Supreme Court to hear potentially landmark case on partisan gerrymandering

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case to determine if partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...25237e-5435-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html

Now, the SCOTUS may simply be accepting this case in order to settle a division, and reaffirm that partisan gerrymandering is just fine.

Or they may have accepted the case in order to draw a line between acceptable partisan gerrymandering and unacceptable partisan gerrymandering. This is the most likely scenario, I think, and it will leave us with some sort of tortured test to determine whether a given gerrymander is legal.

But I hope they have accepted the case because they think that the entire concept of partisan gerrymandering may be unConstitutional, violating the principle of equal representation among other things. And we can finally get to a point where districts are drawn using non-partisan criteria, rather than to help one party or another.

Because the entire concept of partisan gerrymandering should offend anyone interested in fair representation. Elected officials should not be allowed to select their voters, full stop.

A non-partisan system may still lead to imbalances, but at least they would be side effects of the system, not the whole purpose.

 

This is really huge news and I happy to learn that they are at least willing to hear this case. Gerrymandering is one of the greatest threats to our democracy and it is a primary driver behind the polarization of both politicians and constituents.

 

So they may fix California where the Democrats corruption is so deep that the state district lines are a total joke?

 

Yep. Gerrymandered districts produce extremist representatives who have no incentive to actually accomplish anything or work across the aisle. They push their parties to the extremes, making it difficult for the parties themselves to work together.

But most of all, gerrymandering effectively disenfranchises millions of people, who are not given a fair chance for their vote to have meaning. There will always be districts that are deep blue and deep red, and that's fine. But we shouldn't be trying to maximize the number of such districts. The more purple districts we have, the healthier our democracy.

 

It's factually impossible to draw the lines in a way that everyone thinks is fair, or does not provide some benefit to one side. The people voted for the leaders in place. The leaders have the constitutional power to draw the lines as they see fit. The SCOTUS can't come in and upend that. The SCOTUS has the power to declare laws unconstitutional, but that doesn't mean they can declare the constitution itself unconstitutional.

 

Absolutely. This isn't a partisan thing for me. I've opposed gerrymandering for decades. It's a deeply offensive practice.

 

The studies on this issue - specifically on the math being used to help demonstrate partisan gerrymandering - indicates that 12 of the 14 states found to have gerrymandering above the threshold advocated by the mathematician were in Republican states. I am not sure if California was one of the 2 democratic states, but it is certainly possible.

 

The Supreme Court has routinely and repeatedly decided whether lines were drawn in such a manner as to disenfranchise the minority vote.

The fact that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this case means, by default, that at least 4 of the judges think the issue is something that could be decided by the Supreme Court.

 

the point of gerrymandering is to reduce the value and significance of certain peoples' votes.

i dont see how that can be considered legal.

 

I agree you can't draw lines in a way that guarantees no advantage to one side or the other, but that's not the point. Draw the lines using non-partisan criteria, and let the chips fall where they may.

There are all sorts of ways to draw lines in a non-partisan manner:

• Draw them by algorithm;
• Draw them using a bipartisan commission;
• Draw them using some simple rules, like "must follow municipal boundaries whenever possible" and "must be as compact as possible".

Lots and lots of smart people have studied this and come up with all sorts of ways to remove the partisanship from district drawing.

So once leaders are elected, it's perfectly fine for them to draw the lines in such a way as to ensure they STAY elected?

I don't think so. That is corruption, pure and simple.

Sure they can. The fact that they have deferred this up until now doesn't mean they can't come to a new realization that partisan gerrymandering is unConstitutional.

Um, what? How would any of this result in declaring the Constitution unConstitutional?

 

It makes sense that at this point in time more Republican states have an issue, simply because Republicans controlled a ton of state legislatures after 2010, when the districts were last redrawn. But it's not a failing of just one party. Both parties do it. Both parties need to stop doing it.

 

But the very lines themselves, are INTENDED to group people together. How can you say there should not be any partisanship, when the line is a line that shows where the partisanship among the voters pre-exists?

An algorithm...I don't even...WTF are you talking about? This isn't the Terminator dude. Those lines are WAY too complex for current AI.

Using a bipartisan commission negates the will of the people. The people didn't vote for half Democrat half Republican leaders. Plus, what if there is a third party that emerges?

Your "simple rules" ignore the reality of where humans who vote a certain way live. Are you suggesting that Democrats can only live in Democrat neighborhoods, or something?

Your plea to "lots and lots of smart people" is ridiculous. We all thought we were voting for smart people, who draw the lines the way we want them drawn. You are assuming that the public is electing leaders, then later changing their party on a massive scale. What makes you think that is an actual thing?

 

^^This^^

California. The poster child for gerrymandering. #moreleftisthypocrisy

 

Why does the minority vote matter more than the majority vote? Why are you bringing race in to this? Are you saying minorities can only vote a certain way? Why do they not have the same voting rights as others, in your mind?

 

You seem to ignore the real basic issue that is underlying these gerrymandering issues. When political lines are drawn, they are drawn by people whose sole and primary interest is to retain power by making it as easy as possible for themselves or for their party to get re-elected. It is extremely rare that set of interests aligns with the interests of the people who elected them.

 

I brought minorities into this because you said, "The leaders have the constitutional power to draw the lines as they see fit. The SCOTUS can't come in and upend that." That appears to me as a belief that the Supreme Court has no authority to determine whether a legislative line was drawn properly.

I cited you an instance where the Supreme Court has done just that, on multiple occasions.

 

Multiple lefties on this thread have endorsed the idea of ending partisan gerrymandering even in, and especially in, the most liberal of bastion states like California.

Recognize that and contribute to the conversation.

 

They don't. What are you on about?

Why can't you make your case on law or law theory? Why pull the race card?

 

Do you need me to cite you Supreme Court precedent where they ruled that district lines were drawn improperly?

 

Here's my contribution: Illegals should not be counted in the census.

 

What you wrote here ... doesn't make any sense. Can you clarify or restate?

Nonsense. Researchers came up with a working algorithm 10 years ago. I wrote about it then:
http://midtopia.blogspot.com/2007/07/nonpartisan-redistricting.html

Here's the detailed explanation of the algorithm:
http://www.rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html

Maybe you should do some research before declaring this sort of thing impossible.

21 states already use bipartisan or nonpartisan redistricting commissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_commission

It doesn't "negate the will of the people." It simply prevents partisan gerrymandering of districts. If a state is mostly Republican, it will still send mostly Republican representatives to Congress. That is as it should be.

Um, no. The point of getting rid of partisan gerrymandering is to NOT CARE where Republicans and Democrats live. You draw the boundaries based on some criteria that has NOTHING to do with political leanings. So you follow municipal and county boundaries, for example.

The result will almost certainly be more purple districts, and fewer deep red and deep blue districts.

You don't seem to actually understand what I'm saying.

 

Please point out the hypocrisy, since all the "leftists" in this thread have said yes, California gerrymandering is just as unacceptable as, say, Alabama gerrymandering.

 

So, in your mind, the will of the people means nothing. In your mind, every district should be drawn in a way that makes it a swing district? How does that not negate the constitutional powers bestowed upon the elected officials? You haven't thought this though, at all. You have been told there is unfairness causing Democrats to lose over 1,000 seats of power since Nancy Pelosi took the gavel. That is utter nonsense. Democrats cannot sue their way back in to power, and the notion that they could is ridiculous. Change your platform, or become extinct like the Whigs and the Know Nothing party.

 

Just because corrupt *******s were shown to misbehave in the past, does not negate the constitutional powers of elected officials. While it's obviously illegal to draw lines with malice to disenfranchise a group, that doesn't mean lines must be drawn with race in mind. It's quite the opposite, actually. Also, nobody is forcing minorities to all vote the same way. The notion that this will never change, belies all human history prior. Take the black community for example. They voted around 85% Republican prior to the New Deal programs.

 

So you agree that the Supreme Court does have the authority to review these district lines for potential constitutional violations.