Gerrymandering Likely to Get Worse in States

It is endlessly suspicious when politicians control the process by which they and their allies are elected. Yet Arizona lawmakers had been battling their own citizens for precisely this power, in a lawsuit that culminated Monday in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the right of voters — not legislators — to control how electoral districts are drawn.

 

In 2000, Arizonans voted to take the state legislature out of the redistricting process. They hoped to curb partisan gerrymandering by creating an independent, bipartisan commission that would handle the duty of redrawing state and federal voting districts after every Census.

The commission’s redistricting plan led to Democratic wins in 2012, which upset the GOP-controlled legislature. Republicans claimed that the whole process was unconstitutional because the founding fathers specifically commanded state legislatures to run elections.

They were referring to the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which reads as follows: