Supreme Court strikes down North Carolina congressional district maps http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/north-carolina-gerrymander/index.html
I am sure that the Democrats were guilty of the same over the years. Given a chance in NC, I am very sure that they wil try to return the favor. I really wish that Congress would do something about it. But that is serious make believe.
Both parties are guilty of ugly gerrymandering - it sucks and a major problem, but it's generally legal. What the NC GOP did was simply not legal.
The construct of having geographically defined districts that need to be regularly redrawn to track with population shifts has caused so much trouble. This was not one of our better ideas.
so dumb, the legislature created a majority minority district explicitly to comply with the Voting Rights Act, and got tarred as racists because of it
The real beating is on the Democrats for losing the seats Republicans illegally stole. Analysis | Republican redistricting is taking a beating in the courts (again)
2018 will likely be the 2nd time in 4 elections where the party who gets the majority of the cumulative national house vote but a minority of the seats. That is not democracy. Texas districts have also been ruled illegal. There needs to be a nationwide movement for independent redistricting after the next census. Not really. There are two ends of the spectrum that accomplish the same thing. Spread all minority vote across many many districts or draw crazy district lines to push the vast majority in a single district to minimize their representation in congress.
Both sides do this when they are in power. The party in power calls it redistricting and the other party calls it gerrymandering. The losing side will always take it to the courts and sometimes they win.
Judges Order North Carolina to Redraw Voting Maps After Illegal Republican Gerrymandering http://time.com/5096431/north-carolina-voting-districts-gerrymandering/ Love the GOP effort to justify the redistricting lines... that it doesn't look like a strange monster...
I remember talking to my parents as a kid in the '80s about gerrymandering. Playing devil's advocate, my mom asked me how they're supposed to update maps to track changes in population without risking gerrymandering. I suggested back then that the map-making rules should say that congressional districts must be concave. Thinking about it today, I think that would about some practical challenges, but I still kinda like the elegance of that approach. It's hard to pull a lot of tricks with a blunt instrument like that.
We're still waiting for the Supreme Court to say if they are going to take up the Texas redistricting case. It's too late for any changes to take affect for 2018. You would assume that new maps would be ready for 2020 which would be the last election before the census driven re-districting. That's a pretty impressive use of the courts.
The biggest case will be the Wisconsin case which was heard last year. The ruling is due out in June but if the USSC strikes down Wisconsin's maps, it'll be the first time they've struck down maps for political (rather than racial) gerrymandering. Plus the Wisconsin case was the first where the plaintiffs attempted to apply an actual legal test for political gerrymandering. And if the court endorses the efficiency gap as a legal test, then in theory plaintiffs and judges have a straightforward way to handle gerrymandering cases.
