Voters as Variables: The Algorithmic Dissolution of Representation in the American Republic

This paper examines the constitutional transformation of electoral representation in contemporary America, focusing on the 2025 North Carolina redistricting controversy as a paradigm of algorithmic control. It argues that redistricting, once intended to balance demographic fairness, has become a lawful mechanism for the dissolution of political equality. Anchored in Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution and in landmark cases such as Baker v. Carr (1962) and Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the study traces the evolution of representation from personhood to parameter, revealing how judicial silence and computational precision jointly produce a new regime of “arithmetical sovereignty.” Within this framework, citizens are reduced to variables of power retention—inputs in a partisan equation that predetermines outcomes while preserving procedural form. By situating this development within the broader phenomenon of “lawful decay,” the paper argues that constitutional erosion in the United States now proceeds not through open defiance but through technical perfection. The work concludes that democracy cannot survive its mathematization: when voters become data points, representation ceases to be an act of trust and becomes an algorithm of control.