supreme court allows lawsuit against gerrymandering in maryland to proceed

[myreality]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...198_story.html

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a Maryland man may proceed with his lawsuit alleging that the state’s congressional redistricting plan was unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

The court said lower courts were wrong to dismiss the lawsuit that Steven Shapiro filed on behalf of himself and others challenging the state’s redistricting after the 2010 Census. The state’s overwhelmingly Democratic political leadership changed the lines to make it easier for Democrats to win in seven of the state’s eight congressional districts.

Going to be interesting to see how this pans out.

[Salodin]

I'm not even mad, but only if it sets the precedent so that we can get rid of all these republican benefiting lines on the districts.

Iirc, republicans wouldn't even control congress if not for the ways districts are gerrymandered.

[Kazen]

The ironic part is Maryland has a republican governor at the moment because people got so complacent and didn't vote lol.

[Inshiya]

There's a problem here:

This case addresses only one type of gerrymandering, and specifically that's the question of whether you count non-voters (non registered voters, felons, immigrants) in the "total people" per region when counting districts.

Right now we just go by population, so urban areas get a large portion of the districting/vote. However these centers do not have as many active voters as they have people, so this case would seek to only district based on voter bases, which would drastically hurt urban area representation and cost democrats seats in every state.

This case however would not preclude republican based gerrymandering, which occurs when you simply re-draw lines in silly ways to include all the minorities/democractic voter in a single district (even if there's an equal amount of them in the state as republican voters).

So basically, this could be the end of democracy.

[archibaldcrane]

There's a problem here:

This case addresses only one type of gerrymandering, and specifically that's the question of whether you count non-voters (non registered voters, felons, immigrants) in the "total people" per region when counting districts.

No, you're thinking of the Texas case. This case is good ol'fashioned line-drawing.

[archibaldcrane]

Iirc, republicans wouldn't even control congress if not for the ways districts are gerrymandered.

You do not recall correctly. Obviously gerrymandering has nothing to do with Senate results, as Senators are voted on by the entire state.

In the house everyone is up for election every two years, and in 2014 Republican candidates got 51% of the vote - so even in the (non-existent) ideal districting scenario, they'd still have a majority.

Granted, they won 56% of the seats so there's some fuckery there helping them, but they'd still control both chambers without it.

[Salodin]

Ah, I knew it was close but wasn't sure on exact numbers. Thanks.

[archibaldcrane]

It'll look much worse in '16 if Hilldog is steamrolling some chump but the Rs keep the house by a large margin.