Most people talking about Anthony Kennedy re-evaluating the principle of one-person-one-vote have covered how it will diminish Congressional representation from districts that have a lot of immigrants in them.
However, I don’t think that immigrants will be the thing we talk about in the years after Kennedy changes the rules, if he decides to do that. A lot of states take away the right to vote from anyone convicted of a felony. Many of those same states stand out, one could say, when it comes to treating black people fairly. The result is some Congressional districts, often but not exclusively in the South, where a whole lot of residents are black non-voters either in prison or recently released from it.
Will Justice Kennedy let former voters count as citizens? I would strongly hope so. I mean I hope that he puts the whole idea of changing the law to bed, but if he does go the other way then he really needs to at least include citizen non-voters. The alternative would give Republican states an even greater incentive than they already have to move as many black people through the prison system as they possibly can. Under new rules they could not only eliminate Democratic voters, but Democratic Congressmen and Congresswomen as well.
Just a little palate cleanser while we wait for the wreckage of King v. Burwell.
Emily68
I keep thinking about Scalia and how the actual language of the law and/or constitution is what really matters. Obviously, the framers didn’t mind that those who couldn’t vote or weren’t even citizens were being counted in the census that determines Congressional districts. The ratio 3/5 comes to mind.
Betty
Wouldn’t it be very time-consuming and expensive to carry out this count? Who would be responsible for doing it?
MobiusKlein
@Betty: The Right sort of folks. Perhaps a concerned council of citizens would step forward?
So… this count does not include minors either. Why do they hate babies?
MomSense
The Republican “vision” for our country is a nightmare. Remember the lyric “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”? Seems like a good description of what we are enduring with these bastards.
JPL
@MobiusKlein: It’s been apparent to me, for a long time, that they love the fetus, but not the child.
JPL
The fact that they chose to hear this case, signals that some think the case has merit.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JPL: I’ve said before, they’re all about the “child” until it crosses the cervical Rubicon, then they don’t give a shit until it’s old enough to tote an M-16.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: GOPers and those who vote for them, love to talk about American Exceptionalism but they seek to undermine everything that makes this country unique and a beacon of hope to people around the world.
Some examples:
1. Broad based prosperity
2. Egalitarian ethos
3. Scientific and technological prowess.
Kay
It scares me because it comes along with them gutting the Voting Rights Act, so it really starts to look like a carefully planned strategy. A one-two punch. I haven’t figured out what it’s intended to do yet, but I’d hate to find out later.
Obama’s justice dept has been very good on voting rights and I once listened to a former Clinton staffer (she worked for Clinton when Clinton was in the Senate) discuss Clinton’s efforts on the Help America Vote Act at a voting rights forum. I think Clinton will be very strong on voting rights too. It seems like something she has been interested in for 40 years and understanding the “long arc” trajectory, the big picture, really helps because it helps one anticipate an attack.
sukabi
@schrodinger’s cat: the problem with your thesis is polysyllabic…
Kay
So Clinton led on the HAVA (Help America Vote Act) – an imperfect law!- the HAVA was mostly administrative- the boring work of administering elections properly- but that’s central to the civil right of voting because “process protects” and rights aren’t much use without practical rules of application:
What makes her “good” on voting rights in my view is she stayed with it:
artem1s
I think you’re missing the inevitable problem of who is going to decide the definition of ‘legal voter’. If the states get to decide this on a one by one basis (and you know they will) you are going to see a lot of shenanigans around voter registration and disqualifying and removing people from the voter rolls. Assume it will be a moving goal post that will be designed to discourage individuals from jumping thru multiple hoops to be considered ‘legal’. The hacks on SCOTUS who OK’d Hobby Lobby will throw in the usual “its a narrow ruling and who could have known?” BS.
srv
@schrodinger’s cat: Or it could be because we’re God’s Chosen.
Why do people always think it’s a coincidence that the first settlers were Puritans, and others fleeing religious persecution?
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
It is an ugly world view. America is the greatest country in the world with the greatest constitution in the world so let’s destroy the mechanism for self governance, de-fund all the programs for the general welfare, and neglect the infrastructure that generations of Americans built.
Republicans are like the bizarre, dysfunctional family that buys a nice house in the neighborhood and then lets the paint peel and the yard deteriorate.
I can’t even figure out what their desired end result is. Will they be satisfied when all the roads are crap, all the bridges unsafe, all the kids are starving, all the wages are poverty level? What the hell do they want? This is the greatest country on earth so let’s destroy all that’s good about it.
schrodinger's cat
@srv: Every country in the world thinks that they are unique and God’s chosen.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: They are cynics, the Greatest country on the earth crap is for the rubes. All that Republicans seem to care for is lining the pockets of the already chosen (i.e. the 1 %). They don’t care about the long term, since they will be dead in the long term (paraphrasing Keynes).
Mandalay
@Kay:
She was more than just interested; Clinton sponsored a bill – the Count Every Vote Act of 2005.
Sadly, it went nowhere. That was partly because Democrats didn’t push it, and partly because it was (correctly but unfairly) portrayed as legislation that would allow convicted murderers to vote. So now Rand Paul is proposing a watered down version of Clinton’s bill from ten years ago, which specifically does not restore voting rights for felons with convictions for violence.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay: It just scares the snot out of me. First the VRA vivisection and now this. Justice can only be so good on voting rights (and this one has been excellent) when the court* destroys all the tools.
*non-traditional case style = editorial
Botsplainer
@MomSense:
The Addams Family…
srv
@schrodinger’s cat: You should get out more, I would bet a very low percentage of countries feel that way about themselves. Take a foreigner to a country football game and see what they say about the prayer and star spangled banner.
Plus, they’re obviously wrong.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
An intriguing formulation!
schrodinger's cat
@srv:
Of course, they are and so are we. There is no God, only Ceiling Cat and Ceiling Cat does not care for your puny countries.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
4: “Nation of immigrants” cultural diversity. Not that America is the only nation made up of immigrants from all around the world rather than defined by a particular ethnic group, but it’s still considered a pretty shining example, warts and all. The conservative desire to level all cultural diversity and make everything conform to their own White (preferably Southern) Christian (preferably Protestangelical) Anglo standard is a pretty massive negation of what a lot of people – American and other – find good about the United States.
Kropadope
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Five years old?
Chris
@Kay:
I think their ultimate utopia (as Norquist and others have basically said outright) is to roll back the entire twentieth century. And go back to an age when, among other things, votes were irrelevant (even more than they are post-Citizens United) and real power rested on a gaggle of political bosses (the Tweed/Tammany Hall model) who were basically the barons of their own little fiefdoms. Age of poll taxes and patronage networks and political candidates chosen in “smoke filled rooms” far away from the public by The People Who Really Mattered.
It’s a much more mundane goal than fascism or Stalinism, but to my mind, plenty horrific in its own way.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: 5. They also hate the concept of public goods. Like public education, National Parks and the like.
Good addition, my initial list wasn’t exhaustive at all.
Cervantes
@srv:
Sure. Or it could be that our ancestors were extra-terrestrials who impressed their everlasting superiority upon the proto-humans they found elsewhere on the planet.
You have any any other theories? (I do.)
“The first settlers were Puritans”? Tell that to the Spanish who made it to the south-eastern US in the sixteenth century. There were missions all the way from (what is now) North Carolina to Florida, nor were these missionaries “fleeing religious persecution.”
But you knew that.
mai naem mobile
I don’t fully understand this case. Whats the end goal? To tilt the country towards older demographic states? I’m not even sure if it would make a huge difference beyond some exceptional situations. What happens to basing funding on the census? Also what of rural agricultural areas with non citizen farm worker s? Slaughterhouse workers?
Frank Wilhoit
@MomSense: To be precise, “freedom” has today become a euphemism for unaccountability.
Cacti
@srv:
The first English settlements in mainland North America were economic ventures.
boatboy_srq
@srv: It’s hardly a coincidence that people are taught that the first settlers were Puritans. Nobody remembers Jamestown, St. Augustine and the other pre-Plymouth settlements; best reasons are a) the rest were in Dixie and/or settled by French and Spanish, and nobody wants to remember that proto-Confederates and Those People got there before We™ did, and b) reminding everyone that the New World was a mercantilist commercial endeavor long before it was a haven for religious wingnuttery undermines the “City On A Hill (for Gawd’s Chosen People)” concept.
NonyNony
@mai naem mobile:
Dilute the political power of the urban areas by dictating that a chunk of their population doesn’t count and shouldn’t have representation. The smaller the population of an urban area, the fewer representatives that area will have. So you get more rural representation and less urban representation than we currently have even though the population being served really isn’t changed. Given the white flight racism that have turned the cities into areas inhabited either by non-whites or younger whites who tend to vote for Democrats you can see the appeal for the racists.
Chris
@Cervantes:
STARGATE!!!
I’m sitting here in St. Augustine, FL (oldest city in the U.S, or at least that’s what they say – certainly one of the oldest) as I read this, so that comment amused me considerably, as well.
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
It pushes it back to the legislative branch (as you know!) and they can do a LOT there. I noticed Bill Clinton was actively courting Nina Turner for political support when the Clinton’s were in Ohio for the last race. That’s partly because he recognizes her as political talent Democrats will be promoting, but I think it’s also because she makes the moral case for voting rights.
I would bet you 50 dollars Clinton will be out with her in ’16 :) She’s something else. She’s just hugely appealing personally and that’s rare.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: The business of America is business! Everything else is just window dressing.
schrodinger's cat
Speaking of the first settlers, I have always wondered why we talk about the Puritans and Mayflower and Plymouth rock and not so much about Jamestown and Virginia!
Gimlet
The last civil rights frontier, Corporate voting!
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Recounting the settlement and establishment of a tobacco farming enterprise is a lot less charming.
Kropadope
@Gimlet: With votes apportioned based upon total assets, naturally.
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
They don’t love the fetus, either. They’re solidly against prenatal care and make no exceptions in their dogma for fetuses in danger or already dead.
What they love is claiming a position of righteousness while hurting others and asserting the dominance of their religious tribe. Being able to say they’re against ‘baby killing’ while their actual policies get people killed is the asshole perfect storm.
@schrodinger’s cat:
‘American Exceptionalism’ means ‘how dare you criticize me for my cruel and bigoted policies’, and fits into the rest of the conservative mindset perfectly. If America is ‘exceptional’, and remember that they think anyone who isn’t white and conservative is ‘Unamerican’, then whatever they do is always right. Conservatives are people who seethe with resentment that they’re not allowed to hurt others whenever they feel like.
NonyNony
@schrodinger’s cat:
Thanksgiving was a Yankee holiday – the South didn’t adopt it until well after the Civil War. So of course the emphasis was on the Northern settlement of the US and not the Southern settlement. (In fact Thanksgiving Day and the abolitionist movement were joined together – there’s a fascinating bit of Thanksgiving history from that Erik Loomis posted a link to at LGM last fall – here it is).
Amir Khalid
@srv:
Statements like this make me wonder if you’ve ever set foot outside the US.
srv
@Cervantes: @Chris: And God smote them because they were not worthy.
I was in St. Augustine last week, and I didn’t see any Spaniards. If they’d won, we’d all be speaking spanish.
Plus, it’s Florida.
D58826
OT but the GOP clown mini-bus has a new inmate – Rick Santorium is officially a passenger. Can hardly wait to see what he says about the Duggers given his frequently voice concerns on incest and man-on-dog sex
Gin & Tonic
@Gimlet: My long-lost cousin!
Omnes Omnibus
@boatboy_srq: One should also note that the Plymouth Colony was financed by people who expected a return on their investment. The first ship to arrive at Plymouth after the Mayflower was the Fortune and it brought among other things a letter from the investors bitching about goods not being shipped as promised.
srv
@Amir Khalid: How many Malaysian (or is it Indonesia?) flag t-shirts are in your closet?
My underwear has the stars & stripes, buddy.
A Ghost To Most
The first settlers in North America were European? Only if the Clovis culture originated in Europe.
Cervantes
@mai naem mobile:
To take the narrow view … the instant plaintiffs are seeking that the Court:
Those are the key demands (taken from a brief filed by the plaintiffs).
To take a wider view (reflecting the attention and support this case has received from Republicans everywhere), you need to know one thing: legislative districts in Texas are shaped to have roughly equal total populations, and as a result they do not all contain the same number of eligible voters. Take a ludicrous example: suppose in District A there is one registered voter and one illegal alien; whereas in District B there are just two registered voters. So long as only total population counts, the voter in District A gets a full elected representative whereas the two in District B only get half each. Plaintiffs don’t think this is fair. They don’t want illegal-immigrant numbers to influence things, and so, instead of total population, they want other measures to be used: “total voter registration,” “citizen voting-age population,” and so on.
(Taken from an amicus brief.)
By the way, official Republicans in Texas asked the Supreme Court not to take this case.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
Wait! I love him, too!
Amir Khalid
@srv:
You fart through your country’s flag? For shame.
Cervantes
@srv:
Right.
And by the way, I’m quite sure that, despite your outpourings above, you can’t really believe that the Puritans had a principled objection to religious persecution — can you?
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Re Malaysian Airlines, I saw the list of changes proposed (or accepted) by the new guy.
What do you make of it all?
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
His farts don’t smell. For he is one of the Chosen.
Brachiator
@srv:
The Puritans weren’t the first settlers, and they were not fleeing religious persecution. They thought their faith was more pure than anyone else’s and couldn’t stand to be around their religious “inferiors.”
It’s too easy to demolish your simplistic and flat out wrong version of history. You gotta be doing this on purpose.
japa21
Has srv ever been as inane as today?
srv
@Cervantes: This blog has always been infested with Catholics.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’ve always found it interesting to that the one time he was asked about China’s forced abortion policy, Pat Robertson’s response was basically “what’s the big deal? They’re just doing what they gotta do.”
You could read that as 1) Pat Robertson’s happy with abortion in China because the less nonwhite people in the world, the better, or 2) it really is completely about telling the woman not to do – it doesn’t matter whether it’s to save the baby or not, or 3) both. Either way, I found the quote – and the total lack of rebuke from within the fundiegelical community – revealing as hell.
Cervantes
@Chris:
There are other possible explanations.
Perhaps he’s one of those cranks who avoid sulfur in their diet because they’re worried about the mercury in their dental fillings.
(He or she, that is.)
srv
@Brachiator: You people obviously don’t read your kids’ textbooks.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
@japa21:
srv can’t be serious. Comments are tongue in cheek, I presume.
Pogonip
@Amir Khalid: Hee hee hee hee hee hee. You win!
Chris
@srv:
Proddy, please. The word you’re looking for is “Papists,” or “beadswingers,” or “Mary-worshipers,” or “mackerel snappers,” or possibly just “you assholes.” We are also accepting racial slurs along relevant lines, e.g. “paddy,” “guido,” “spic,” and “polack.”
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
This is bizarre. I noted earlier that it seems to me that total population, based on a census count, is a hard, real number. Total voter registration is more variable, and is obviously heavily weighted towards those who have some sense of political engagement. But this would also say that people who don’t vote are not citizens deserving of representation, which is absurd.
Basing anything on “citizen voting age population” is absurd for another reason. It says that non-voters should be represented, but not children, who would become de facto non-citizens unworthy of representation.
This whole thing seems to be a solution desperately seeking a problem.
Chris
@Cervantes:
Or it.
Immanentize
This is a very interesting case. I did some voting rights work a few decades ago and have stayed up on the issues. One of my oldest friends works in the DOJ voting division….
To me the interesting questions start with children — they also wouldn’t count for redistricting purposes under the glib theory suggested by the petitioners. Or are children (if they are citizens) they considered “future citizen/voters?” Not cunting children would have a huge scewing effect on policies like education.
But in many states felons are citizens who are also “future voters” (they can have their civil rights restored by operation of law or by court case or by pardo, etc.) And why aren’t all undocumented immigrants also simply “future citizens/voters?” Laws change, there are opportunities for asylum, etc. And what if you are a citizen but refuse the frranchise because you hate the President? Or you are just lazy?
The questions raised by proposed restritions on the count during redistricting are really profound. And it is not clear that the urban areas would lose and the rural areas win — In New York there was a large attempt to change the redistricting count from residents to consider where a person’s permanent resident was in teh context of large prisons filled with men from downstate located in small towns upstate. The small towns received huge federal benefit increases although the towns paid nothing for the prisoners….
I think the more improtant question is whether there will be a national standard for counting — heading off state attempts to tinker with their own state election rules. The conservatives will say that state’s can do what they please as long as it doesn’t vioolate the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments. Others will say that everyone residing must be the standard and that the constitutionally required census is the best determination of that (i.e. the right to vote in a state is a federal constitutional right).
We’ll see….
Stella B
@artem1s: Perhaps they would like to declare registered Republicans as the only eligible voters?
The Pilgrims and Puritans were fleeing relative religious persecution, some of which they brought on themselves, but they weren’t the first European settlers. However, the hundred or so Pilgrims that arrived on the Mayflower selected a much healthier environment and prospered relative to the early Virginians, leading to an estimated 16 million descendants today. The early Virginia settlers suffered from a lot of disease and were pretty much wiped out.
A lot of what we “know” about those “awful” Puritans comes from a book written after the Revolutionary War (essentially a New England war which the south entered late and reluctantly) by Rev. Samuel Peters, a British loyalist. We romanticize the Virginia “Cavaliers” much like we romanticize the Confederates.
Brachiator
@srv:
Funny thing about that. My mother was a teacher, and regularly supplemented official school texts with corrective material when stuff was clearly wrong. And somehow, people in my family have often directly challenged teachers who sling BS. Nobody in my family has ever required that anyone actively engage stupidity, but we applaud it when it happens.
My nephew, now attending college, recently joined the club, taking on a professor who regularly makes sh^t up and tries to pass it off as trooth.
Also, the stuff you sling is lower than the worst textbooks. More like ratty pamphlets put on your car windshield.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: Just to go along with the Puritans bit, I think we should go with Papists. BTW did you know that Guy Fawkes signed his name as Guido?
jayjaybear
@Chris: Cahokia would like a word with you.
kc
This is why liberals really need to devote resources, time, & energy to local elections.
srv
@Brachiator:
Let me help you with that:
http://www.puritans.net/curriculum/
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
Not a business person, so I’m not qualified to assess the recovery plan’s chances of success. What I do know is that MAS’ problems go far beyond last year’s MH370-MH17 double whammy. It has not addressed the challenge of the budget airlines: for example, Tony Fernandes’ outfit AirAsia has been eating their lunch on domestic and regional flights for years, and they need to start being competitive there again. I reckon that changing the name, restyling the cabin crew uniforms and repainting the planes isn’t going to help; those things were never the problem, and besides people will be aware that MAS is still MAS.
What’s been making the biggest noise here is that everyone but new CEO Christoph Müller is getting laid off, and only 14,000 of 20,000 staff will be rehired. People are saying this is a dodge to get out of paying the other 6,000 their retrenchment benefits, and possibly illegal. This sounds to me like a needlessly demoralising thing to do even to the people who get to stay on. MAS Employees Union is complaining to the PM, who I hope won’t ignore the plight of 20,000 voters even if some of them vote Pakatan like Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Anti-Catholicism as a prejudice has had its teeth pulled so thoroughly in the last fifty years, I consider it more adorably quaint than “low.”
Patrick
@Amir Khalid:
Most likely he hasn’t. Less than 40% of all Americans even have a passport. At least every country in western Europe that I have visited seem to think they are the best country in the world. Go to a national soccer game. They are more fanatic about their own team than the US is about their team.
Archon
@MomSense:
I don’t even think most Republican voters have thought out the end game of their policy preferences.
It would end in total collapse that’s for sure.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, it was losing ringgit by the fistful long before.
Right, and this is a key, it seems to me. Not that I am unsympathetic to the workers — but one of the problems with the old MAS was interference by (what we can call) the government, even unto the point of corruption in the awarding of service contracts, etc.
Anyhow, thanks for the comment.
Brachiator
@srv: A home schooling curricula??
Sweet boneless Jebus!
Thanks for the laugh.
@Chris:
True enough. Also, most people don’t feel that strongly about their own religion, so there is not much point in hating on someone else’s .
Cervantes
@srv:
!
mai naem mobile
@Cervantes: just my anecdotal evidence. Rural areas have non citizen ag workers. Aren’t these a wash with the non citizens in urban areas. Aren’t urban areas over whelmingly democratic so a small percentage difference would not make a difference. Also as mentioned already prisons in rural areas. I would really need to see actual statistics to see how this would shake out. Doesn’t this go back to a local version of red/blue state and most important purple states which are few.
Woodrowfan
@NonyNony: Not in Virginia! Here it’s all Jamestown all the time, and then some commies settled up north somewheres later……..
People forget there were two groups of Puritans who settled in new England, and some were more, shall we say fanatical, than others… I don’t remember if it was the ones in Plymouth who thought the ones in Boston were fuzzy librals, or the other way around…
Kay
Also! There was a brief moment in time there when the stars aligned on felon voting and Democrats missed it.
There was a Christian faction in the conservative movement that were pro-felon voting rights restoration- Santorum was part of it and so was DeWine.
In fact, Mitt Romney attacked that group in Ohio in 2012 in this bizarre inter-wingnut battle where Romney was pandering to the anti-voting faction on the Right so went after the religious voting rights faction. DeWine objected (probably scared of the True the Vote lunatics) and actually de-endorsed Romney over it.
I think if you dig deep enough in Rand Paul’s voting position you’ll find the Right wing Christian voting people. Paul downplays the religious influence in his positions because it’s uncool, but it’s there.
Anyway! Lost opportunity there, in say 2006-2008, for Democrats in Congress. The door was open a crack.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I hear you, Kay.
rikyrah
@artem1s:
you nailed it.
nailed it.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I can’t figure it out. Every time I try to decipher what might happen I end up with “loss there, but gain over there!”
Thankfully, there are voting rights professionals in this world. :)
boatboy_srq
@Woodrowfan: People also forget that by the time the Puritans were done there were nearly a dozen different flavors of Puritanism, each with its own colony, because the dominant group kept imposing [unspeakable heresy] on the rest at the colony level and the others had to get out from under. We can thank Puritanism in its various forms for the creation of Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut specifically to escape Massachusetts’ Reformatory zeal. Xtian Federalists in particular forget that separation of church and state was as much counteraction of this behavior as it was disallowing a federal religion, for precisely the same reasons.
NCSteve
Plenty of reason to be nervous with this Court, but the MSM idjits don’t understand, and are not explaining, that this case a) involves a procedural issue, not a substantive issue and b) SCOTUS didn’t elect to take this case, but, rather was legally required to.
Most voting rights cases are heard by three district court (federal trial court) judges rather than a judge and a jury. The loser in such a case has a direct right of appeal to the Supreme Court. 98% of the Court’s docket consists of cases taken on petition for certiorari (discretionary review) from the Circuit Courts of Appeal or state supreme courts, from which there is no right of appeal to SCOTUS. This is a rare instance in which SCOTUS is required to hear the appeal whether it wants to or not.
And the issue on appeal is solely the question of whether these asswipes have a private cause of action, a right to bring a lawsuit. The merits of their claim is not, and cannot properly be, before SCOTUS.
There’s plenty of reason for apprehension and the possibility of raw, open judicial activism is never off the table with Roberts and his fellow assholes, but the mere fact of the appeal sends no signals at all because they were required to hear it.
Citizen Alan
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
This is a myth. Republicans don’t care about fetuses either, or else they would support things like pregnancy anti-discrimination laws. I used to think it was entirely woman-hating but I have a new theory. I think right wing anti-choicers subconsciously realize that they’re awful disgusting people, and abortion causes them feelings of existential dread because they know the world would be a better place if they’d never been born.
Citizen Alan
@Botsplainer:
They were at least witty and entertaining.
Carl Nyberg
Here’s the maximalist position:
Congress has to count everyone in the state b/c the US Constitution says so. So Texas gets to keep the US House seats it would lose if the “Conservative” accounting method were used on the federal level.
But states should be free to decide people ineligible to vote (or simply aren’t registered) are non-persons and don’t count toward where the district borders get drawn.
For extra credit they will figure a way to count prison populations for representation purposes, but not felons after release from prison.
Carl Nyberg
@artem1s:
Spot on.
What Tea Party wants is not full disenfranchisement of all “undesirables”. But every person of color will have to have some White person in authority vouch for their “character” (meaning, “s/he doesn’t question the social hierarchy”).
They want an American feudalism where low talented White men have the petty enforcer and middle management jobs reserved for them.
And they have the political power. The South used to have “White pre-primaries”. Now the Republican Party serves this function.
Carl Nyberg
@mai naem mobile:
What if states create a law where it’s up to the locals to tell which people to count toward representation?
The county board certifies that prisoners should be counted but counties without prisons certify that ex-felons should not be counted?
The Supreme Court is making partisan mischief. What force is going to limit the partisan mischief?
The 14th Amendment?
catclub
But as Paul Waldman points out at the Plum Line, it’s going to be a very big deal for Republicans as well, who will likely see this as yet another way to entrench their control of legislative bodies. Paul considers this a direct analogue to what happened with King v. Burrell: yesterday’s fringe legal theory became tomorrow’s party orthodoxy.
Waldman’s view of this. I think that is quite possible.
Text from here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_05/heres_how_republicans_could_re055760.php
catclub
@NCSteve: Thanks for that explanation.
Chris
@Carl Nyberg:
Certainly this, yes.
'Niques
@NonyNony: I haven’t read all the comments, but do they realize that by not counting all citizens, there will be fewer representatives? That many repub’s will lose their seats?? Surely it will be all areas, and not just urban, that will be affected.
gian
Reminds me of English history and the “rotten boroughs” and reforms of 1832
Bill Arnold
@Gimlet:
This could be fun, because there is (currently) no limit on the number of corporations that a state can mint. Every state would get 1 representative except the winner in the number of corporations contest. The contest would be decided by mathematicians, in a totally non-partisan way.
burnspbesq
@JPL:
Actually, nobody “chose” to hear this case. When a voting rights case is decided by a three-judge panel of the District Court, there is no role for the Court of Appeals to play. The appeal (if any) goes directly to the Supreme Court as an appeal, not as a petition for cert. The Supremes had no discretion not to take this case.
Matt
Do the rurals really wanna start this “one person one vote” argument? Because from where I’m sitting, it starts leading to questions like “why do 600k people in WY get 2 senators” or even “why are we massively subsidizing utilities and infrastructure for people who sit in the boonies and hate us?”
Justin
@Stella B:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Four_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_1:_Republican_government