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The fact that Roberts actually wrote this without his head exploding is astounding: "Vote dilution in the one-person, one-vote cases refers to the idea that eac

The fact that Roberts actually wrote this without his head exploding is astounding: "Vote dilution in the one-person, one-vote cases refers to the idea that each vote must carry equal weight. That requirement does not extend to political parties; it does not mean that each party must be influential in proportion to the number of its supporters." How can each vote carry equal weight if 60% of the voters get to select 30% of the elected officials?

chrisseaton 7y ago
> That requirement does not extend to political parties I think political parties are a non-entity as far as the US constitution (small 'c') is concerned, aren't they? So the court doesn't have any opinion on them and there are no requirements.
- paulkon 7y ago
  What's the distinction between small 'c' Constitution and the formal document in this context?
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    The constitution includes the Constitution, plus precedent, convention, etc. Some countries, like the UK, have a constitution but no Constitution.
- coldcode 7y ago
  It's true, the Constitution was written without regard to parties, which I think is a huge failing, but one that could be remedied - if we didn't have partisan politics. But Supremes have created new law many times, both good and bad, and they should have this time as well. What will likely happen is people will challenge maps on other reasons, with no obvious likelihood of success. I have always felt that the rule for drawing a map should involve some kind of rational geometric principal, such as requiring the maps to have a minimal boundary length, making it mostly impossible to rig. But not very likely to ever happen sadly.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    In the UK they just get an independent group to manage the boundaries.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      The Boundary Commission. Yes, we do. But: 1. It would be harder to create such an independent commission in the US, because Americans (and especially Republicans) have worked tirelessly to make every corner of their lives another opportunity for partisanship. Americans elect _far_ too many officials, and those elections almost invariably end up partisan because a party has the muscle to win you the election. For example, in the US all those Supreme Court justices who wrote this decision and its dissents are in effect partisan, even though in principle it's not supposed to be a partisan body. In the UK the Supreme Court is just a bunch of judges that other judges and lawyers thought should be elevated, not a partisan issue. 2. Because Parliament is sovereign the Parliament has to actually enact those boundaries after the commission proposes them. Historically there is always a political party that thinks these changes are a bad idea conveniently for them because it somehow always seems to be the party that will likely lose seats. Because the Commission itself is impartial which party is angry about this varies, but in recent history it's Labour. When proposals to actually apply the current recommendations are coming up, I can always expect about one Facebook post a week from somebody who had no idea how boundaries work, or that there's an independent commission in charge of this, who has been convinced "somehow" that the party they don't like has conspired to take seats away from the one they do like via these boundary changes. Big surprise. 3. To be fair we got here because historically UK boundaries were left unchanged for so long that we had the Rotten Boroughs, a situation where some random land owner might own an area which was entitled to be represented by an MP even though literally _nobody_ had lived there for decades. You will not be surprised to learn that this caused _horrendous_ levels of corruption, bad enough that the act of parliament to fix it was routinely called the Great Reform Act (legally "Representation of the People Act 1832") and had to be rammed through by the same sort of extreme measures we've seen Democrats talking about in the US to fix its democracy.
  - coldcode 7y ago
    Also true that states can remedy this (this opinion is federal), but due to the original problem, are unlikely to.
harryh 7y ago
Because, by design, we don't have proportional representation. Even in a world without gerrymandering a small majority (say 55%) of voters evenly distributed can pick even 100% of elected officials.
mieseratte 7y ago
> How can each vote carry equal weight if 60% of the voters get to select 30% of the elected officials? Your vote is measured the same way as my vote. Your vote doesn't equal three-fifths of mine. There is apparently not a Federal regulation on crafting districts such that they overall skew in a given direction. In practice this can and does result in your vote being effectively worthless if you are in a district that is not your particular flavor. Depending on your philosophies, the judiciary is not tasked with legislation or "correcting wrongs" but with evaluating the current ruleset and determining if things are correct given those rules. So despite that you and I can look and say "well regardless of the letter of the law, the outcome surely isn't right" you have those that view this as not being in their power to change. The law legislates the way in which the vote is counted, not in the district-creation process. One would assume this is how his head remains intact.
ccleve 7y ago
Because a voter's preference cannot be expressed solely through their affiliation with a political party. We look at gerrymandering through the lens of "fairness", and we find it unfair when one group cannot get reasonably proportional representation in the legislature. But we are all members of many groups. We belong to political parties, racial groups, regional groups, economic groups, social classes and personality groups -- how can all of them get a voice which is proportional to their numbers? There's no clear-cut solution. This is the core problem with most gerrymandering jurisprudence -- it looks at at the problem mostly through a racial lens, and more recently, a partisan one. But the world is more complex than that. Voter's interests are not solely determined by the color of their skin or their political party. The court is not saying that gerrymandering is okay. The court is saying that they don't have a solution, or at least not one that can be imposed by courts. The court is more constrained than a legislature in finding a solution, because the court must override state laws based on a reasonable reading of federal law, in this case the Voting Rights Act, or the Constitution. And unfortunately, both of those sources are nearly silent on the matter. It is not within the courts power to create law from nothing, notwithstanding Kagan's dissent. In the past, we decided that the appropriate grouping for the election of representatives was geographic. It's not ideal, but it's the best of bad options. Our current gerrymanders are a perversion of that principle, and we are right to look for a solution that leads to cleaner, more compact districts. The court has said that it's not theirs to decide the issue. I'm not sure I agree, because current gerrymanders are an incumbent protection racket, and that looks to me like a civil rights violation. But in any case, it is well within the power of Congress to fix the problem through an amendment to the Voting Rights Act, and they certainly should.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  "It is well within the power of Congress to fix the problem..." Except that the Senate is controlled by Republicans and Republicans, on the whole, benefit more from gerrymandering. Even when the words and intentions of GOP are made clear, "we gerrymandered black peoples' districts to reduce their representation", it's still hard to remove that entrenched power. What's more, because of the pro-rural bias of the Senate, the rural allegiance to the GOP, and the electoral college disadvantaging urban centers, this entrenched GOP will continue to have a disproportionate share of power. The Democrats try to play clean and fair, meanwhile the deck is stacked against them, and they still naively don't shift back towards gaining rural voters who they need for the Senate. Until the Fox News loving Silent Gen and Boomers die off, the GOP will cling to a disproportionate share of power.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> That requirement does not extend to political parties I think political parties are a non-entity as far as the US constitution (small 'c') is concerned, aren't they? So the court doesn't have any opinion on them and there are no requirements.

paulkon 7y ago
What's the distinction between small 'c' Constitution and the formal document in this context?
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  The constitution includes the Constitution, plus precedent, convention, etc. Some countries, like the UK, have a constitution but no Constitution.
coldcode 7y ago
It's true, the Constitution was written without regard to parties, which I think is a huge failing, but one that could be remedied - if we didn't have partisan politics. But Supremes have created new law many times, both good and bad, and they should have this time as well. What will likely happen is people will challenge maps on other reasons, with no obvious likelihood of success. I have always felt that the rule for drawing a map should involve some kind of rational geometric principal, such as requiring the maps to have a minimal boundary length, making it mostly impossible to rig. But not very likely to ever happen sadly.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  In the UK they just get an independent group to manage the boundaries.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    The Boundary Commission. Yes, we do. But: 1. It would be harder to create such an independent commission in the US, because Americans (and especially Republicans) have worked tirelessly to make every corner of their lives another opportunity for partisanship. Americans elect _far_ too many officials, and those elections almost invariably end up partisan because a party has the muscle to win you the election. For example, in the US all those Supreme Court justices who wrote this decision and its dissents are in effect partisan, even though in principle it's not supposed to be a partisan body. In the UK the Supreme Court is just a bunch of judges that other judges and lawyers thought should be elevated, not a partisan issue. 2. Because Parliament is sovereign the Parliament has to actually enact those boundaries after the commission proposes them. Historically there is always a political party that thinks these changes are a bad idea conveniently for them because it somehow always seems to be the party that will likely lose seats. Because the Commission itself is impartial which party is angry about this varies, but in recent history it's Labour. When proposals to actually apply the current recommendations are coming up, I can always expect about one Facebook post a week from somebody who had no idea how boundaries work, or that there's an independent commission in charge of this, who has been convinced "somehow" that the party they don't like has conspired to take seats away from the one they do like via these boundary changes. Big surprise. 3. To be fair we got here because historically UK boundaries were left unchanged for so long that we had the Rotten Boroughs, a situation where some random land owner might own an area which was entitled to be represented by an MP even though literally _nobody_ had lived there for decades. You will not be surprised to learn that this caused _horrendous_ levels of corruption, bad enough that the act of parliament to fix it was routinely called the Great Reform Act (legally "Representation of the People Act 1832") and had to be rammed through by the same sort of extreme measures we've seen Democrats talking about in the US to fix its democracy.
- coldcode 7y ago
  Also true that states can remedy this (this opinion is federal), but due to the original problem, are unlikely to.

harryh 7y ago

Because, by design, we don't have proportional representation. Even in a world without gerrymandering a small majority (say 55%) of voters evenly distributed can pick even 100% of elected officials.

mieseratte 7y ago

> How can each vote carry equal weight if 60% of the voters get to select 30% of the elected officials? Your vote is measured the same way as my vote. Your vote doesn't equal three-fifths of mine. There is apparently not a Federal regulation on crafting districts such that they overall skew in a given direction. In practice this can and does result in your vote being effectively worthless if you are in a district that is not your particular flavor. Depending on your philosophies, the judiciary is not tasked with legislation or "correcting wrongs" but with evaluating the current ruleset and determining if things are correct given those rules. So despite that you and I can look and say "well regardless of the letter of the law, the outcome surely isn't right" you have those that view this as not being in their power to change. The law legislates the way in which the vote is counted, not in the district-creation process. One would assume this is how his head remains intact.

ccleve 7y ago

Because a voter's preference cannot be expressed solely through their affiliation with a political party. We look at gerrymandering through the lens of "fairness", and we find it unfair when one group cannot get reasonably proportional representation in the legislature. But we are all members of many groups. We belong to political parties, racial groups, regional groups, economic groups, social classes and personality groups -- how can all of them get a voice which is proportional to their numbers? There's no clear-cut solution. This is the core problem with most gerrymandering jurisprudence -- it looks at at the problem mostly through a racial lens, and more recently, a partisan one. But the world is more complex than that. Voter's interests are not solely determined by the color of their skin or their political party. The court is not saying that gerrymandering is okay. The court is saying that they don't have a solution, or at least not one that can be imposed by courts. The court is more constrained than a legislature in finding a solution, because the court must override state laws based on a reasonable reading of federal law, in this case the Voting Rights Act, or the Constitution. And unfortunately, both of those sources are nearly silent on the matter. It is not within the courts power to create law from nothing, notwithstanding Kagan's dissent. In the past, we decided that the appropriate grouping for the election of representatives was geographic. It's not ideal, but it's the best of bad options. Our current gerrymanders are a perversion of that principle, and we are right to look for a solution that leads to cleaner, more compact districts. The court has said that it's not theirs to decide the issue. I'm not sure I agree, because current gerrymanders are an incumbent protection racket, and that looks to me like a civil rights violation. But in any case, it is well within the power of Congress to fix the problem through an amendment to the Voting Rights Act, and they certainly should.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
"It is well within the power of Congress to fix the problem..." Except that the Senate is controlled by Republicans and Republicans, on the whole, benefit more from gerrymandering. Even when the words and intentions of GOP are made clear, "we gerrymandered black peoples' districts to reduce their representation", it's still hard to remove that entrenched power. What's more, because of the pro-rural bias of the Senate, the rural allegiance to the GOP, and the electoral college disadvantaging urban centers, this entrenched GOP will continue to have a disproportionate share of power. The Democrats try to play clean and fair, meanwhile the deck is stacked against them, and they still naively don't shift back towards gaining rural voters who they need for the Senate. Until the Fox News loving Silent Gen and Boomers die off, the GOP will cling to a disproportionate share of power.