896
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
registration and access to the ballot, but to provisions that might "dilute" the force of minority votes that were duly cast and counted. See id., at 569. The decision in Allen thus ensured that the terms "standard, practice, or procedure" would extend to encompass a wide array of electoral practices or voting systems that might be challenged for reducing the potential impact of minority votes.
As a consequence, Allen also ensured that courts would be required to confront a number of complex and essentially political questions in assessing claims of vote dilution under the Voting Rights Act. The central difficulty in any vote dilution case, of course, is determining a point of comparison against which dilution can be measured. As Justice Frankfurter observed several years before Allen, "[t]alk of 'debasement' or 'dilution' is circular talk. One cannot speak of 'debasement' or 'dilution' of the value of a vote until there is first defined a standard of reference as to what a vote should be worth." Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 300 (1962) (dissenting opinion). See also Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 88 (1986) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment) ("[I]n order to decide whether an electoral system has made it harder for minority voters to elect the candidates they prefer, a court must have an idea in mind of how hard it 'should' be for minority voters to elect their preferred candidates under an acceptable system"). But in setting the benchmark of what "undiluted" or fully "effective" voting strength should be, a court must necessarily make some judgments based purely on an assessment of principles of political theory. As Justice Harlan pointed out in his dissent in Allen, the Voting Rights Act supplies no rule for a court to rely upon in deciding, for example, whether a multimember at-large system of election is to be preferred to a single-member district system; that is, whether one provides a more "effective" vote than another. "Under one system, Negroes have some influence in the election of all officers; under the other, minority groups have more influence in the selection of fewer officers." Allen,
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