Voters in five states went to the polls in 2018 and said no to partisan gerrymandering. Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah all passed ballot measures that weakened the ability of state legislators to pass purely partisan maps, whether by putting in nonpartisan commissions or other models. Now, there are two questions: Which states will be the next to take action, and will the Supreme Court allow these fixes to stand?
”We’re seeing possible ballot measures in Arkansas and Oklahoma in 2020,” RepresentUs co-founder Josh Silver told the Washington Post. “We’re seeing very promising activity in Virginia, the beginnings of what might be a legislative movement in Pennsylvania and Maryland. I think the map continues to grow.”
But the Supreme Court has never acted to rein in partisan gerrymandering, while a 2015 decision upheld an Arizona redistricting commission only with the vote of now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy and over the objections of the court’s conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts. So it’s not hard to imagine the Trump court of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh not just approving districts drawn purely to benefit Republicans but rejecting the will of the voters and striking down nonpartisan commissions or other ways of drawing district lines based on something other than partisan loyalty.