Partisan gerrymandering is dominating the news, and as a scholar of constitutional law and a biographer of James Madison, who founded one of America¡¯s first political parties, I think I know the reason: The whole thing has gone completely nuts.
We are now at the point where gerrymandering is making a mockery of democracy itself. It¡¯s not inconceivable that, in the near future, every seat in Congress will be either a Democratic seat or a Republican seat, fixed by a process that manipulates electoral districts so that whichever party controls the state legislature can guarantee the election of its candidates.
How did we get here? Who¡¯s to blame? And is there anything we can do to get out of it?
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