Ideally compact and cohesive congressional districts in some states can be just as unfair as the complex, meandering shapes of classical gerrymandered districts in others.
Courts should relax the threshold for congressional districts within a state having nearly identical populations to the more flexible standard used for state-level legislative districts.
After a career in tech, I’ve immersed myself in redistricting and partisan gerrymandering over the last couple of years.
I’ve studied the mechanics of redistricting at the state level and redistricted North Carolina and Maryland by hand. I’ve dug into what partisan…
Efficiency gaps are functionally equivalent to malapportioned districts.
While what it means for a state to have a significant ‘efficiency gap’ can be hard to grasp conceptually, it is exactly the same as that state having…
Amendments to state constitutions could seriously limit partisan gerrymandering, if they reflected a deep technical understanding of how redistricting and gerrymandering work, but the language of…
The ‘efficiency gap’ standard now before the Supreme Court in Gill v. Whitford would only be part of an overall standard for partisan gerrymandering. This article outlines a comprehensive standard for partisan gerrymandering that…
Since excessive discriminatory effect in partisan gerrymandering prima facie demonstrates discriminatory intent, a standard for intent could be collapsed into a standard for effect.
