New York Democrats’ hyperpartisan gerrymandering violated the state Constitution, which voters amended eight years ago to establish a bipartisan redistricting commission — specifically prohibiting line-drawing that discourages competition or gives one party an advantage.
But correct as last week’s state high court ruling striking down those lines is, it doesn’t solve a growing national problem. In fact, it exacerbates it, since extreme gerrymandering is now happening asymmetrically across the U.S., with Republican-controlled legislatures and governors going to town to maximize their leverage by creating as many safe congressional districts for their fellow partisans as possible, while Democrat-controlled states are increasingly tying their hands to prohibit the nefarious practice.
The result is roughly akin to what would happen if large, blue states like California and New York decided on their own to divvy up their electoral votes based on the proportion of votes a given presidential candidate won, while large red states continued to award them in winner-take-all fashion: an attempt to make America’s representative form of government work better is actually, in aggregate, making it less fair overall.
