How a Cure for Gerrymandering Left U.S. Politics Ailing in New Ways
The New York Times
Independent commissions to oversee the redrawing of electoral maps were thought to be the solution to an age-old problem. Instead, they have become bogged down in political trench warfare.
In Virginia, members of a bipartisan panel were entrusted with drawing a new map of the state’s congressional districts. But politics got in the way. Reduced to shouting matches, accusations and tears, they gave up.
In Ohio, Republicans who control the legislature simply ignored the state’s redistricting commission, choosing to draw a highly gerrymandered map themselves. Democrats in New York are likely to take a similar path next year.
And in Arizona and Michigan, independent mapmakers have been besieged by shadowy pressure campaigns disguised as spontaneous, grass-roots political organizing.
