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

26II. Review Is Required Because The Fifth CircuitIncorrectly Decided This Important And UnsettledQuestion.A. The Fourteenth Amendment’s One-Person,One-Vote Principle Secures The Rights OfVoters.The Fourteenth Amendment protects “the rightof all qualified citizens to vote.” Reynolds, 377 U.S. at554 (emphasis added). Because that right “guaranteesthe opportunity for equal participation by all voters inthe election of state legislators,” id. at 566 (emphasisadded), “the weight of a citizen’s vote cannot be made todepend on where he lives,” id. at 567 (emphasis added);id. at 568 (“[A]n individual’s right to vote for statelegislators is unconstitutionally impaired when its weightis in a substantial fashion diluted when compared withvotes of citizens living [in] other parts of the State.”)(emphasis added); id. at 561 (“[T]he judicial focus mustbe concentrated upon ascertaining whether there hasbeen any discrimination against certain of the State’scitizens which constitutes an impermissible impairmentof their constitutionally protected right to vote.”); id. at563 (“Weighting the votes of citizens differently, by anymethod or means, merely because of where they happento reside, hardly seems justifiable.”) (emphasis added).The point of Reynolds and its progeny could not be moreclear: the Fourteenth Amendment’s one-person, one-voteprinciple secures the rights of voters—not the populationwrit large. See, e.g., Hadley, 397 U.S. at 52, 56; Chapmanv. Meier, 420 U.S. 1, 25 (1975); Bd. of Estimate of City ofNew York v. Morris, 489 U.S. 688, 698 (1989).