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Page Number: 49.0

10 

RUCHO v. COMMON CAUSE 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

tional  districting  requirements).  The  effect  is  to  make 
gerrymanders far more effective and durable than before, 
insulating  politicians  against  all  but  the  most  titanic 
shifts  in  the  political  tides.    These  are  not  your  grand-
father’s—let alone the Framers’—gerrymanders. 

The  proof  is  in  the  2010  pudding.    That  redistricting
cycle  produced  some  of  the  most  extreme  partisan  gerry-
manders  in  this  country’s  history.  I’ve  already  recounted
the results from North Carolina and Maryland, and you’ll
hear  even  more  about  those.  See  supra,  at  4–6;  infra,  at 
19–20.  But  the  voters  in  those  States  were  not  the  only 
ones  to  fall  prey  to  such  districting  perversions.    Take 
Pennsylvania.  In the three congressional elections occur-
ring under the State’s original districting plan (before the 
State Supreme Court struck it down), Democrats received
between 45% and 51% of the statewide vote, but won only
5 of 18 House seats.  See League of Women Voters v. Penn-
sylvania, ___ Pa. ___, ___, 178 A. 3d 737, 764 (2018).  Or go
next  door  to  Ohio.   There,  in  four  congressional  elections, 
Democrats  tallied  between  39%  and  47%  of  the  statewide 
vote,  but  never  won  more  than  4  of  16  House  seats.    See 
Ohio  A.  Philip  Randolph  Inst.  v.  Householder,  373 
F. Supp.  3d  978,  1074  (SD  Ohio  2019).    (Nor  is  there  any 
reason  to  think  that  the  results  in  those  States  stemmed 
from  political  geography  or  non-partisan  districting  crite-
ria, rather than from partisan manipulation.  See infra, at 
15, 31.)  And gerrymanders will only get worse (or depend-
ing  on  your  perspective,  better)  as  time  goes  on—as  data
becomes  ever  more  fine-grained  and  data  analysis  tech-
niques continue to improve.  What was possible with paper 
and pen—or even with Windows 95—doesn’t hold a candle 
(or  an  LED  bulb?)  to  what  will  become  possible  with  de-
velopments  like  machine  learning.    And  someplace  along 
this road, “we the people” become sovereign no longer.