[FreeTally]

Thats what I suspected. Badly drawn lines or not, its not Constitutional for the court to draw them itself. I don't think conservatives should cheer when the Constitution(state or federal) is violated to get our way.

[jadimov]

.....I don't think conservatives should cheer when the Constitution(state or federal) is violated to get our way.....

I agree. The end does not justify the means. The precedent set by allowing actions such as this will surely come back to haunt us.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Thats what I suspected. Badly drawn lines or not, its not Constitutional for the court to draw them itself. I don't think conservatives should cheer when the Constitution(state or federal) is violated to get our way.

The problem occurs when the authorized power refuses to act in a legal manner. In this situation the available choices are to draw their own districts, use the illegal new districts, use the now worse former district lines, not have a election and have the old legislators stay in office, or to have the election without districts (ie. all seats running at large). This last choice was used in 1964 when the courts threw out the Illinois Congressional (or was it legislative) districting. The parties were told to nominate at large slates to run against each other, but the party leaders arranged for each party to nominate only 2/3 as many candidates as seats, so that each party could count on 1/3 of the seats, and contested one third (in effect). Since this was 1964, it was lucky for the GOP that they did this, since the Goldwater defeat would have lead to an all Democrat legislative body.

What solution would you choose, or is some other choice available?