The Supreme Court has taken up two cases; one a Democrat gerrymandering of MD and a Republican gerrymandering of NC. Both are apparently fairly egregious and the fact each party is involved gives them cover that their decision will not be partisan. AFAIK, the Republicans will suffer more from ending it.
I really would like to see their reasoning if they decide the two cases differently; that the MD one is illegal, but the NC one legal. But I really cannot see them doing that. And I also cannot see why they are allowing this if all they want to do is affirm the status quo.
Fair districting is a relatively easy problem to solve logistically. There are a couple of excellent proposals for how multi-district states could get it done quickly, easily and fairly. But the Founding Fathers did not – perhaps could not – anticipate this problem 200 years ago and now our decrepit and partisan systems, which work against better democracy, are entrenched in a constitution that requires tremendous political will to fix. Good luck widdat.
Well, it takes enormous political will to fix OR the decision of five or more people on the supreme court.
What remedy they find is the tricky part. Do they prescribe something and say to the states, “Do it this way, motherfuckers!” or do they instead say that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional and therefore “You guys better come up with something” at which point further state-level shenanigans begin.
Or, of course, they could decide it’s not unconstitutional and we’re still stuck in the mud.
Did the first Congress even have districts? Requiring them is not in the Constitution anywhere - just that they have to be in proportion to the population, and they have to be elected directly by the people.
The Supreme Court is (supposedly) loathe to take up what they deem “political questions”. In other words, meddling in how government operates.
In 1962 the court heard a case, Baker v. Carr, regarding redistricting in Tennessee.
The case, literally, destroyed two Supreme Court justices. One quit having been mentally shattered by the case and one had a severe stroke that ended his career.
“When Chief Justice Earl Warren was asked at the end of his career, “What was the most important case of your tenure?”, there were a lot of answers he could have given. After all, he had presided over some of the most important decisions in the court’s history — cases that dealt with segregation in schools, the right to an attorney, the right to remain silent, just to name a few. But his answer was a surprise: He said, “Baker v. Carr,” a 1962 redistricting case.” - The Political Thicket
With Kavanaugh replacing Kennedy, the Court may decide to put the final nail in the coffin for political gerrymandering cases and say that they are non justiciable political questions.
In case you think that is an outrageous result, shortly after the founding, many states elected Congressmen at-large, meaning a slate of Congressman were voted on throughout the state. That system would give Maryland ALL Democrats.
Hey, hey, the Fair Representation Act introduced by Don Beyer creates superdistricts and requires proportional voting. That would be an awesome way to show those evil Maryland libbies a thing or three.
UltraVires, is that any more outrageous than a state allocating ALL of its electoral votes according to the statewide majority, as 96% of states do right now? It’s maybe not the ideal system, but I don’t think it’s necessarily outrageous. And it’s certainly better than a state’s populace having a clear majority in one direction, but their representation having a clear majority in the other direction, as often happens as a result of gerrymandering.