supreme Court famously said, in 1964, that “legislators represent people, not trees or acres.” That was its basic explanation for getting away from the traditional pattern of mapping election districts by geographic area, rather than by the people who are to be represented. But the lingering question is: who are “the people” who are represented?
They could be the voters who actually go to the polls to exercise that right. They could be the people eligible to vote, many of whom stay away from the polls. They could be only the U.S. citizens. They could be all the people, even those who do not have the right to vote — because they are children, non-citizens, or prison inmates, for example.
Actually, when the Supreme Court in the 1964 decision in Reynolds v. Sims first mandated equality, it used the idea of population and voters interchangeably. “The overriding objective,” it said, “must be substantial equality among the various districts, so that the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the state.”
The court is being asked to consider whether the unequal distribution of non-voters in legislative districts dilutes the strength of voters.
