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Gerrymandering is OK--according to Supreme Court

supremecourt.gov

Commentary: Sad time in America. The Trump/ McConnell Supreme Court ruled that Federal Courts cannot stop politicians from gerrymandering districts in their state to favor one party over another. Of the ten most gerrymander states, only one has a Democratic legislature (Maryland). The rest are all Republican and include states like Texas, North Carolina and Kentucky.

As Justice Elena Kagan said in dissent “this decision violates the constitutional rights of many hundreds of thousands of American citizens.” This practice affects local, state and Congressional elections. With modern computer data about voting patterns, Politicians draw District lines so they select their voters, rather than voters selecting the politicians. Weird district shapes appear in these states that look like spaghetti rather than lines based on non-political considerations.

As Rep. David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly said, “I think electing Republicans is better for the country than electing Democrats.” Lewis and his fellow conspirators drew a map in North Carolina, so Republicans prevailed in 10 of 13 Districts—even though statewide they only had 53% of the vote.

An option to state lawmakers and Governors drawing District maps--is assigning the task to an independent bipartisan commission. Their generally made up of members of both party’s and independents. Districts must be compact, contiguous and contain an integrated social-economic populous. This is happening in several States like California, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Washington and five others.

Why couldn’t the Supreme Court use what is happening in these States as a model of what should happen country-wide? I would argue that they didn’t, because the conservative male members of the court are scared to death of a fully functioning democracy where every vote counts.