Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Souter, J., dissenting
an atomistic exercise.3 Although it is the law of the Constitution that representatives represent people, not places or things or particular interests, Reynolds, supra, at 562, the notion of representative democracy within the federalist framework presumes that States may group individual voters together in a way that will let them choose a representative not only acceptable to individuals but ready to represent widely shared interests within a district. Aleinikoff & Issacharoff, Race and Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw v. Reno, 92 Mich. L. Rev. 588, 601 (1993) ("It is only as collective partisans of the same political preference—whether that preference is defined by party or race or any other measure—that voters can assert their right to meaningful participation in the political process"). Hence, in respecting the States' implementation of their own, traditional districting criteria, the Court has recognized the basically associational character of voting rights in a representative democracy.
3 As Professor Issacharoff notes, our vote-dilution cases acknowledged that "the right to cast an effective ballot implied more than simply the equal weighting of all votes . . . . To be effective, a voter's ballot must stand a meaningful chance of effective aggregation with those of like-minded voters to claim a just share of electoral results. For this reason, any sophisticated right to genuinely meaningful electoral participation must be evaluated and measured as a group right . . . ." Issacharoff, Groups and the Right to Vote, 44 Emory L. J. 869, 883 (1995); see also Davidson, The Recent Revolution in Voting Rights Law Affecting Racial and Language Minorities, in Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990, p. 23 (C. Davidson & B. Grofman eds. 1994) ("Ethnic or racial vote dilution takes place when a majority of voters, by bloc voting for its candidates in a series of elections, systematically prevents an ethnic minority from electing most or all of its preferred candidates . . . . Vote dilution not only can deprive minority voters of the important symbolic achievement of being represented by preferred members of their own group, it can deprive them of a committed advocate in councils of government . . . [and] of the substantial benefits that government bestows . . .").
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