Key Points • The Supreme Court’s recent decision to stay out of adjudicating gerrymandering doesn’t necessarily change anything because the court had never put limits on partisan redistricting in the first place.• Republicans are still slated to control the drawing of many more districts than Democrats following the 2020 census, […] Read more »
Politicians Don’t Actually Care What Voters Want
We like to think that politicians care about what their constituents want. If voters in a legislative district have certain views about, say, the legality of abortion, we assume that their representative’s decisions will be shaped, or at least influenced, by those views. To a large extent, democracy depends on […] Read more »
The Supreme Court’s partisan gerrymandering decision is Justice Scalia’s last laugh
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering claims present questions beyond the reach of the federal courts may signal the first time in the nation’s history that a majority of Justices have surrendered our most fundamental of constitutional rights, the right to participate equally […] Read more »
The Gerrymandering Ruling and the Risk of a Monopoly on Power
At some point or another over the last decade, Democrats have won the most votes but lost national elections for the presidency, the House and the Senate. Partisan gerrymandering is just one of the reasons the Democrats are at such a disadvantage. But the Supreme Court’s decision on gerrymandering Thursday […] Read more »
Supreme Court says gerrymandering fix up to voters, not judges
The Supreme Court is empty days before the justices vote to on the U.S. gerrymandering case. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite John Rennie Short, University of Maryland, Baltimore County In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is not unconstitutional. The majority ruled that gerrymandering is outside […] Read more »
Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Partisan Gerrymandering
In a landmark 5-4 decision issued by Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority, the Supreme Court has rejected challenges to a GOP-drawn map in North Carolina and a Democratic-drawn map in Maryland. In doing so, the Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is non-justiciable: in other words, maps […] Read more »