![]() But the law on race and ethnicity in the redistricting context essentially boils down to three concepts. Race relations and electoral politics are both quite complicated. The extent to which redistricting can or must account for race and ethnicity is sometimes seen as a particularly thorny problem, but that’s in part because some people have a vested interest in making it seem hard. The other set of major federal redistricting rules concerns race and ethnicity. Though the Supreme Court has formally left this question for a future case, their last word in the area left serious question as to whether such measures would be constitutional. But some have suggested other measures, including voting-age population (“VAP”), citizen voting-age population (“CVAP”), or registered voters. Each of these alternatives depends on a logic of exclusion, denying representation to those who pay taxes and who are expected to live by our laws. In 2011, each and every state counted the total population. Iowa both limits the total population deviation to five percent, and also sets the overall average deviation at no more than one percent.Īs far as who is counted for purpose of equalizing state and local districts, the Supreme Court has been less definitive about what the Constitution requires. Colorado, for example, allows at most five percent total deviation between the largest and smallest districts Missouri asks districts to be no more than one percent above or below the average, except that deviations of up to three percent are permitted to maintain political boundaries. Some states hold their state districts to stricter population equality limits than the federal constitution requires. This is not a hard line: a state plan may be upheld if there is a compelling reason for a larger disparity, and a state plan may be struck down if a smaller disparity is not justified by a good reason. Over a series of cases, it has become accepted that a plan will be constitutionally suspect if the largest and smallest districts are more than ten percent apart.
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