We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
THE COLLEGE TOWN ADVANTAGE: THE VOTING AND REPRESENTATIONAL STRENGTH INFLATION EFFECT OF ENUMERATING COLLEGE STUDENTS IN COLLEGE TOWNS AND A PUSH FOR LEGAL CHALLENGES, LEGISLATIVE ADJUSTMENTS, AND EXECUTIVE AMENDMENTS.
- Authors
Fairfax, Regina C. E.
- Abstract
For reapportionment of local districts, legislators routinely rely on unadjusted total population data from the United States' decennial Census to identify their population base and equalize their districts to comply with the One-Person, One-Vote doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since 1950, the Census Bureau has specified that students living in university housing such as dormitories will be enumerated in the Census as living in their "college towns," as opposed to their hometowns or parental homes. However, many college students are not permanent, legal, or voting residents in their college towns. This was particularly true during the 2020 Census Enumeration period, during which the vast majority of college students were not physically residing in their college towns, but were enumerated in the Census as residents of their university housing. When local legislatures rely on unadjusted Census total population numbers to identify an apportionment base and equalize their districts, actual voting and legal residents of college towns enjoy highly inflated voting power and representational strength in comparison to neighboring districts without large student populations, creating a "college town advantage." While many college towns are disproportionately white and wealthy compared to the rest of the state, districts that neighbor universities are disproportionately minority and poor, placing the largest political dilution burden of the college town advantage on poor and minority members of local communities. This Article argues that for local districts with large votingineligible college student populations, the college town advantage runs afoul of the permissible apportionment base requirement under the One-Person, One-Vote doctrine. This Article advocates for litigation over the inclusion of college students within certain localities' apportionment bases under an apportionment base theory of One-Person, One-Vote compliance. This Article highlights the issue of the current college student enumeration practice and the strength of an apportionment base legal challenge through a case student of the City of New Haven's 2022 redistricting plan in the districts surrounding Yale University. Additionally, this Article presents several legislative and executive solutions to address the limitations of college student enumeration challenges.
- Subjects
APPORTIONMENT (Election law); COLLEGE students; U.S. Census Bureau; UNITED States. Constitution. 14th Amendment; SUFFRAGE
- Publication
Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, 2024, Vol 31, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1068-7955
- Publication type
Article