One man, one vote

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"One man, one vote", is a slogan used in pointing out a perceived imbalance in a given voting system.

1 United Kingdom
- 1.1 Historical background
- 1.2 NICRA
2 United States
- 2.1 Historical background
- 2.2 Warren Court decisions
3 Recent usages
4 References

[edit] United Kingdom

[edit] Historical background

When Northern Ireland came into being, it adopted the same political system which was in place at that time in Westminster. However, whilst the British parliament updated its system some years after Northern Ireland had set up its devolved government, the system in the province remained the same.

[edit] NICRA

When the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association came into being in 1967, it had five primary demands. An additional demand which became just as important was that every citizen in Northern Ireland be afforded the same number of votes for elections. The system the Northern Ireland government had adopted allowed for an extra vote per person for every business they owned.

Along with four of the five primary demands, the voting system was updated by the Northern Irish parliament and came into effect for the next election which, ironically, took place after the suspension of the Northern Ireland government.

[edit] United States

[edit] Historical background

The US Constitution requires a decennial census for the purpose of assuring a fair distribution of seats in the US House of Representatives, and this has generally occurred without incident, with the exception of the 1920 Census. However, once the practice developed of electing said representatives from districts drawn from within the state, rather than electing them at-large, the question arose as to whether or not the state legislature (which had responsibility for drawing these congressional districts) was required to see that said districts were equal in population. As with anything done in as large a country as the United States, there was no uniform practice. Some states redrew their US House districts every ten years, many did not. Some never redrew them, except when it was mandated by a change in the number of seats to which that state was entitled in the House of Representatives. This led to a disproportionality in the influence of voters across the states. For example, if the 2nd congressional district eventually had a population of 1.5 million, but the 3rd had only 500,000, then, in effect—since each district elected the same number of congressmen—a voter in the 3rd district had three times the voting "power" of a 2nd district voter.

Additionally, in most US states, electoral districts for seats in the upper house or Senate were ostensibly created at least partially on the basis of geography, rather than population. Whereas lower house seats might or might not be reapportioned on a decennial basis, such as those of the US House of Representatives, in most states, state senate district boundaries were never redrawn. As the United States became more urban, this led to the dilution of the votes of urban voters when casting ballots for state senate seats. A city dweller's vote had less influence on the make up of the state legislature than did a rural inhabitant.

[edit] Warren Court decisions

In various reapportionment cases decided by the Supreme Court, notably Wesberry v. Sanders, Reynolds v. Sims and Baker v. Carr it was ruled that districts for the House of Representatives and for the legislative districts of both houses of state legislatures had to be roughly equal in population. (The US Senate was not affected by these rulings, as its makeup is explicitly established in the US Constitution).^[1] The cases concerning malapportionment ended the pattern of gross rural overrepresentation and urban underrepresentation in the US House and state legislatures. Eventually the rulings were extended over local (city) districts as well.^[2]

Though now illegal, some state legislatures still today sometimes try to overpopulate the opposing parties' strongholds, generally through the use of gerrymandering.

[edit] Recent usages

Recently, the term "one man, one vote", has been bandied about by those who suspect cases of voter disenfranchisement. While very different in meaning from its original usage, this connotation may yet imprint itself on social consciousness better than the original use.