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One person, one vote principle
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The one person, one vote principle
Pavel Šára, April 17, 2014
US since WW2: Issues
Decennial census
Origins of the principle
Sources
- provides data for the reapportionment and redistricting process but also for other purposes (especially money distribution)
- not everyone is counted - poor, illegal migrants tend not to be counted at all while others are counted twice
- students
- prisoners (generally not allowed to vote)
- people hesitate to hand in the forms - especially illegal immigrants
- people living overseas
- congressional and state legislative elections
- currently the most important redistricting principle that constraints the others
- before the 1960s districts unequally populated
- Redistricting Revolution of the 1960s
- 1962 - Baker v. Carr, 1964 - Wesberry v. Sanders, Reynolds v. Sims
- the accepted deviation not specified
- current situation - zero deviation v. 10 per cent rule
Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010).
Lisa Handley and Bernard Grofman, eds. Redistricting in Comparative Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Thomas L. Brunell, "The One Person, One Vote Standard in Redistricting: The Uses and Abuses of Population Deviations in Legislative Redistricting," Case Western Reserve Law Review 62, No. 4 (Summer 2012): 1057-1077.
Ronald Keith Gaddie, Justin J. Wert and Charles S. Bullock, "Seats, Votes, Citizens, and the One Person, One Vote Problem," Stanford Law and Policy Review 23, No. 2 (2012): 431-453.
Laughlin McDonald, "The Looming 2010 Census: A Proposed Judicially Manageable Standard and Other Reform Options for Partisan Gerrymandering," Harvard Journal on Legislation 46, No. 1 (Winter 2009): 243-274.
Gerald R. Webster, "Reflections on Current Criteria to Evaluate Redistricting Plans," Political Geography 32, (January 2013): 3-14.
Reform proposals
The OPOV and its criticism
- different data should be used to determine the size of the districts - citizens, people eligible to vote, voter turnout
- partisan consequences
- increasing the size of the House
- the votes will never have equal weight
- despite not being perfect, the OPOV is still the fairest variable
- used for partisan purposes
- congressional districts remain unequal
- impossible to count everyone
- population at the moment of the census v. population when district plans are approved
- tolerate small deviations?