One person, one vote: SCOTUS to tell us what it means

[Brittain33]

Doing this for redistricting but NOT for apportionment, while consistent under the constitution, makes a total mockery of the principles here. Either non-citizens should count, or they don't. Otherwise this is handing states like Texas a huge tranche of seats based on its non-citizen population which won't count for legislators. This means that a citizen in a Republican district in Texas will have an unequal vote compared to a citizen in a Republican district in Kentucky or Ohio because the R districts in TX will have significantly fewer residents and voters.

[Brittain33]

Congress, through the VRA, requires States to estimate the CVAP (and its racial composition) when performing redistricting.

Does this requirement apply to all 50 states?

[Brittain33]

Doing this for redistricting but NOT for apportionment, while consistent under the constitution, makes a total mockery of the principles here. Either non-citizens should count, or they don't. Otherwise this is handing states like Texas a huge tranche of seats based on its non-citizen population which won't count for legislators. This means that a citizen in a Republican district in Texas will have an unequal vote compared to a citizen in a Republican district in Kentucky or Ohio because the R districts in TX will have significantly fewer residents and voters.

There are already inter-state discrepancies in vote strength.  Compare a Montana voter for the House to a Rhode Island voter.  The fact that this might alter the discrepancies (decreasing them in some cases, increasing them in others) is basically irrelevant.  The only question is how best to ensure that, within each state, all voters are afforded equal protection. 

The issue is that it needlessly causes a new discrepancy of the type that this change purportedly addresses. If there were a political Hippocratic oath to "do no harm," this fails miserably.

[Brittain33]

Doing this for redistricting but NOT for apportionment, while consistent under the constitution, makes a total mockery of the principles here. Either non-citizens should count, or they don't. Otherwise this is handing states like Texas a huge tranche of seats based on its non-citizen population which won't count for legislators. This means that a citizen in a Republican district in Texas will have an unequal vote compared to a citizen in a Republican district in Kentucky or Ohio because the R districts in TX will have significantly fewer residents and voters.

There are already inter-state discrepancies in vote strength.  Compare a Montana voter for the House to a Rhode Island voter.  The fact that this might alter the discrepancies (decreasing them in some cases, increasing them in others) is basically irrelevant.  The only question is how best to ensure that, within each state, all voters are afforded equal protection.  

The issue is that it needlessly causes a new discrepancy of the type that this change purportedly addresses. If there were a political Hippocratic oath to "do no harm," this fails miserably.

And what I am saying is that a) the inter-state discrepancy is not a "new discrepancy", and b) it doesn't make the existing discrepancy worse, only different.  Some of the changes will decrease discrepancies.  

By new discrepancy, I implied "new type of discrepancy."

If you can suggest any change to the Rhode Island - Montana discrepancy that doesn't involve fractional representatives or increasing the size of the House of Representatives to 2,000 members, I'm all ears. It's unsupportable to compare an unavoidable artifact of small states to a superfluous distortion that is avoidable and afflicts a large number of states.

[Brittain33]

A better solution would be for the federal government to issue ID cards and require that they be accepted for federal elections without a further registration step. 

That's Phase 3 of Operation Jade Helm.