One Person, One Vote: Teaching Sixth Grade Arithmetic

Abstract

The opinions leading up to and comprising the Redistricting Revolution, of the 1960s represent the most fundamental element of the course in Election Law. The litigation in Colegrove v. Green, Baker v. Carr, and Reynolds v. Sims all involved electoral districts that had substantial deviations in population between the most populated and least populated electoral districts. From these decisions, students squarely face fundamental questions about the role of courts in regulating the judicial process: When should courts police the political process and, if the courts choose to police the political process, what should they do? The genesis of the Redistricting Revolution is well known. In Colegrove, a majority of the Court heeds Justice Felix Frankfurter's admonition to not enter the "political thicket." In Baker, Justice William Brennan leads the Court in the opposite direction, employing a "yes, we can" attitude toward judicial intervention without exactly spelling out how "we can." In Reynolds, the Court supplies the remedy for the wrong: the doctrine of one person, one vote that generally requires electoral districts to be "as nearly of equal population as is practicable." The one person, one vote doctrine has been much maligned. For example, Hofstra's Grant Hayden has remarked on the "false promise" of one person, one vote. Indeed, one person, one vote was derided from the get-go. In a companion case decided on the same day as Reynolds, Justice Stewart dismissed one person, one vote by describing it as the "uncritical, simplistic, and heavy-handed application of sixth-grade arithmetic." As the title suggests, this Essay will focus on the latter three words of Justice Stewart's critique-the sixth-grade arithmetic. As part of my course on Election Law, I actually teach the students how to do the arithmetic that is such a focal point of the one person, one vote doctrine. In this Essay, I'll first briefly summarize why the arithmetic is important to the doctrine, then explain my approach to teaching the arithmetic, and finally explain why I spend class time teaching sixth-grade math.