Bakers V. Carr Pros And Cons

The Unites State’s restrictions on voters had a long and dark history to being exclusionary. Initially, only white, own-landing, men had the right to have their voices be hard and from that point on there has been efforts to restrict women, native Americans, African Americans, other ethic minorities from voting through bigoted statues such as Jim Crow laws. The phrase “bad habits die hard” is true here since the United States is still using de jure methods to restrict voters from many demographics. There is contamination of wishes to keep people out of voting from the drawing of districts, the systematic way our elections run, to the actual more practical details on who can vote; it is critical that all these levels of the electoral process

Representatives represent a geographic area within a state and not the state at large, so a challenge can arise when dividing states according to their population because districts are required to be equal—or almost equal—in population. The 1962 case of Bakers v Carr held that it is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause for a state to weigh one individual’s vote more than others, thus upholding the principle on one person, one vote. This doctrine is especially important because it is the basis to districts being equally distributed. In theory, every person should be equally represented before the government but a problem with single member districts is that it makes it easier to exclude minorities from political participation. By definition, minorities’ voices are drowned out by the overwhelming majority who votes. A possible solution to this is through efforts like mandates of majority-minority districts, which most of the constituency in a district are minorities, similarly to like Affirmative Action for voting. Statues that pass strict scrutiny should be brought to the Congress’ docket because a diverse voting body is a compelling state interest so narrowly tailored ways need to be developed to be inclusive in the voters during state and federal

Through this method of choosing, the candidates with the most votes win, thus not equally representing a possible larger majority that could have been fragmentized by many candidates. It is possible that the candidate that wins just won because they are the larger of the minorities that ran in the election. Under this model, a majority of people could end up being represented by someone they did not vote for as their representative. A solution to this would be to incorporate proportional representation during elections to represent the composition of the public more accurately, but still apply a moderately high minimum percentage threshold in order to prevent extensive fragmentation and a massive amount of new parties. A truly proportional representation isn’t completely necessary, but can be incorporated more into state elections to form a more mixed system. Some levels of elections, such as senatorial elections can remain truly under a plurality system, but representative elections can incorporate proportional representation in states with larger populations. Having less of a winner-take- all system will allow for presidents to be elected more through popular vote and make democracy more direct. It would also allow for more political voices than just the two establishment parties that exist since with a more proportional system, voting for a third party would no