When states, counties, and towns redraw political districts, is it constitutional for them to include individuals who are ineligible to vote, such as noncitizens?Or does that dilute the vote of eligible citizens and violate the one-person, one-vote standard that the U.S. Supreme Court established for all redistricting fifty years ago in Reynolds v. Sims (1964)?
The Supreme Court is set to finally decide this issue in Evenwel v. Abbott—something it has avoided for decades up until this year.
In Evenwel, two Texas voters claim that including noncitizens in the population used to draw their legislative districts violates the Equal Protection Clause. These voters were placed by the state legislature in senate districts whose voting populations deviate anywhere from 31 to 49 percent from the ideal population of a...
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Does Allowing Noncitizens to Be Counted in Redistricting Violate One Person, One Vote Standard?
ReplyDeleteYES! It absolutely does. It mathematically creates votes of different weights in every district than the natives of that district are entitled to unless the aliens are evenly distributed in every district (and such is not the case). I estimate at least ten electoral college votes in California alone are attributable to Illegal aliens and thus nullifying the votes of three whole other states full of citizens.
But since the Census doesn't even ask your citizenship status, it is as if the government doesn't really want to know who is a citizen.
But the best way to fix this, as well as other forms of gerrymandering, is at-large representation. Thus, you don't vote by district. You vote for your platform and the people who carry your platform. More votes = more representation. But everyone gets the representative they voted for.