Or perhaps in another districtTWO hundred and twenty-six years after America’s Constitution was ratified, it might come as a surprise to learn that a fundamental question about the nature of the American republic has never been resolved—or even posed. It is well known that the country is a representative democracy where the people elect officials who serve in local, state and national institutions to make laws and carry them out in their name. It is a bit less well understood that, for the past half-century, the principle of “one person, one vote” has meant that the states’ electoral districts must be roughly equal in population. If 100 people are served by one state senator, for example, while another represents a district of 1,000 people, the former group has ten times the clout of the latter. The Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that these types of inequalities violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
That 1964 ruling in Reynolds v Sims, which announced the principle of “one person, one vote”, also said that states must count “people” (rather than “trees or acres”)...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1Y5fFcF
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