This past Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that state legislative districts had to be drawn to take all residents into account, not just voters or eligible voters. This policy was challenged by white rural voters who said that non-citizens, children, prisoners, and anyone else not eligible to vote diluted their voting power. Well, yeah. (By the way, isn’t it nice that Scalia is no longer on the Court?)
While this case was thrown out, other Republican attempts to suppress voter turnout have succeeded. Wisconsin is an example. There a federal district judge stuck down a voter ID bill, saying there had been no evidence of voter fraud. Unfortunately, a federal appeals court reversed that decision.
As a result, about 300,000 state residents could not vote in the most recent election. In all the hoopla over Cruz and Sanders, how many stories did you see about the state law that disenfranchised 300,000 voters?
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