Friday 22 July 2011

Gerrymandering is self-limiting.

 In 1986, Justice O'Connor cogently observed that "there is good reason to think that political gerrymandering is a self-limiting enterprise":"In order to gerrymander, the legislative majority must weaken some of its safe seats, thus exposing its own incumbents to greater risks of defeat -- risks they may refuse to accept past a certain point. Similarly, an overambitious gerrymander can lead to disaster for the legislative majority: because it has created more seats in which it hopes to win relatively narrow victories, the same swing in overall voting strength will tend to cost the legislative majority more and more seats as the gerrymander becomes more ambitious. More generally, each major party presumably has ample weapons at its disposal to conduct the partisan struggle that often leads to a partisan apportionment, but also often leads to a bipartisan one. There is no proof before us that political gerrymandering is an evil that cannot be checked or cured by the people or by the parties themselves. Absent such proof, I see no basis for concluding that there is a need, let alone a constitutional basis, for judicial intervention."
The credit for this story goes to Ann Althouse.
This bizarrely gerrymandered district in Chicago 
may not corrupt the national election results.

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