Roslyn Silver
Today, the right to vote in this country and the state of Arizona is a fundamental right of citizenship. The act of voting is one of the most elemental forms of democratic participation. But participation in our democracy is more than the act of casting a vote. The vote must be meaningful in the sense that it can be aggregated with voters having compatible goals. As Justice Powell said in Davis v. Bandemer, “The concept of ‘representation’ necessarily applies to groups: groups of voters elect representatives, individual voters do not.” If you live anywhere in the United States, you live in geographic districts from which all federal, state, and some local officers are elected. The geographic dimensions of those districts have always affected electoral outcomes, but they have changed markedly since our country was founded and Arizona became a state.