Supreme Court of the United States
GILL V. WHITFORD
The case could impact congressional maps in around half a dozen states and legislative maps in about ten states and have major implications for the next round of redistricting after the 2020 Census.
- Historic Chance to End Extreme Gerrymandering, Michael Li, Thomas Wolf
June 21, 2017
Cross-posted from The American Prospect
Americans are fed up with gerrymandering. The most recent Harris poll shows
that 74 percent of Republicans, 73 percent of Democrats, and 71 percent
of independents believe that politicians shouldn’t have a hand in
drawing lines that benefit them.
Despite public opposition across the political spectrum, politicians
have taken a stronger and stronger hand in line-drawing, resulting in
gerrymandered maps that are more and more extreme. The problems continue
to mount: A combination of “Big Data,” single-party control of state
governments, and polarized politics have allowed paid political
operatives to craft increasingly surgical gerrymanders far more potent
than their precursors, locking in lopsided maps that are deeply
unrepresentative of the electorate.
The good news is that the Supreme Court has the chance to take a
major bite out of extreme gerrymandering this fall when it hears Gill v. Whitford, an appeal of a landmark decision striking down a Wisconsin state assembly map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers drew the lower house map in
secret, behind closed doors, with no input from Democrats. The result
was a huge and disproportionate advantage for Republicans, at odds with
Wisconsin’s status as a swing state. In 2012, Republicans won 60 of the
90 nine seats in the Wisconsin Assembly, despite winning only 48.6
percent of the two-party statewide vote; in 2014, they won 63 seats with
only 52 percent of the statewide vote.
Read the full story on The American Prospect
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