Elections, Rep, and Voting Rights

Election Clause

The Elections Clause provides that state legislatures prescribe the times, places, and manner of elections for Senators and Representatives, but Congress may make or alter those regulations. States have primary rulemaking authority for congressional elections, but Congress has a supervisory override power. It applies to federal congressional elections, not directly to state elections or presidential elector selection.

2. Concurrent authority / jurisdiction in elections

Concurrent election authority means more than one level or branch of government can have legal power over elections. Under Article I, states initially regulate congressional elections, but Congress can make or alter those rules. Under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Congress and federal courts may also intervene when state election rules violate equal protection or racial voting rights. In Bush v. Gore, the issue was not simply the Elections Clause; it involved presidential electors under Article II, Florida law, state court interpretation, federal Equal Protection, and the Supreme Courts emergency intervention.

Republican Gurantee Clause

Article IV, Section 4 guarantees every state a republican form of government. The Court has usually treated Guarantee Clause claims as nonjusticiable political questions because the clause lacks judicially manageable standards and historically implicates political-branch judgments about state governments. In Baker, the Court avoided the Guarantee Clause and used Equal Protection instead.

Disenfranchisement and methods

Disenfranchisement means denying or weakening the right to vote. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, Southern states used facially legal rules and discriminatory administration to exclude Black voters and sometimes poor white voters. States used facially legal rules and discriminatory administration to exclude Black voters and sometimes poor white voters. requirements, grandfather clauses, intimidation, white primaries, and discriminatory registration practices.

Apportionment and maapportionment

Apportionment is the allocation of legislative representation among districts. Malapportionment occurs when districts with very different populations elect the same number of representatives. This makes some votes count more than others

Example: a rural district with few residents may have the same representative power as a much larger urban district, giving rural voters disproportionate influence.

one person one vote principle

One person, one vote means each person’s vote should carry roughly equal weight. Reynolds held that both houses of state legislatures must be apportioned substantially on a population basis. The rule does not require proportional party representation. It also does not apply to the U.S. Senate because the Constitution explicitly structures it with equal state representation.

racial gerrymandering

Racial gerrymandering occurs when race predominates in drawing district lines and traditional districting principles are subordinated. Race-conscious districting is not automatically unconstitutional; the constitutional problem arises when race becomes the dominant sorting principle. Once race predominates, strict scrutiny applies: the state must show a compelling interest and narrow tailoring.

partasain gerrymandering

Partisan gerrymandering means drawing district lines to advantage one political party and disadvantage another. after Rucho, federal constitutional claims against partisan gerrymandering are nonjusticiable political questions. The Court did not say partisan gerrymandering is good or harmless. It said federal courts lack a neutral, manageable constitutional standard for deciding when partisan advantage goes too far.

Compactness and contiguity of districts

Compactness asks whether a district is geographically coherent rather than stretched, bizarre, or fragmented. Contiguity means the district is physically connected. These are traditional districting principles, along with respect for political subdivisions, communities of interest, and geography. They are not absolute constitutional commands, but they can

be evidence that race or party overwhelmed ordinary districting logic.

Minority-majority districts

A minority-majority district is a district in which a racial or ethnic minority group makes up a majority of the population or voting-age population, often so that the group has a realistic opportunity to elect its preferred candidate. The legal point is not simply numbers. The question is whether the district is required or justified by the VRA and whether it was drawn in a way that survives Equal Protection review.

Cracking and packing

Packing wastes votes by over-concentrating a group in a few districts where it wins overwhelmingly. Cracking wastes votes by splitting a group across many districts so it cannot win anywhere. These tools can be used for racial vote dilution or partisan entrenchment. In racial cases, cracking and packing may support VRA or Equal Protection claims. In partisan cases, Rucho blocks federal constitutional review even when the practice is extreme.

Justiciability

Justiciability asks whether a court has authority and institutional capacity to decide a case using legal standards. It includes doctrines such as standing, ripeness, mootness, and the political question doctrine. In Week 7, the most important part is the political question doctrine: whether election-law disputes are legal claims courts can decide or political disputes courts should avoid.

Political questions

A political question is a constitutional issue that federal courts decline to decide because it is committed to another branch or because courts lack judicially discoverable and manageable standards. Baker identifies factors such as textual commitment to a coordinate branch, lack of manageable standards, need for nonjudicial policy judgment, and risk of disrespecting another branch. Colegrove treated malapportionment as nonjusticiable; Baker moved away from that path for Equal Protection malapportionment claims.

Single-member district

A single-member district elects one representative from one geographic district. It is the usual form for congressional and many state legislative elections. In a single-member district with plurality voting, whoever gets the most votes wins the whole seat. This structure can make district lines extremely important because moving voters across lines changes representation.

First-past-the-post voting

First-past-the-post is plurality winner-take-all voting. The candidate with more votes than any other candidate wins the seat, even if most voters preferred someone else across multiple alternatives. In single-member districts, this can produce disproportional outcomes: a party can win a majority of seats without a majority of total votes, especially if district lines are packed or cracked.

Proportional representation

Proportional representation allocates seats roughly in proportion to vote share. If a party wins 40 percent of the vote, it should receive about 40 percent of seats. The U.S. Constitution does not require proportional representation. Rucho treats claims about partisan fairness as often sliding toward a demand for proportionality, which the Court says has no objective constitutional measure.

Voting Rights Act and preclearance

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is Congress's major statute enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment. Section 2 applies nationwide and bans voting practices that deny or abridge voting rights because of race or color. Section 5 required covered jurisdictions to get federal approval before changing voting rules. Section 4(b) supplied the coverage formula identifying which jurisdictions were covered. Shelby County struck down Section 4(b), leaving Section 5 without a working coverage formula unless Congress enacts a new one.

Racial bloc voting

Racial bloc voting means voters of different racial groups vote in strongly different patterns, so the majority group can usually defeat the minority group’s preferred candidate. Under Gingles, a Section 2 vote-dilution plaintiff traditionally had to show: (1) the minority group is large and geographically compact enough to form a majority in a reasonably configured district; (2) the minority group is politically cohesive; (3) the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc usually to defeat the minority-preferred candidate; and then the totality of circumstances shows unequal opportunity. Callais adds that, for the second and third preconditions, plaintiffs must provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation where race and party are closely correlated.