High Court Upholds Pennsylvania Redistricting

[Frodo]

At issue for the high court was whether partisan gerrymandering can be so extreme as to be unconstitutional and whether to spell out rules limiting the practice.


The Supreme Court last addressed the issue in 1986, when it held in a splintered ruling that political gerrymandering could be unconstitutional, but provided few rules on how to review such cases.


In the Pennsylvania case, the lower court overturned the 1986 precedent and said federal courts have no jurisdiction to review political gerrymandering disputes. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling, allowing Pennsylvania's new redistricting map to stand.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040428/ts_nm/court_redistricting_dc_5




Apparently, the four most conservative members also wanted to overturn the 1986 ruling and take the Federal courts out of gerrymandering decisions. They were barely beaten back.


On a side note... that was our last shot before the elections, right? Is there anything else in the pipeline?

[spinbaby]

1. &%#@#!

What we have going on in PA is blatent gerrymandering. I'm in a predominantly Democratic township just outside the predominantly Democratic city of Washington. Do they put us with Washington? Noooooo....we get tacked onto the freeper hell that is Greene County and Washington gets put with the far eastern part of the county.

[David__77]

2. Well, we'll have to play this game then as well.

I think we can be even better than them about this. We also have to make sure that our people turn out in the right areas in the next census. It's vitally important.

[Frodo]

3. I'm afraid that may not be an option.

You think we haven't been "playing this game" too???

How do you suppose we held something like a 100 seat majority in the House while Reagan walked to a 49 state victory? Or Nixon? A lot more people voted republican, but we won lots more seats...

Why? Because we drew the lines... in almost every state. Prior to 1990 I think there was only one state of consequence whose lines had been drawn by the republicans.

Did you know that until the fiasco in Texas last year there were comfortably more Democrats in the House from Texas than republicans even though shrub carried the state by a solid majority?

No. The only solution here is to move to some sort of non-partisan redistricting process before it kills us.