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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf The Supreme Court Reads This Study, It Could End Partisan Gerrymandering Forever
If The Supreme Court Reads This Study, It Could End Partisan Gerrymandering Foreverby Ian Millhiser at Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/12/01/3597643/this-study-could-end-the-worst-kinds-of-gerrymandering-if-the-supreme-court-took-the-time-to-read-it/
"SNIP..........................
Common sense dictates that the legislative maps that could produce such a result must be deeply flawed and that they must be biased towards Republicans, the same party that controlled both houses of the state legislature when these maps were drawn (although the state had a Democratic governor at the time of the redistricting, the governor has no veto power over congressional maps). A new study by Duke Mathematics Professor Jonathan Mattingly and undergraduate Christy Vaughn seems to confirm this insight. Their study confirms that it is highly unlikely that a fair redistricting process would have produced a map as skewed towards one political party as North Carolinas congressional map is.
Mattingly and Vaughns study redrew numerous random congressional maps, all of which complied with three rules: the districts must be connected, they must come as close as possible to having [an] equal number of people, and they should be as compact as possible. They then ran eight different simulations, some of which gave greater preferences to compact districts over equal population, while others placed greater emphasis on maintaining exact population. Seven of the eight simulations did not produce a single map where Democrats won less than five congressional seats, assuming that every voter who cast a vote for a Democrat or a Republican in 2012 would have cast the same vote under the simulated maps. The one simulation that did produce a handful of outlier maps where Democrats won only four seats did so in less than 5% of the samples.
Thus, the actual result of the 2012 elections four Democratic congressional seats in North Carolina did not even show up in all but one of Mattingly and Vaughns simulations. In the simulation where it did arise, it did so only in a few unusual cases. It is exceedingly unlikely that North Carolinas GOP-friendly maps could have arisen organically. Rather, as Mattingly and Vaughn demonstrate, they are almost certainly the product of a legislature that carefully designed the maps to produce a desired result. The studys authors argue that this result cries out for an independent check on redistricting The fact that the election outcomes are so dependent on the choice of redistrictings demonstrates the need for checks and balances to ensure that democracy is served when redistrictings are drawn and the election outcome is representative of the votes casted.
Which brings us back to the Supreme Court. In the 2004 case Vieth v. Jubelirer, a total of four conservative justices joined an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia arguing that federal courts should not get involved in partisan gerrymandering cases. The essence of Scalias argument in Vieth is that courts are simply unable to come up with a legally manageable standard for determining which gerrymanders cross the line when they become impermissible. According to Scalia, no judicially discernible and manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged.
..........................SNIP"
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If The Supreme Court Reads This Study, It Could End Partisan Gerrymandering Forever (Original Post)
applegrove
Dec 2014
OP
Do the 5 SC Deciders even read anything other than supportive of their opinion?
Dont call me Shirley
Dec 2014
#3
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)1. n/t
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)2. Probably need to establish the methodology.
In order to sway a future court, one probably needs to develop a fairly robust process for this evaluation. I'd suspect that literally thousands of these permutations would have to be run and the results would have to be lower than 5%.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)3. Do the 5 SC Deciders even read anything other than supportive of their opinion?
0rganism
(23,957 posts)4. the only way the SCOTUS would "end gerrymandering" as a result of this study
is if it showed that Republican gerrymandering somehow, systematically, helped Democrats win seats.
the SCOTUS as currently configured will regard this study as evidence for the absolute necessity of partisan gerrymandering.
UTUSN
(70,711 posts)5. The SCotUS *reads*?!1 nt
mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)6. "Uh-huh-huh, uh, huh-huh-huh
You said 'read'."
I couldn't find a picture of Scalia photoshopped to look like Butt-Head.
Takket
(21,578 posts)7. If no standard is in place...
Then it is up to the congress to pass.... Oh... Forget it.
JEFF9K
(1,935 posts)8. If present trends continue ...
... we will have a non-Republican Supreme Court NEVER!