One Person, One Vote?

We may talk about one person one vote and all votes being equal, but we have never had a system that resulted in that being true in this country.

Starting with our presidential elections and then considering the way we select the senate and finally how we draw our congressional districts, some votes count more than others.

On the national level states with small populations gain an advantage because of the way the constitution allocates senators and the electoral college so a senator from California represents a lot more people than a senator from Wyoming.

Now understanding that the states had a vested interest in protecting their interests when the constitution was drawn up and gave themselves this advantage, it wasn't likely envisioned that the states would become so population diverse.

Of course within the states we see districts drawn with partisan zeal that leads to protecting the advantage of one party over the other.

It was always like this, but now with computers and demographic models there are ways to perpetuate this gerrymandering that would have been impossible 50 years ago.

Finally we see all the efforts to suppress certain voters in the name of stopping voter fraud, a virtually non-existent problem which keeps young and poor voters off the rolls.

So do we really believe in the concept of one person one vote?

Clearly only if they vote the way we want them to.