Louis Tafuto v. Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., et al.

Supreme court rulings have dramatically limited the judiciability of vote dilution for partisan gerrymandering since 2018. Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1929 (2018) limited standing to only voters who had a diluted vote in a gerrymandered district as opposed to those with statewide representational harms. One year later, Rucho v Common Cause, 139 S. Ct. 2484, 204 L. Ed. 2d 931 (2019) ruled that partisan gerrymandering through legislative redistricting was not judiciable even with a district specific diluted vote. In 2022 and 2024 tens of millions of registered voters will participate in elections with the measurable disadvantage of a diluted vote. Politicians and Political Action Committees will spend hundreds of millions of dollars making sure those votes stay diluted and are leveraged to gain optimal power for their party. With this model, as a country we will begin to see an increased number of minority rule presidencies as we did in 2016. A government where the minority political party is able to manipulate the constitutional framework of our democracy to weaken the weight of the votes of the majority party and retain Executive Branch power violates the equal protection and free speech rights of the disadvantaged voters. As vote dilution schemes become more prevalent, access to the courts for individual voters to challenge this conduct becomes more difficult. In 2016, the Petitioner brought before the Southern District Court of New York (SDNY) a case against the defendants where he had a district specific diluted vote caused by corrupt behavior of the presidential candidate and his campaign. The SDNY ruled that the injury, despite being a diluted vote in a specific electoral district (New York) in a federal election, was too widely by millions of other voters to constitute standing. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals supported the SDNYs ruling to dismiss on standing opining that standing in vote dilution required that the vote dilution occur only at a state legislative district level. Petitioner asserts that standing at the pleading stage should exist for voters in a presidential election provided their vote was diluted within the state they voted. Petitioner also asserts standing should exist when the conduct being challenged in the complaint is not a derivative of a free and fair election outcome. The questions presented are: 1. Is a diluted vote an injuryin-fact when Plaintiff is in a “packed” Electoral College district (New York) in a U.S. federal election?