The Supreme Court has a chance to restore democracy to redistricting

Even as the court agreed to hear the case, the justices sent a signal they may be skeptical of the challengers' arguments.

Democrats hope a favorable decision will help them cut into GOP electoral majorities.

The justices last took up the topic in 2004 in a case called Vieth v. Jubelirer.

A year ago a district court ordered Wisconsin to produce a new, less partisan map in time for the 2018 election.

The justices in a brief written order said they would review a redistricting case from Wisconsin, where a three-judge lower court previous year invalidated a redistricting plan enacted by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature in 2011.

As debate surrounding gerrymandered districts has stayed on the front pages, Republican legislators have fired back, saying that Democrats did their fair share of gerrymandering during the decades in which they controlled the General Assembly. In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a law creating a voting district shaped like a salamander that heavily favored his party, the Democratic-Republicans. The decision could reshape American political battles for generations to come.

The appeals court found that Wisconsin's map was meant to entrench one party in power over the life of the districting plan. A divided panel ruled that the maps violated the constitution.

Twelve Republican-dominated states are supporting Wisconsin in its defense of the 2011 redistricting plan. I've said all along, I think it'll be upheld in the court. The four liberal Justices dissented.... "Gerrymandering has become so aggressive, extreme and effective that there is an urgent need for the Supreme Court to finally step in and set boundaries". He says Democrats proved in court that their rights were violated and "now this story will be told on a national stage". Until now, he hasn't found one.

The court's five conservative justices voted to stop the redistricting process.

Republicans "wield legislative powers unearned by their actual appeal to Wisconsin's voters", the voters argued in court papers.

On Monday, The Supreme Court announced it would hear a case relating to the practice of partisan gerrymandering, a strategy in which politicians redraw district lines in order to sweep specific communities likely to be aligned with a political party and prevent the opposition from gaining power.

But it is also true that statewide maps can be drawn in a way to give one party a clear advantage in most of the districts. Both political parties do it when they can.

Voters will be caught in the middle, with many of them being faced with potentially new and different representation because of changes to the districts they now live in. State and federal legislative district boundaries are reconfigured every decade after the census so that each one holds about same number of people, but are sometimes draw in a way that packs voters who tend to favor a particular party into certain districts so as to diminish their statewide voting power.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin released a statement calling for "a nonpartisan redistricting process". In March, judges ruled that three of the state's 36 congressional districts were illegally drawn to intentionally discriminate against minorities. Cities do it for city council districts.

In 2010, Republicans gained control of the state's government.

One can see how this method would make Democratic votes less equal than Republicans votes because, under this map, Republicans won two thirds of the seats with just 48.6 per cent of the vote. Although non-partisan commissions control the drafting of these districts in a handful of states, partisan state legislatures in most states control the process. This will be the landmark case that either shuts down Republican cheating or allows Republicans to use DeVos math to win elections.