This week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will consider whether the state’s harshly gerrymandered congressional map violates the state’s constitution.
The case is happening early enough in the year that the court could order a redrawn map ahead of the midterm elections. If that happens, Democrats will probably win at least one additional House seat this cycle, and they will be better positioned in several other seats.
The case is about state, not federal, law, so the result will stand regardless of how the United States Supreme Court rules on the biggest question of all: whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution.
A Supreme Court ruling against partisan gerrymandering could usher in a half-dozen or more new congressional maps before the 2020 election, but probably not before this November’s midterm elections.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t limit partisan gerrymandering, it could get a lot more extreme.
As unfavorable as the current map is for Democrats, Republicans could go even further in 2020 if they controlled the process again. This is unlikely because the Pennsylvania governor is now a Democrat, but Pennsylvania serves as a good illustration of how gerrymandering can play out.
We’ve redrawn the Pennsylvania congressional map in two ways. One is a neutral map, the kind that might be drawn by a nonpartisan committee. The other is an adventure in extreme gerrymandering that aims to maximize the number of Republican-held seats.