The Supreme Court Could Give The GOP Another 8 Seats In Congress

[Cryptoad]

This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit filed by conservative activists in Texas that could redefine the principle of “one person, one vote” as we know it. And if the Court sides with the plaintiffs, Republicans could stretch their already-historic majorities in the House and state legislatures even wider — the GOP would be helped just slightly in presidential elections.

Is Congress’s job to represent people, or just voters? Currently, all states are required to redraw their political boundaries based on the Census’s official count of total population every 10 years, which includes minors and noncitizen immigrants. But the Texas plaintiffs argue that states should be allowed to apportion seats based on where only U.S. citizens over 18 years of age live.

It seems like a minor detail, but it’s actually a major distinction. The decennial Census doesn’t track citizenship data, but the Census’s American Community Survey does. And although all 435 U.S. congressional districts have roughly equal total populations, the number of eligible voters and rates of actual participation can vary wildly from place to place.

For example, in Florida’s 11th District, home to the largely white retirement mecca of The Villages, 81 percent of all residents are adult citizens. But in California’s heavily Latino 34th District, anchored by downtown Los Angeles, only 41 percent of all residents are eligible to vote. The variations across districts in terms of actual turnout can be even more eye-popping. According to results compiled by Polidata for the Cook Political Report, Montana’s lone House district cast 483,932 votes for president in 2012, more than four times the tally in Texas’s 29th District, 114,901.

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http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-supreme-court-could-give-the-gop-another-8-seats-in-congress/