Supreme Court considers politics in redistricting

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court considered Wednesday whether to give politicians new rules for drawing election districts in a case that questions whether the process has gotten too political.

Justices were reviewing a fight from Pennsylvania over a congressional map that essentially redistricted three Democratic House members out of a job. Court members debated whether to throw out the entire map, or order a redrawing of one questionable district in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Democratic voters who challenged the plan want the high court to use the case to spell out rules limiting partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing districts to favor one party over another.

During the arguments, Justice Antonin Scalia asked how the court could define unfairness.

Paul M. Smith, the attorney for the Democrats, said that a minority party getting two-thirds of new seats after redistricting is unfair.

But Bart DeLone, a deputy attorney general from Pennsylvania, said that there is political motivation in line-drawing. "And frankly, we don't have a problem with that,'' he said. "The question is whether or not they have been shut out of the process.''

The Supreme Court has made it almost impossible to win a claim that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, although justices left the door open to such claims in a splintered 1986 ruling.

The case is important because of the high stakes in boundary-drawing for political parties. States must redraw boundaries after every census to reflect population shifts, and redistricting has gotten more sophisticated.

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School, said justices may be "seriously considering giving partisan gerrymandering claims some teeth.'' Or, after 17 years, they may just feel it's time to revisit the subject, he said.

If the high court backs away from its 1986 ruling, as the GOP is urging it to do, Republicans could lock in their control of Congress for years to come, said Nathaniel Persily, a professor and redistricting expert at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

But if the court endorses the greater judicial involvement sought by the Democrats, the ruling would probably lead to legal challenges to the new congressional maps in at least a half-dozen other big states, he said.

Smith told justices in a filing that "as line-drawers have become more brazen in their willingness to instill bias in electoral maps, the need for judicial intervention has become compellingly clear.'' He called the court's attention to a bitter court fight over redistricting in Texas that also involves Democratic charges of blatant GOP gerrymandering.

John P. Krill is the lawyer who represents the Pennsylvania Senate president pro tem and the House speaker, both Republicans. He told justices that redistricting is political and said it would be impossible for judges "tasked with exorcising partisanship from mapmaking'' to know how to do it.

Because of Pennsylvania's slower-than-average population growth, the state lost two of its 21 seats in Congress after the 2000 census.

The new 19-seat maps were approved with substantial Democratic support, but they were engineered by the Republicans who control both houses of the Legislature at a time when powerful computer software makes it possible to trace voting patterns down to individual streets and houses.

Largely because of where the district boundaries were drawn, the GOP tightened their grip on the state's congressional delegation, winning 12 of the 19 seats in 2002. Previously, the Republicans had 11 seats to the Democrats' 10.

During the arguments, Justice Antonin Scalia asked how the court could define unfairness.

Unfairness is obviously how the Democrats define it.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates get slightly more than 50% of the Congressional vote, but Republicans win a majority of the seats. This is unfair. Districts should be redrawn so that Democrats win a majority of seats.

In Texas, Republican candidates win 55+% of the Congressional vote, but Democrats win a majority of seats. Republican legislators redraw the lines so that Republicans win a majority of seats. This is unfair.

"Justices were reviewing a fight from Pennsylvania over a congressional map that essentially redistricted three Democratic House members out of a job."

Awwww!! Poor babies!!!!!!!!!!

How many Republicans were gerrymandered out of jobs by politically generated redistricting???

But don't expect Medusa (Bader-Ginsburg), the Recluse-Freak
(Souter), the Senile Internationalist (O'Connor), or the
Leftist Twins (Breyer and Stevens) to render any kind of fair decision on this issue. Any edict they issue on this subject will be most carefully worded to best advantage Democrats. (And their "Decisions" should be better termed "edicts" as the Constitutionality of those decisions is based soely in their own imaginations.

Clinton may be gone, but his legacy lives on, while the Republican Eunuchs in the Senate continue to stand, baffled, at the delying tactics of the Democratic Filibustiers.

"Oh great, if the Supremes rule against the GOP gerrymander in PA, then judges everywhere will play a greater role in redistricting."

So long as legislatures draw redistricting maps, politics will be involved and those who are in control will draw the maps to their benefit. In fact, even if a "non-partisan" commission or a judge draws the maps, they will still take politics into account. Have you seen the congressional map used in Texas in 2002? It was worse than any legislative gerrymander, and it was drawn by a judge (albeit based on the 1992 RAT gerrymander, as smoothed out in 1996 after a few districts were declared unconstitutional because race was the overwhelming factor).

There is no perfect solution to political gerrymandering. In fact, it would be less (small d) democratic to draw districts without taking politics into account, because one would end up with districts were the people have nothing in common except the fact that they live in a 20-mile radius of each other. And if one tries to draw as many evenly-matched districts as possible, a party that has a good election night could elect every member of the delegation even though they are only 51% of the population. If one tries to be fair about how to go about electing representatives, one has to balance (i) the right of the majority to speak with one voice with (ii) the right of a numerous minority to representation. Thus, it would be wrong to insist that 4 of the 9 representatives from Indiana be Democrats even though they get 44% of the vote, since the 56% that vote Republican should expect, for the most part, to speak for Indiana in Congress. But it is also wrong for all 10 reps from Massachusetts to be Democrats. I believe the best way to reach the happy medium between strict majoritarianism and strict proportional representation is for each state to create a number of multi-member districts (3-member or 5-member districts are best), with each multi-member district electing members by proportional representation. Thus, Indiana would create 3 districts of 3 members each, and each of the districts would most likely elect 2 Republicans and 1 Democrat, for a congressional delegation of 6 Republicans and 3 Democrats. Massachusetts would create 2 districts of 5 members each, with the most likely result being a delegation with 6 or 7 Democrats and 3 or 4 Republicans. The benefits of such a system are that not only will minority ideologies get representation (when was the last time a Republican from SW Georgia or NW Tennessee had a representative who looked out for his interests?), but it would make it much more difficult to obtain partisan advantage from redistricting, since multi-member districts are almost impossible to pack, stack or crack. And there would be no need to draw "minority-majority" districts, since any 3-member district in which blacks are over 25% of the population and any 5-member district in which they are over 17% of the population would be able to elect a black Congressman. I think multi-member districts may be the only way to avoid most of the problems created by redistricting in particular and congressional elections generally.

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