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.

The process 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 month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which had ruled in January 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 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 before the court provide an opportunity for the justices to go dramatically further and rule that some gerrymanders are so extreme that they violate the U.S. Constitution.

The first case, which was argued last October, involves a Republican-friendly map for the Wisconsin Assembly. The second, which will be argued March 28, focuses on a map fashioned by Democrats that allowed their party 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 Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause if it intentionally and effectively discriminated against an identifiable political group.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has led the charge to stop gerrymandering here, and toward that end has empaneled the bipartisan Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, of which Sen. Steve Waugh (R-St. Mary’s, Calvert) is a member.

In striking down the Wisconsin map, a three-judge federal court said the U.S. Constitution was violated if a redistricting plan is “intended to place a severe impediment on the effectiveness of the votes of individual citizens on the basis of their political affiliation,” and can’t be justified on other, legitimate grounds. The judges relied on both the Equal Protection Clause and the free-speech protections of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment is at the center of an argument for lawyers challenging the Maryland map, designed by Democrats to successfully eliminate the once-GOP-friendly 6th District seat, now comprising all of Western Maryland plus parts of Montgomery and Frederick counties, held for 20 years by Roscoe Bartlett. In their petition to the Supreme Court, the lawyers representing Republican voters argue that “citizens enjoy a First Amendment right not to be burdened or penalized for their voting history, their association with a political party or their expression of political views.” That claim quotes from a 2004 opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is likely to be the deciding vote in the case.

Lawyers can argue about whether the justices should rely on the Fourteenth Amendment or the First Amendment. What matters is that the court use its authority to end redistricting abuse by state lawmakers, because 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.