emerged in oral argument that i m sure rick recalls, is that the court was wary of saying yes, okay, we re going to entertain partisan gerrymand gerrymandering claims for feel they would have hundred from around the country, because face it, partisan gerrymandering is a part of life, but they were concerned there s no way to know when to blow the whistle. s melissa, just to explain to folks, back in 2010 ropes in particular made a very big push to win over state legislatures in the states, in part, for this reason, to redistrict ways that ended up being favorable. obviously this is something that democrats do, too, as the maryland case highlights, where doctor it go next, as it relates
of republican hopefuls. who better to break it down than the master of our political break downs, my friend steve kornacki. steve, walk me through it. specifically starting in pennsylvania. yeah. let s look at pennsylvania with this in mind. nationally democrats need to pick up 23 steeats. a gain of 23 gets them the house. why is pennsylvania critical? there s so much opportunity there. big state. remember, trump won it, but the margin was razor thin for trump, and yet at the same time, in a state this evenly divided in 20 16, republicans won the layon s share of house seats. democrats said it s because of jerly ma gerrymand gerrymandering. under the 2016 scheme, a lot of the republicans who got elected with donald trump, they did it in districts that were very competitive. not surprising here. for instance, a district voted for clinton by two votes, kos
do you anticipate this issue in the supreme court of the united states lines up with the split where kennedy is in the middle making the decision? it very well may, but it s worth noting the partisan gerrymandering has not always been an issue that follows the predictable ideological cleav e cleavages in the court. in the 80s, president reagan and bush rail against gerrymand gerrymandering, and arnold schwarzenegger was pushing for reform, and in the first case that the court ever took in 1986, the key opinions that recognized the theory were written by center right justices, not by liberals, so, today the issue may fall along more predictable cleavages with
hopefully in under 60 seconds. you were able to reduce to a numerical a quantitative score whether gerrymandering crossed a line in a particular state, is that it in a nutshell? that s the key to the second prong of the test. it asks whether the math has shown a large and durable discriminatory effect. well i can go i hope it s successful. my cards are on the table. i think that gerrymandering needs to be reigned in, both parties have done it, they ve done it for a long, long time, all the way back to eldridge jerry, but we re self-sorting. there s a self-sort taking place in this country where we associate, i d say, too much with the like-minded. it s not going to be a panacea if you re successful. good luck, professor. thank you very much. still to come, your best and
equivalent to race. if you are looking for an analogy for the theory, it s really one person, one vote, where 50 years ago the courts said that big variations in district population are not constitutional. this test is based very closely on the frame work that the courts used for decades to decide one person, one vote disputes. also, there s another similarity here between partisan gerrymandering and one person, one vote. 50 years ago, there was a serious threat to american democracy, and the supreme court intervened and put an end to that threat. today, partisan gerrymandering is also something that threatens to undermine basic democratic norms, and that s why, again, we re hoping that the court will step in and fix a really serious democratic malfunction.