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In one of the more anticipated decisions of this term, the Supreme Court (6-3 on ideological lines) has struck down the second Louisiana majority-black district. They did not rule categorically that race may not be used as a factor in redistricting decisions, but they did rule that if a redistricting decision could be explained by a partisan gerrymander rather than a racial one, there was no case.
In practice, if taken seriously by lower courts, this pretty much destroys nearly all Section 2 Voting Rights Act cases, because of the strong affiliation between blacks and the Democratic Party.
The entire idea of section 2 applied this way has always been rather silly, it takes the collectivist view around race that people are better represented as a class based off their skin color rather than their ability to choose based off their own individual beliefs and preferences. There's a lot to complain about with voting, partisan gerrymandering is still messed up both federally and state election wise, the structure of the Senate explicitly having a bunch of low population states over less high population ones, and the electoral college works in a similar way.
But those are problems by changing the very value of a person's representation, by making someone in California have like 10x less say than the same person in Mississippi in Congress and the presidency. It's not an issue because they fail to make the assumption that black people need some explicit maps drawn out for them "as a class".
Yes, and that's a good thing.
Let's take a look at where that isn't true: Canada. This country has the politics you say you want, where the only relevant voters reside in one of 3 cities (legislature is de facto unicameral, though on paper it is something else). Naturally, they all vote as a bloc, and their policies are not only alien to the rest of the country, but increasingly oppressive in the sense that they prevent anywhere else from developing.
As a direct result, Canada has had active separation movements since roughly the late 1800s. These weren't as much of a problem between 1910 and 1950 for obvious reasons, but it's been a continual threat since 1970, and the referendum in QC in the mid-'90s had majority support except for the city on the QC/ON border (as in, the vote for QC to secede would have succeeded without Montreal). Even then, it was defeated on a razor thin margin. And the next Provincial election in QC is likely going to the separatists.
Serious attempts at Western separatism are newer. The province is a natural seat of government for a separated West due to where it is and what it sits on, and there's a bigger barrier with respect to the fact it needs to win referenda in 4 provinces to be a viable country- but Ottawa (and Vancouver) become more and more foreign, and grow more and more hostile, to the rest of the nation every single day. The rest of the country won't have the chance to get any political representation for 15 years, the sitting government exists completely contrary to the results of the election, and everyone knows it.
Most of the movement on the issue has been cooler than it would be in the US- Canada is a much poorer country thanks to difficult land and high latitude so there's a lot less to fight over and a lack of social cohesion is therefore costlier. Were this same situation true for the US (even in its original 13-colony form) it just straight up wouldn't have survived.
TL;DR Consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed, and the cities depend on the country for raw resources and soldiers- which are two things cities require for continual survival they cannot create on their own. (Not that it's a law of nature for a city to fail to field soldiers; that's a new incapacity revealed over the latter half of the 20th century, and specifically for Western cities.)
It is wise to limit the power of larger states to run roughshod over smaller states to ensure the larger states are limited to mining/colonizing the rest of the country in a sustainable manner, and not one that doesn't just end up with the country folks shooting up the power lines and oil pipelines (or seceding completely -> reserving the right to wage what is technically a civil war at some time in the future).
That's not true, in a one vote power per person system, rural voters are relevant too. They're just only as relevant as their actual population size.
Not true, but even if they do so what? More citizens live in the cities therefore doing pro city stuff means benefiting more citizens than pro rural stuff then.
And the rural country doesn't likewise depend on the cities? They benefit from all the wonderful intentions, financing, and other stuff that comes out of the cities. Farming and resources are valuable, but rural life has electricity, cars, far more stable crops from advances in science (bad harvests are so much less common), medical inventions, internet, smart phones, TV, cheap good looking clothes, and basically anything else that comes from urban workers.
Rural life benefits immensely from the economic and technological growth that the cities are responsible for.
Ah so giving them extra vote power is just a deal so they don't shoot up the democracy.
This is essentially the core thesis of the The Federalist Papers.
You believe in gaining the consent of the governed don't you?
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