How to rig an election
Even children scarcely getting civics education these days understand the constitutionally guaranteed principle of one person, one vote. So too must the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday heard persuasive arguments from Wisconsin plaintiffs seeking to end the scourge of hyper-partisan gerrymandering.
The case before the justices challenges lawmakers’ drawing of district lines so meticulously engineered to guarantee seats to that state’s governing Republican Party that in the election that followed, the GOP won 60% of the state Assembly’s seats with just 48% of the vote.
The practice would be just as toxic to the body politic if the controlling party in question had been Democrats, or Libertarians, or Communists.
Across America, district lines drawn by partisan state legislatures decide the outcome before a single voter has cast a ballot by overpacking voters who back the other party into a few uncompetitive districts — or spreading their influence so thin across many districts, it’s effectively negated.
But it’s much simpler to declare partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional and contrary to democracy than it is to draw the right line between legislative boundaries appropriately drawn and those calibrated for perverse political purposes.
The federal judges who last year invalidated Wisconsin’s map ruled that the plaintiffs first have to prove discriminatory intent. That’s easy. For one thing, Wisconsin Republicans invited their party’s lawmakers in for an exclusive review of the lines.
Two, the lines would have to have a discriminatory effect, while having no legitimate justification. Here, plaintiffs propose counting the share of each party’s votes statewide wasted either on a losing legislative candidate or piled atop the 50% majority needed to win. A lopsided “efficiency gap” would signal a skewed playing field.
Were the Supreme Court to bless such a statistical tool, the justices would have to decide just how imbalanced is too imbalanced to stand.
Chief Justice John Roberts throws a bright red herring into the pool by suggesting that such legal oversight would inject the high court into a selfdestructively political role as arbiter resolving boundary disputes in state after state — Bush vs. Gore meets “Groundhog Day.”
It’s a necessary risk. Standing by while legislatures sweep voters’ rights into the gutter would be even more politically poisonous. With cynicism pervasive and government increasingly failing to represent the people, this is a moment for history. The court must seize it.