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

24fewer eligible voters. The district court agreed. Whilenoting that the Supreme Court had “flung the courtsinto the redistricting thicket” with “no clear precedentand language … supporting both sides of the issue,” thecourt adopted the reasoning of Judge Kozinski’s Garzadissent. Id. at 221 (“Reynolds implies that the overridingconcern of the Court was that every person’s vote countequally.”). In that case, by “[u]sing voting age population,the deviation between districts [was] 16.17%,” whichcreated a “variance [that] is well in excess of 10% and isunacceptably and unconstitutionally large.” Id. at 223.The court thus declared the county’s plan unconstitutionalunder the Fourteenth Amendment.The Fourth Circuit reversed. Daly, 93 F.3d at1227. The court concluded that there was no authorityto “suggest that the principle of electoral equality issuperior to the principle of representational equality.” Id.at 1223; id. at 1226-27 (“[W]hen all of the aspects of equalrepresentation are considered as a whole, it becomes clearthat representational equality is at least as important aselectoral equality in a representative democracy.”). “Evenif electoral equality were the paramount concern of the oneperson, one vote principle,” moreover, the court concludedthat resolving the issue “would lead federal courts too farinto the ‘political thicket.’” Id. at 1227 (quoting Colegrovev. Green, 328 U.S. 549, 556 (1946) (Frankfurter, J.,concurring)). The Fourth Circuit therefore held that “thedecision to use an apportionment base other than totalpopulation is up to the state,” id. at 1225, and it upheldthe county’s use of total population as an unreviewablepolitical question, id. at 1227.