The wisdom of the Founders recognized that most citizens were not equipped to deal with complex questions of government. Gentlemen of property and businessmen assured that power would rest in the hands of those best prepared for the task. By a happy coincidence, themselves.
What a stupid argument. By that reasoning, anytime someone’s candidate loses, the constitution is violated. :rolleyes:
Why on God’s Green Earth would you ask a rando poster on the Internet this question, when there is a series of court rulings that explain in detail why it’s unconstitutional? Are you trying to score points, or do you have some other purpose?
Your argument is stupid. The point is not that voters are disenfranchised when they don’t vote for a winning candidate. The point is that voters are disenfranchised when their own government intentionally draws lines around their voters to intentionally turn one set of voters into a minority voice.
It might not be slam-dunk obvious, but it seems to be a perfectly reasonable argument to me.
“Hey, Eonwe, we know you vote for Star-bellied Sneeches, but we don’t want Star-bellied Sneeches in office so we’re going to count your vote over here with all these non-Star-bellied Sneeches voters who live across town, thus taking away your vote from your Star-bellied Sneech supporting neighborhood, so that the non-Star bellied candidate in your neighborhood will get elected.”
Sure seems like it’s removing the power of “the people” to me.
I absolutely oppose the legislature scoffing at the law, if indeed this is what they are doing. But I’d say that isn’t a settled question yet. Different courts have delivered different findings when considering the problem.
Why should I accept your claim that the legislature is scoffing at the law when the law remains unclear at present?
One position is pro-democracy, one is anti-democracy. You tell us which we should pick.
Yes.
But “the People,” also includes fifteen year olds, felons, and non-citizens, and none of those exclusions offends that clause. I am a person, and I can’t choose a member of the House of Representatives in southern Virginia, because I live in Northern Virginia. THAT doesn’t offend the clause either. Right?
So what are the specifics of that clause’s operation, according to you?
Actually, scratch that – I have no care about what you think it should mean. What do the courts say it means?
My purpose is to suggest that those court rulings are not final, and that a final ruling will find that the practice is constitutional.
Aw, you left off the fun part!
“So, all you guys have to do is raise up a massive and overwhelming vote and take over all the levers of power, then pass a Constitutional amendment! Neener-neener, and good luck with that!”
They are scoffing election law exactly as much as the people toppling Silent Sam were scoffing the ‘historical preservation’ law, but your opprobrium appears to be directed in vastly different ways in the two cases. You criticized people toppling the statue before there had been any charges filed, much less a conclusive court case. Why do people toppling racist statues warrant immediate condemnation, but a legislature ignoring election law gets no condemnation unless and until the Supreme Court steps in?
And I’d like a cite for which courts have delivered substantially different findings when considering the problem of NC’s gerrymandered districts.
So you’re asserting that if one considers a law ‘unclear’, one has the right to ignore it? And it’s rather telling that ‘laws protecting racist statues’ get the ‘assumed good’ treatment, while ‘laws protecting against illegitimate redistricting’ get the ‘assumed invalid’ treatment.
I assume that Bricker’s point is that the Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled that a partisan gerrymander is unconstitutional. There is a clear law that knocking over a statue is an offence (unlawful property damage, or whatever the local jurisdiction calls it.) There is no clear law that a partisan gerrymander is illegal. So, it’s hard to say that the drafters of this particular districting plan were scoffing at the law.
In other words, cite for the law that the drafters of the districting plan were scoffing at?
It starts “We the People”.
You can’t assume that all things that seem wrong are in fact illegal. If enough people get upset by it, then it might become illegal.
In Agatha Christie’s book Crooked House, the recently deceased was a crook. That is, he was smart and understood the rules and always conducted himself that he was never committing a crime, just coming as close to the line as possible. Everyone everyone agreed he was crooked, especially in relation to making profits off the war effort in WWII. The police inspector summed it up to Poirot: “Nothing he did was ever illegal, technically. But once the government found out what he was doing, they usually made it illegal.”
Sure. and then?
Who do you see doing that? The discussion has been about what *should *be illegal, what the courts *should *rule unconstitutional, what the spirit of the constitution that *should *guide them is, all combined with skepticism that they will do so.
Wouldn’t you rather the ruling be in accordance with the spirit of our founding document and the principles it lays out, not a way to skirt it?
You’re posting as a lawyer, not a citizen.
Whether something is constitutional is different from whether something is justiciable.
It may well be that 5 members of the Supreme Court think partisan gerrymandering is not justiciable. That doesn’t mean they think it does not violate the Constitution.
What, you mean that it’s impossible to rule according to the clear text of the law? And here I thought that you were a strict constructionist.
Oh, and partisan gerrymandering also falls afoul of the Constitutional clause guaranteeing the states a republican form of government.
God you’re exhausting. I have no interest in chasing goalposts.
Depends on the capitalization.