Election '18
The GOP Has a Stranglehold on America's Election Map That Will Go On for Years
The one exception is Pennsylvania, where Democrats could gain a few House seats.
By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
January 25, 2018

In one of the most important political developments of our time, top state and federal courts across America are rejecting extreme redistricting, or gerrymandering, which is an insidious form of political segregation.

After the 2010 Census, GOP leaders drew maps sorting their state's most reliable voters into congressional and state legislative districts. Political consultants, mostly Republicans, segregated reliable voters by race and party affiliation. Cynically, they created these maps to ensure that GOP candidates would get winning margins and supermajority rule in otherwise purple states.

Extreme gerrymandering has been the foremost reason Republicans have had a U.S. House majority this decade. It’s why the GOP has had legislative monopolies in numerous states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Ohio, where after gaining a lock on political power, they imposed a catalog of right-wing policies.

But as 2018 begins, there have been a series of state and federal court rulings in redistricting cases that are akin to referees throwing the flag for dirty play. Segregating voters by race is already illegal, while sorting voters by party affiliation is increasingly being ruled illegal. The open question, as the Supreme Court will rule later this spring on partisan gerrymandering, is ...................