Following on from the various threads about the use of voter ID and similar tactics as a form of voter suppression in US elections, is the representation reduction part of Section 2 of the 14th amendment ever applied in practice, and if so, would this apply to voters denied the right to vote due to any of these voter suppression tactics?
Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.*
Not really sure what you’re getting at. My (probably poor) reading of your bolded portion of Sec. 2 suggests to me that it would tend to act as a disincentive for artificially excluding whole groups of citizens from eligibility to vote (i.e., “Hey Missouri, if you’re not going to give the franchise to the one-third of your citizens who have black skin, you can just get by with two-thirds of the seats in Congress to which your population would otherwise entitle you.”).
ETA: fractions made up for the purpose of this illustration
Another Amendment was needed to make poll taxes unconstitutional, which were the South’s way of restricting black voting for 100 years after the 14th Amendment. Nobody ever tried to reduce representation because of it. (At least I don’t recall any serious attempt to do so. Somebody may have made the argument somewhere.)
And every state has regulations concerning eligible voters. Trying to argue that requiring a photo ID differs from the 50 sets of regulations already in place, including those already requiring ID’s, and thereby violates the 14th Amendment is going to be a stretch.
There may very well be other ways to attack those laws, which are clearly aimed at voter suppression. I hope so. But realistically, they will have to go in the direction of ensuring that everyone has equal and inexpensive access to identification, because regulation itself is clearly Constitutional.
I’m pretty sure that section has never been enforced, even during the darkest days of Jim Crow.
They had to pass a law to stop voter suppression. If they could have relied on the 14th amendment, the courts at the time were probably willing to accomodate that view but you can’t get there just on the 14th amendment.
Question:
Who would have standing in such a lawsuit?
It says “shall” so suppose a state decides to disenfranchise a group of voters, who would hold Congress accountable to perform their mandated duty?