petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to grant ... - Election Law Blog

14of any one voter once cast is accorded equal weight relativeto every other voter. Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 557-58. “Withrespect to the allocation of legislative representation, allvoters, as citizens of a State, stand in the same relationregardless of where they live.” Id. at 565. “Simplystated, an individual’s right to vote for state legislatorsis unconstitutionally impaired when its weight is in asubstantial fashion diluted when compared with votes ofcitizens living [in] other parts of the State.” Id. at 568. Inshort, “the weight of a citizen’s vote cannot be made todepend on where he lives.” Id. at 567.But the Court has not yet decided “what measure ofpopulation should be used for determining whether thepopulation is equally distributed among the districts.”Chen, 121 S. Ct. at 2021 (Thomas, J., dissenting fromdenial of certiorari). By not deciding the issue, the Courthas “left a critical variable in the requirement undefined.”Id. Indeed, “[t]he one-person, one-vote principle may, inthe end, be of little consequence if [the Court] decide[s]that each jurisdiction can choose its own measure ofpopulation. But as long as [the Court] sustain[s] theone-person, one-vote principle, [it has] an obligation toexplain to States and localities what it actually means.”Id. For several reasons, the question is too important toremain undecided any longer. See Robert W. Bennett,Should Parents Be Given Extra Votes On Account ofTheir Children?, 94 Nw. U. L. Rev. 503, 516 (2000) (“Canit really be that equally populated districts are importantin constitutional terms, but that the inclusion or exclusionfrom the count of population groups that may approach,or conceivably even exceed, half the total in some districtsis of no constitutional moment?”).