“This Case Is Everything”
The future of our representative system of government is now at the mercy of the U.S. Supreme Court’s stolen conservative majority. The Court will soon have the opportunity to make a ruling that could help determine which political party controls Congress and state legislatures for decades.
According to The New York Times, the outcome of Gill v. Whitford—a case involving Wisconsin’s legislative maps—“could transform the American political landscape.” It is time for the Court to finally rein in the act of manipulating electoral boundaries to perpetuate the power of an incumbent political party—i.e., partisan gerrymandering.
After the GOP takeover of many state legislatures in 2010, the party employed an unprecedented level of sophisticated computer mapping to rig Congressional and state legislative elections. It ensured advantages that were almost impossible for Democratic candidates to overcome even when they were favored by a clear majority of voters.
For example, after the 2010 census, Republicans reconfigured electoral district boundaries in Wisconsin. Despite garnering only 48.6% of votes in the 2012 elections, the GOP won an extraordinary 60-to-39 seat majority in the state Assembly.
