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

23two, five, or ten, or one-half.”) (internal citation omitted).“References to the personal nature of the right to vote asthe bedrock on which the one person one vote principleis founded appear in the case law with monotonousregularity.” Id. Indeed, “a careful reading of the Court’sopinions suggests that equalizing total population isviewed not as an end in itself, but as a means of achievingelectoral equality.” Id. at 783.Judge Kozinski thus concluded that the theory “at thecore of one person one vote is the principle of electoralequality, not that of equality of representation.” Id. at 782.The right to vote “is an important power reserved onlyto certain members of society; states are not required tobestow it upon aliens, transients, short-term residents,persons convicted of crime[s], or those considered tooyoung.” Id. at 781 (citation omitted). The one-person, onevoteprinciple “assures that those eligible to vote do notsuffer dilution of that important right by having their votegiven less weight than that of electors in another location.”Id. at 782. The Fourteenth Amendment “protects a rightbelonging to the individual elector and the key questionis whether the votes of some electors are materiallyundercounted because of the manner in which districtsare apportioned.” Id.Five years later, the issue arose in MecklenburgCounty, North Carolina. Daly v. Hunt, 881 F. Supp. 218(W.D.N.C. 1995). In Daly, the plaintiffs challenged themethod of dividing Mecklenburg County into districts forthe election of County Commissioners and School Boardmembers. The plaintiffs claimed that dividing the countyinto districts based on total population unconstitutionallyweighted the votes of citizens in districts that have