The Boston Globe : It’s unfair and unjust. So why has gerrymandering lasted this long?
LAST MONTH, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case in which Wisconsin seeks to overturn a decision of a lower court holding that the state assembly district map is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Wisconsin’s effort should fail. The lower court got it right. Although Democratic and Republican voters in Wisconsin are about evenly divided, the state legislative districts are so manipulated that Republicans gained 60 percent of the seats in the assembly, despite receiving less than 49 percent of the statewide vote in 2012 — a result that has remained largely unchanged in subsequent elections. And it is that gerrymandered assembly that Wisconsin wants to keep in office so it can draw a new map for itself and for the state’s members of Congress in 2021.