But election lawyers and experts say that what is happening now is a crisis with few parallels in American history, especially given the potential weakening of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court is expected to rule on in the coming months.
They fear this one-two punch could weaken democracy.
“The wheels are coming off the car right now,” said Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School who has studied gerrymandering. “There’s a sense in which the system is rapidly spiraling downward, and there’s no end in sight.”
Congressional redistricting is typically carried out after the national census, which is taken every decade. States can win and lose House seats according to population changes, and state legislatures from both parties have used the once-per-decade opportunity to redraw districts that benefit them politically.
But this year, that norm has been shattered. Election experts worry that if the trend continues, redistricting could become a chaotic and near-constant process, with state lawmakers redrawing districts with the onset of every midterm election…..
Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, said that gerrymandering generated more controversy when the country was closely divided politically, with power regularly flip-flopping between parties.
At the same time, both parties in recent years have painted the other as a fundamental threat to the future of the republic.
“When the stakes are viewed as so high and the partisan margins of control are so thin,” Mr. Pildes said, “it creates all of this pressure for those who control the structure of elections to use that power to try to advance the interests of their side.”…