July 5, 2022
Obligatory statement: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. But I retain my right to rage against the machine about the bottom-barrel headliners this YOLO Court is looking at for the next session.
SCOTUS is looking at a gerrymandering case from North Carolina next session too. The crux of these political cases about redistricting is in where we put the emphasis on who is getting screwed over by the gerrymandering of political districts. Voters are getting screwed over by partisan gerrymanders. It’s not that political parties, one or the other, or third parties, are getting screwed over by partisan gerrymanders. That’s not the issue.
I can claim some expertise on this, just from being from Michigan, where a ballot initiative passed by voters created a non-partisan board to draw the new congressional districts. The result didn’t really favor one party or another. But the real impact is that the congressional districts make sense now. For instance, college towns that were once divided into different districts connected way into the surrounding hinterlands are now wholly contained in discrete districts. The crux of the matter is that Michigan non-partisan redistricting made it so a voter’s vote makes more sense. It’s been hard on the parties and some elected officials, to be honest, but a Michigan voter’s vote seems like it is going to go toward something that makes sense.
It makes more sense to frame the gerrymandering issue in terms of voting rights rather than political advantage.
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