Just How Much Gerrymandering Is Unconstitutional? Wisconsin Plaintiffs Want the Supreme Court to Rul

[applegrove]

Just How Much Gerrymandering Is Unconstitutional? Wisconsin Plaintiffs Want the Supreme Court to Rule.

by Jack Fitzpatrick at the National Journal

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/92066/just-how-much-gerrymandering-is-unconstitutional-wisconsin-plaintiffs-want-supreme-court-rule?mref=landing-list

"SNIP.............



But the Wis­con­sin-based plaintiffs in a law­suit filed this sum­mer think that they have found the for­mula that the Court has been wait­ing for. And if they man­age to push their case to the high court and win, the law­suit’s con­sequences could ex­tend from Wis­con­sin across the en­tire na­tion.

In a new U.S. Dis­trict Court case, Whit­ford v. Nich­ol, the plaintiffs pro­pose judging ger­ry­man­der­ing via a concept called the “ef­fi­ciency gap,” based on an aca­dem­ic pa­per writ­ten in 2014 by polit­ic­al sci­ent­ists Nich­olas Stephan­o­poulos and Eric McGhee.

The pro­pos­al is sur­pris­ingly simple for such an ar­cane sub­ject: Start by adding up each party’s “wasted” votes that don’t help them win a dis­trict. (If Party A wins 90 votes out of 100, 39 of its votes are wasted, since it only needs 51 for a ma­jor­ity. All 10 of Party B’s votes are also wasted in this scen­ario.) The dif­fer­ence between each party’s wasted votes, di­vided by the total num­ber of votes cast, is the “ef­fi­ciency gap.”

Across the Wis­con­sin State As­sembly, Stephan­o­poulos and McGhee found a 13-per­cent ef­fi­ciency gap in 2012 and 10-per­cent gap in 2014, both fa­vor­ing Re­pub­lic­ans. That trans­lates to Re­pub­lic­ans win­ning 13 per­cent more seats in 2012 and 10 per­cent more in 2014 than they would have un­der a map that treated mem­bers of both parties equally.



.............SNIP"

[Takket]

1. Ohio already showed us

That the public overwhelmingly wants an end to gerrymandering. As I said before the DNC needs to be all over this to help end the GOP control of the House.

[davidn3600]

2. Not sure how much the Supreme Court can do...who do you want to draw the lines?

The drawing of the districts is largely a state right.

Who do you want to draw the lines? The federal executive branch does not have the constitutional authority, nor should they. That would violate the separation of powers. If the federal government starts to micro-manage how the lines are drawn, the feds can draw the lines in a way that favors the party in power.

The only time the Supreme Court will get involved is if the drawing is based on racial lines.

[shraby]

3. The census bureau would be a good place to do the drawing.