Jun 27, 2017 3 min read

Given the depth of our divisions and the rancor enveloping our politics, it’s hard to feel encouraged about much of anything that is happening in Washington, D.C., or Harrisburg these days.

But maybe, just maybe, we’re at the darkest hour before the dawn.

No, dodgy websites that spread misinformation, rage-fueled talk radio, 24/7 cable news, hate-mongering hucksters and all the other things that pit us against one another won’t be disappearing next week. But there is a sliver of hope that, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, some sanity and moderation could eventually make a comeback in our politics.

The reason? The country’s highest court has agreed to hear a case about partisan gerrymandering this fall. The court will decide whether the carving up of state assembly districts by Wisconsin lawmakers in 2011 was unconstitutional because it was so blatantly partisan.

If a majority of the nine justices on the Supreme Court agree with a panel of federal judges that Wisconsin’s gerrymandering was out of bounds, it could bring newfound rationality to how our congressional and legislative districts are crafted. By extension, it could make elections for those seats more competitive and force candidates to be more responsive to a broader base of voters, not just their own fierce partisans.

An Associated Press examination of partisan gerrymandering found it overwhelmingly benefited Republicans in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan, even though both states are fairly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. The article explained gerrymandering this way: “When the party controlling the redistricting process sets out to draw lines, it has detailed information about the number of supporters the opposing party has, and where they reside. It sets out to shape districts so its opponents’ votes are wasted – spreading them out in some places so they are unlikely to win, and compacting them in others so they have far more votes than they need for victory. Both methods allow the party already in power to translate its votes into a greater share of victories – or, put another way, to be more efficient with its votes.”

The GOP in both states was able to fortify its congressional majorities in the years after the 2010 census because it held the executive and legislative branches and was able to control the redistricting process. It should be noted this is not an exclusively Republican sin; Democrats are accused of having drawn district lines in Rhode Island and Maryland to their advantage, and the GOP in Maryland is challenging the lines in court. Republican voters also tend to be more efficiently placed in suburban and rural areas, while Democrats tend to be packed into urban areas and college towns, thus further diluting their impact at the ballot box.

But pendulums swing, communities can shift political allegiances, and no party has a permanent hammerlock on power, so it would be to the advantage of both the right and left to stop gerrymandering. A handful of states, including California, Arizona, New Jersey and Washington, have independent commissions that handle legislative and congressional redistricting, while nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions handle legislative districts in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, Arkansas and Alaska. Maine and Vermont utilize advisory committees.

No matter how it’s done, the drawing of legislative and congressional boundaries should be taken out of the hands of politicians. As others have noted, voters should be able to choose their representatives, rather than their representatives getting to choose their voters.