Member-only story
Is The Tide Starting To Turn On Gerrymandering?
Maybe.
When the U.S. Supreme Court determined earlier this year it has no authority to intervene in partisan gerrymandering by state governments, that may have created an opportunity for courts to take more aggressive action to curtail the practice. How so? With the U.S. Supreme Court effectively taking itself out of the picture, state courts suddenly become the be-all and end-all in these matters. So once a state’s highest court has decided something now when it comes to partisan gerrymandering, that’s it. The Supreme Court’s already said it can’t get involved. And also that it’s appropriate for state courts to make these determinations based on states’ individual Constitutions.
We’ll get back to that in a second. Because what really attracted us to this story is how plainly a panel of state judges in North Carolina (Republican and Democratic both), put it when they threw out voting maps for state level legislative districts:
“[I]t is the carefully crafted maps, and not the will of the voters, that dictate the election outcomes in a significant number of legislative districts and, ultimately, the majority control of the General Assembly.”
YES. That’s what’s wrong with gerrymandering. Period.
