Partisan gerrymandering'the practice of drawing districts in a way that is designed to aid one party and hurt the other'is one of the more pernicious phenomena in American politics today. It's fundamentally antidemocratic because it's designed to circumvent or at least dampen the will of voters. For the same reason, it's very difficult to overcome through democratic means: You can't exactly vote out the people in power if they've drawn districts designed to stop you from doing so. And legal remedies are scant. The U.S. Supreme Court has concluded that although partisan gerrymandering is distasteful, the federal courts have no role in stopping it. Some states have specific constitutional protections against gerrymandering, but many do not. But partisan gerrymandering does have one ultimate weakness'a foe that doesn't always win, but whose victories are especially satisfying. That foe is gerrymandering itself. If you have never heard of a dummymander, this is probably a good time to...
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