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

33vote of those residing in the disfavored areashad not been effectively diluted. It would appearextraordinary to suggest that a State couldbe constitutionally permitted to enact a lawproviding that certain of the State’s voters couldvote two, five, or 10 times for their legislativerepresentatives, while voters living elsewherecould vote only once. And it is inconceivable thata state law to the effect that, in counting votesfor legislators, the votes of citizens in one partof the State would be multiplied by two, five, or10, while the votes of persons in another areawould be counted only at face value, could beconstitutionally sustainable.Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 562; Morris, 489 U.S. at 698 (“[A]citizen is … shortchanged if … he may vote for onerepresentative and the voters in another district half thesize also elect one representative.”).Yet this is precisely what the Plan imposes. As notedabove, the Court indicated in Mahan that a 16.4% deviationapproached the constitutional limit, even assuming thatthe State might have a compelling interest in drawingdistricts with such wide deviations. But this case exceedsthe deviations found barely tolerable in Mahan by an orderof magnitude. If the one-person, one-vote principle hasany value, such deviations are clearly unconstitutional.In any event, even if the Plan is not per seunconstitutional, there can be no compelling stateinterest in making the votes of certain citizens worthhalf the votes of others. The only two policy goals thatthis Court has identified as possibly justifying deviations