Under the 14th Amendment, states get House seats by “counting the whole number of persons in each state.” Thus, children, non-citizens, disenfranchised former offenders and similar individuals still count to determine how many representatives each state has. If non-voters can no longer be counted when drawing legislative districts, then states will need to identify which residents are over the age of 18 and only count those residents during redistricting. At the federal level, gerrymanders occur after each state has been apportioned a certain number of seats in the House of Representatives; then state lawmakers carve up the state into districts that benefit one party over the other. Evenwel, by contrast, is an attempt to rig the apportionment process itself. Can it be permissible for map drawers to use “an illegal standard” as even a small part of their criteria?
At thinkprogress.org
