NationStates Jolt Archive

Huh? What? How Dare I?

Well the truth of the matter is that I don't care about you poltical views as much right now as I care about how competant you are in understanding what you are actually talking about.

So I thought I would devise a little quiz if you would to see who could come up with the answer to a politically interesting question. One in which the national media has all but ignored, but potentially very politically important for U.S. citizens. The reason, a good number of poltitical activists have recently latched onto this concept as a way of removing gerrymandering.

As most American's know, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared (from Reynolds vs Sims) that one person equal one vote or "no malapportionment rule". That is that each congressional district within a state should have approximatly equal population.

Now then, how is it that Michigan's congressional district apportionment law be considered constitutional?
Michigan doesn't design its congressional districts based on population, but on municipalities. That is the congressional district plan is slected based on the least number of divided counties, cities, villiages of the suggested plans. Even if that plan has a greater deviation of population between the congressional districts, which would violate the no malapportionment rule?

How can this be so? And why is it so?

Bonus Question: Does this system eliminate Gerymandering?

Well the poportional representation standard is not that strict, they courts allow districts to deviate a few percentage points here or there. Is this the correct answer?

Gerrymandering is not per se unconstitutional unless a group of voters is intentionally discriminated against and the voters are denied the power to influence the political process for a long period of time in a way which degrades a voting groups influence-- it is actually a rather high standard to meet. See Miller v Johnson.

I personally would have gone with provision 7A of that case, regarding the compactness of districts, wherein it effectively argues that a small amount of numerical inequity is tolerable for the sake of having relatively compact districts, rather than something that, on a map, would look like a dragon eating Ann Arbor or something - only the Michigan form of it results in something of a bias toward logical compactness at the expense of physical compactness and numerical equity. It would probably take a challenge to the ruling, brought before the Supreme Court, to get a final answer on this.

Would such a system eliminate gerrymandering? No. It may have the ability to, but it certainly would not do so as a matter of course. Cities tend to act in blocs, and a system in which cities are lumped in together based on 60/40 favoritism of the ruling party is an entirely feasible concept (though invariably a few districts would be given over to the opposition based on provision 7, the division in this case would still leave the party at the helm with a clear and possibly decisive majority).