It seems a bit weird to push the normalcy of my weekly Law in Rural America tweets into your TL, but I've been looking forward to this week in class for so long. So for those following along, it's Rural Voting Power and Access week. #RuralLaw 1/
We're using @BlueJeansNet's breakout groups to do a modified Jigsaw Method discussion covering Rural Voting Power, Prisons and the One Person One Vote Principle, and Native Voting Rights. 2/
Students split up into three reading groups so we could cover hundreds of pages of reading and teach each other the topic we read about. This way a more complicated view of rural voting strength emerges than the typical "rural people are overrepresented in the Senate" take. 3/
We all read our Chemerinsky on "The Rule of One-Person, One-Vote" and the Baker v. Carr line of cases, prompting us to think about why we apportion votes by people and not One Acre, One Vote, and whether that is the fairest distribution of power. 4/
Then, some students will cover Rural Voting Power by reading Debra Bassett's "The Politics of the Rural Vote" where she argues that rural communities are underrepresented in national politics due to campaign finance structures and the electoral college papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… 5/
and they'll pair that with Paul Diller's "Reorienting Home Rule Part I" where he argues that URBAN communities are underrepresented in national politics due to the structure of the senate, EC, and state/nat cong. districting. digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewconten… 6/
Spoiler alert: Bassett and Diller's proposed solutions share a lot in common. 7/
A 2d group of students will teach their classmates about Rural Prisons + OPOV. Those articles suggest that rural prisons increase the voting strength of white rural communities and dilute the voting strength of the communities of color from which many prisoners are relocated. 8/
Those students will read Lotke and Wagner's "Prisoners of the Census," prisonpolicy.org/reports/pace.p… and Julie Ebenstein's "The Geography of Mass Incarceration: Prison Gerrymandering and the Dilution of Prisoners’ Political Representation" ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewconten… 9/
The 3rd group of students will be reading about rural Native voting rights and access and the language and geographic barriers to vote in those communities in @HarvLRev's "Securing Indian Voting Rights" harvardlawreview.org/2016/04/securi… 10/
.. and in Tucker, Landreth, and Lynch's "“Why Should I Go Vote Without Understanding What I Am Going to Vote For?” The Impact of First Generation Voting Barriers on Alaska Natives." repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewconten… 11/
Altogether, these readings present a very complicated view of rural voting strength and political power. It's not just that the Senate is unfair (so you can stop telling me that in casual conversation). The story of rural representation is not so straightforward. 12/
There's also other stuff I wish we could have read, too--like @KathyJCramer's The Politics of Resentment. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book… 13/
For those interested in some media coverage of disproportionate rural representation in national politics, you could start here, but be skeptical: Jonathan M. Ladd, "The Senate is a much bigger problem than the Electoral College," vox.com/mischiefs-of-f… 14/
David Montgomery, "The Urban-Rural Political Divide Is Growing," City Lab, November 6, 2019. citylab.com/equity/2019/11… 15/
Emily Badger, "As American as Apple Pie? The Rural Vote’s Disproportionate Slice of Power," nytimes.com/2016/11/21/ups… 16/
Now wish us luck for the online version of the Jigsaw Method of teaching. For those who are also experimenting pedagogically, if you do something similar that works, get in touch! 17/17
@threadreaderapp unroll please.
