Frank's Musings

Ending Political Gerrymandering



In her dissent to the Supreme Court’s majority decision in the Rucho v. Common Cause case last year, Justice Kagan stated that “neutral and manageable and strict standards” did indeed exist for drawing electoral district lines using complex  algorithms allowed by advanced computing technology, that would make possible redistricting Congressional Districts so as to reduce the partisan distortion of popular representation.  The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, however, chose to claim the impossibility of their use, and defer to the political sphere the apportionment of voter representation in the U.S. Government.



It is certainly not possible, under the current ideological configuration of the Court, to reverse the effect of this decision.   Yet, it may not really be the responsibility of the judiciary to clean up the usual operation of the political process in this country.  Gerrymandering is an endemic threat to the fairness of any democratic system.  Therefore, its distortion can be best mitigated by convincing the voting public that they cannot abide the costs that political gerrymandering (PG) imposes on them. 



PG is a favorite tool of political parties and their elected officials for preserving themselves in power.  It reduces the strength of individual voters and interest groups that depend on effective representation in Washington.  The proper way to eliminate PG from distorting the fairness of the election process, therefore, is for public opinion to be adequately excited about its unsuitability in our democracy to get it to elect local representation that will outlaw PG’s  existence.