It’s time to end partisan gerrymandering

Drawing the boundary lines of legislative or congressional districts to provide an unfair advantage to one party is a practice with a long if not distinguished pedigree in American politics. The name for this process — gerrymandering — derives from Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts governor who in 1812 approved a redistricting plan that included a misshaped district resembling a salamander.

But sophisticated computer software has turned Gerry’s salamander into a true monster. It allows a party that controls the state legislature to perfect the art of map manipulation, ensuring that its candidates are elected in numbers obscenely out of proportion to its support statewide.

This partisan gerrymandering — there is also “racial gerrymandering” designed to dilute the votes of minorities — devalues democracy by unfairly rigging electoral maps. It dilutes the votes of large numbers of citizens, makes elections less competitive and allows people to win seats they would not have won had the system not been cynically manipulated. Fortunately, there are welcome signs that the tide is turning.

Last Monday the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which had ruled that a congressional map drawn by the Republican legislature violated the state constitution’s guarantee of “free and equal” elections, promulgated a new map that relies on advice from a Stanford University professor. Under the previous map, voters in 2016 cast ballots for Democratic and Republican House candidates in roughly equal numbers, yet 13 of the state’s 18 House seats went to Republicans. Under the new map, the delegation is expected to be more evenly divided. The new map also satisfies the court’s requirements for districts that are more compact and break apart fewer counties.

Meanwhile, the Ohio legislature has proposed a constitutional amendment to establish a complicated new arrangement designed to involve both parties in congressional redistricting. In 2016, Republicans won 75 percent of the state’s 16 GOP-drawn districts, even though the party attracted only 58 percent of the votes cast for congressional candidates.

The U. S. Supreme Court aided the cause of reform with a 2015 ruling upholding the right of states to entrust the drawing of congressional district lines to independent commissions, as California does. Now, two new cases provide an opportunity for justices to go dramatically further and rule that some gerrymanders are so extreme that they violate the U. S. Constitution.

The first case, argued last October, involves a Republican-friendly map for the Wisconsin Assembly. The second, to be argued March 28, focuses on a map that allowed Democrats to capture a historically Republican seat in Maryland’s House delegation.

Looming over both cases is a 1986 Supreme Court decision holding that partisan gerrymandering could violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause if it intentionally and effectively discriminated against an identifiable political group. But the court has never agreed on a clear standard for deciding whether partisan gerrymanders cross that line.

What matters is that the court use its authority to end redistricting abuse by state lawmakers; you can’t always count on state supreme courts to stop them. More than two centuries after Elbridge Gerry signed off on his “salamander” map, the day of reckoning for gerrymandering has arrived.