Election Law Commons^™

One Person, How Many Votes? Measuring Prison Malapportionment, Ian Bollag-Miller

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

“One-person, one-vote” is a fundamental principle of democracy. In practice, however, vote distribution among population groups is often less than equal. Even in established democracies, prison malapportionment—the distribution of legislative seats by counting incarcerated people in their prisons’ districts rather than their home districts—is one example of a practice that distorts voter representation. Prison malapportionment allows less populous districts that house prisons to maximize their voting power at the expense of more densely populated districts from which many incarcerated people previously lived. While there has been significant scholarship on the causes and effects of prison malapportionment, there is no standard …

Taking History Seriously: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Reflections On Progressive Lawyering, And Section 3 Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Andrew G. Celli Jr.

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

History has lessons to teach, and lawyers can learn from and use history in ways other than by cherry-picking from it. This Article contends that, while American history may be vexed, progressive lawyers can fully embrace history and hold it up into the light for consideration, all in service of progressive ends.

This Article describes a recent litigation that illustrates the point. In March 2022, the Author, together with other lawyers and a non-partisan pro-democracy group, represented voters from Georgia’s fourteenth congressional district in their effort to disqualify U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from the Georgia ballot—based upon Section 3 …