In one of the most closely watched gerrymandering controversies in the country, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just redrew the state’s congressional maps, in a way that has Democrats pleased and Republicans livid. The result makes a Democratic takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives this fall significantly more likely.
But more than that, it forces us to ask whether we are going to fundamentally change a system that has been in place for most of our country’s history.
The question we have to answer is this: What should determine how district lines are drawn? On one side we have fairness — not always possible to achieve with perfect certainty, but at least a goal one could seek — and on the other side we have the exercise of raw political power for partisan advantage.
You’ll never guess which side the Republican Party comes down on.
As helpful as the court’s new map may be to Democrats right at this moment, that’s only because the existing map is so absurdly skewed in favor of Republicans. After the 2010 Census, Republicans in control of Pennsylvania’s legislature drew a map that gave them control of 13 of the state’s 18 House seats, despite the fact that according to the state government, there are currently 4 million registered Democrats in Pennsylvania and only 3.2 million registered Republicans. The state Supreme Court ruled that the map violated the state’s constitution, then ordered the legislature and the governor to come up with one that treated all voters fairly. When they couldn’t agree on one, the court did it itself, with the help of Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law School professor and redistricting expert who has provided the same service to other courts.
