Posted on 01/07/2019 11:46:54 AM PST by Jacquerie
The Supreme Court announced Friday that it would, once again, consider whether partisan gerrymandering can be so extreme that it violates the Constitution.
The move comes after a term in which the justices had looked poised to impose some limits on partisan influence in redistricting, but ultimately appeared unable to agree on a clear standard for evaluating when state lawmakers cross the line from unseemly to unlawful.
The Supreme Court has invalidated racial gerrymanders in the past, but it has never struck down districts for being too partisan. The gerrymandering cases from last June—one from Maryland, the other from Wisconsin—were two of the term’s most anticipated decisions because they raised the possibility that the Court would do so for the first time.
[snip]
So what then will the innumerate justices do with this case?
They could maximize their future jurisprudential freedom by simply finding that that no workable standard has been discovered. That would leave us where we’ve always been. But the Court could go further, and conclude that gerrymandering cases present a nonjusticiable political question, as Justices Rehnquist, O’Connor, Scalia and Thomas held in Vieth 14 years ago. If the justices were to so decide, partisan gerrymandering claims would be all but locked out of federal court.
Finally, if the Court is inclined to once again sidestep the question, it could probably find a way to rule that, because the current maps have to be redrawn in 2020 anyway, these cases are likely to become moot and should not be decided.
And then we’d get the pleasure of going through all this again in 2021 and 2022.
(Excerpt) Read more at legalinsurrection.com ...
Democrats would maintain that it’s never Gerrymandering because nobody named Gerry is involved in making the district lines and it doesn’t look like a salamander.
Here’s a path forward:
Legislatures get to draw district lines with a huge amount of discretion, being the majority elected by the people.
Courts need to take every measure to enforce that elections are FAIR and not fraud prone, or to allow states to pass election integrity laws (voter I.D., citizenship proof, shorter early voting, etc.) without meddling.
The former will benefit Democrats in a state, and the latter will benefit Republicans, hopefully a net wash.
Edmund Burke has been a Chicago Alderman for 50 years. Burke’s brother ran for state rep and lost. His wife is a judge. His ward ,14th, was originally known as “Back of The Yards” Once the home of the famous Chicago Stock Yards where most food processors along with employee demographics have since relocated. It was a compact area almost square composed mostly of single and 2 story frame and brick family dwellings mixed with scattered brick apartment units.
His ward now consists of areas carved from the 12th and 23rd wards miles from the original 14th boundaries.
When redistricted along with several other wards. Chicago had neighborhoods divided to create “Hispanic”residential sections going to Hispanic aldermanic and congressional (Gutierez) candidates and blacks going to black candidates.
That has had the effect of breaking up a contiguous geographic continuity and community identity. Because the wards affected which are really like small towns have had sections broken up into areas where if a problem arises in a given section of street which has one way traffic only may be two way a block down because it’s in a different ward. It has also played hell on zoning and because of the disruption of jurisdictions with the administration of city services such as streets and sanitation which the alderman (salary $120.000 plus allocations on local projects) do oversee and have input over.
Add to that here was part of the cause and result of those ward re-mappings. I Was living there when this occurred. The federal government Under policies created by the dems and continued on warily by Bush, discarded the 20% down payment requirement of home loans. Directed banks guaranteed by Fanny Mae and and Freddy Mac to grant no money down home ownership loans..This led to a massive change in demographics and in many cases loan defaults that created areas of abandoned single dwelling units.
I thought they were ok with racial gerrymandering as everybody knows white democrats will not vote for black candidates
BOTH sides call it ‘gerrymandering’ when they don’t like it. Both sides do it, every chance they have. For 150 years. Most lists of the most heavily gerrymandered districts seem to come up about 50/50. Any party that doesn’t use it to their fullest advantage is foolish. To the victor belong the spoils.
I’d prefer a mathematical algorithm requiring all districts to be as compact and contiguous as possible. Let the votes fall where they may.
I like it! Using the technology we have today, they could almost cut the cities into neat slices by the street names and city blocks!
Of course, when more white people started buying property in one area, the Liberals would scream that they are trying to create their own white district - because with Liberals it is ALWAYS about race! Or some other contrived victim status.
Sometimes geometric compactness has nothing to do with voters with similar interests.
For example, here is the Phoenix valley, across the northwest are a dozen or so planned senior communities. It is obvious they should all be in the same district, but their layout is linear and stretched out.
That would be nice, but there would still be wiggle room, and that would be the point of nuclear-grade contention, and more lawsuits.
Here’s how you get a scumball Puerto Rican elected to Congress in Chicago. A corkscrew is straighter than the district lines here.
“For example, here is the Phoenix valley, across the northwest are a dozen or so planned senior communities. It is obvious they should all be in the same district, but their layout is linear and stretched out.”
That isn’t obvious to me! You’re simply lining up a different group of special interests, retire people, as opposed to political or ethnic division.
Just for argument’s sake-
Why should communities of similar interest- or any kind of similarities - be a consideration for the drawing of a district? If seniors, or Hispanics, or whomever are split between districts, so what? Maybe even districts should be drawn to be as close to evenly split and as diverse as possible, completely the opposite. that way EVERY district could go any way; that could force politicians to pay attention to every group.
I see nothing in the Constitution that even hints that any particular demographic group should be consolidated - or even considered; if every congressman had seniors, blacks, whites, rich, poor, young families in their district, rather than safely representing ‘rich republicans’, ‘university liberals’, ‘farmers’, or such it might be a good thing. No politician should EVER be even slightly safe, not the ones I hate, not the ones I like.
So, just for discussion, I challenge the underlying assumption that similarity of interests is in any way a good thing :-)
I know how rbg will vote:
*ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz BEEEEEEEEEEPPP~*
That would be nice, but there would still be wiggle room, and that would be the point of nuclear-grade contention, and more lawsuits.
Perhaps an algorithm that set an upper limit on how uncompact a district could be. That would leave the politicians room to mess around with it but not so much to give ridiculous results.
Yes, it was supposed to be up to the legislative power of each state . . . not judges.
What SCOTUS is considering is interesting, but I’m more intrigued by the crawl on Newsmax tonight - “Ginsburg missing SCOTUS arguments for the first time” - could RBG finally be reaching the end of her illustrious judicial career?......
Are the plaintiffs pretending there are “non-partisan commissions” out there? To say there are non-partisan people out there is a lie.
Here’s a simple geometric rule:
No district boundary may cross a line of government jurisdiction or neighborhood subdivision, though a jurisdiction or subdivision may be entirely contained within a district.
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