The California Supreme Court will not prevent Democrats from moving forward Thursday with a plan to redraw congressional districts.
Republicans in the Golden State had asked the state’s high court to step in and temporarily block the redistricting efforts, arguing that Democrats — who are racing to put the plan on the ballot later this year — had skirted a rule requiring state lawmakers to wait at least 30 days before passing newly introduced legislation.
But in a ruling late Wednesday, the court declined to act, writing that the Republican state lawmakers who filed the suit had “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time.”
Absolutely fair. But first, packing and cracking algorithm. Gerrymandering works by manipulating district lines to maximize one party’s advantage through packing (shoving the other party’s voters into a few districts they win overwhelmingly) and cracking (splitting the rest across many districts so they lose narrowly). In packed districts votes are “wasted”: all votes for losing candidates, plus surplus votes beyond 50% in winning districts.
Here’s a toy example. Suppose there are 100 voters split evenly: 50 Party A, 50 Party B, across 5 districts of 20 voters each. If districts are drawn fairly, each district is about 10-10, so the outcome is 2-3 or 3-2 seats either way depending on swing. Now imagine a gerrymander. Party A packs 18 of Party B’s voters into one district (B wins 18-2) and cracks the remaining 32 B voters across the other four districts (so each of those is A=13, B=8). Party A now wins 4–1 despite an even statewide vote. But notice the fragility: if just 3 voters per cracked district switch or turn out differently (so A=10, B=11), Party B flips all four of those districts at once. That’s the backfire. Create razor-thin margins, and extreme gerrymanders make the system highly sensitive to small shifts.
Slight or moderate gerrymandering wont create this effect necessarily, but extreme gerrymandering in purplish places inherently mean you are spreading the butter over too much bread.
More on the matter: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.09381