When the Supreme Court first addressed partisan gerrymandering in 1986, it set forth a standard that was essentially impossible for political parties to meet. According to the Court, it was not enough for parties to show that their supporters had been unfairly "packed" or "cracked" by devious district...

A political earthquake shook California ten days ago when the Citizens Redistricting Commission released its first Congressional maps. Since their release, statisticians and pundits have been working furiously to figure out their consequences. Will the Democrats or the Republicans benefit? Which incumbents will be knocked off?...

Everyone knows that foxes shouldn't guard henhouses. Everyone, that is, except for the Florida Legislature. As the debate rages over the state's next round of redistricting, the Legislature argues that it can be trusted to draw the new lines fairly. Even more brazenly, the Legislature insists that no one else...

As this decade's redistricting cycle begins, Republicans are licking their lips in anticipation. They already hold a sizeable 48-seat advantage in the House of Representatives. Thanks to their sweeping 2010 victories in state races, they will also have complete control over how...

Massachusetts, the site of the original gerrymander, remains one of the country's more gerrymandered states. Under the Congressional map in place over the past decade, odd districts abound. The Second, in south-central Massachusetts, has been compared to the Loch Ness Monster. The Fourth, whose...

Tuesday was a disaster for Democrats, of course, but it was perhaps the best day ever for a cause that many progressives hold dear: redistricting reform. In California, Proposition 20 passed with over 60 percent of the vote, giving the citizen commission established in 2008 responsibility for Congressional...

The memory is still enough to give Democrats the shakes: In 2000, George W. Bush won Florida (and thus the presidency) even though 50.5 percent of the state's votes were cast for Al Gore or Ralph Nader. Bush won, in other words, despite the fact that an outright...

One of the many areas in which Elena Kagan has left next to no paper trail is election law. In particular, Kagan has expressed no views - at least, not in writing - on redistricting, gerrymandering, or the Voting Rights Act. These are all important topics. And they are especially...

The gerrymander - that ugly but all-too-common creature - has thrived in Florida for years. Serpentine Congressional and legislative districts traverse the state everywhere you look. Elections are shockingly uncompetitive, with just three incumbents in the Legislature losing over the past six years (out of 420 elections). And even though...

Will a recent lawsuit result in Congress's most dramatic upheaval in almost a hundred years? Probably not, but that's the quixotic hope of the parties who brought the case. They think that the U.S. House of Representatives is unconstitutional in its current form, and that the only solution is...

Who declared that the country's legal system is "poorly organized if a judge enjoys the dangerous privilege of interpreting the law or adding to its provisions?" Was it Senator Lindsey Graham last week, questioning Sonia Sotomayor about her supposed "judicial activism?" Or perhaps Justice Antonin Scalia in one of his...

For generations after the Civil War, Southern blacks were denied the right to vote through an array of clever stratagems. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, quizzes about U.S. history, and good moral character requirements -- combined with occasional brute force -- kept Southern electorates lily-white. In 1965, only seven...

To the extent Democrats think about Bush v. Gore these days, they remember it as the worst Supreme Court decision in decades -- a nakedly partisan ruling by five conservative justices hell-bent on installing George W. Bush in the White House. Bush v. Gore was all this and more,...

The U.S. House and Senate are both primed to pass the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009. If enacted, the bill would give the District a voting Representative (instead of its current nonvoting Delegate) in the House. Utah would also obtain an additional House seat, thus...

About two months ago, I wrote a column hoping for success but predicting failure for California's Proposition 11, which would make an independent citizen commission (instead of the state legislature) responsible for determining state legislative district lines. Not allowing self-interested politicians to draw their own districts' lines is...

While at an election-watching party in D.C. last night, a few friends and I had an idea: Why not walk to the White House, just a few blocks away, and take some photos by its gates? We didn't think we were the only ones to think of this, but nothing...

Government reform issues have emerged as unlikely hotspots in this presidential campaign. Earmarks, the influence of lobbyists, governmental transparency, campaign finance - all topics typically of interest only to incorrigible policy wonks - are now the subject of dueling ads and intense media scrutiny. I therefore decided to take a...

For the second time in four years -- and the fifth time in a generation -- California voters will be asked in November to approve a new procedure for drawing electoral districts. Proposition 11 would create a redistricting commission made up of 14 regular citizens. These citizens, chosen through an...

The conventional wisdom says there are two kinds of campaign commercials: positive ads, which elaborate on a candidate's own strengths, and negative ads, which shine a spotlight on an opponent's weaknesses. Running positive ads is supposedly evidence of political virtue (or a comfortable lead in the polls), while...

Washington, D.C., one of the country's most violent and unsafe cities, has recently decided to crack down on... jaywalking. While gunshots ring out and drug deals are executed just blocks away, police officers spend entire days nabbing pedestrians who cross streets a little too soon or a little...