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Page Number: 25.0

20 

RUCHO v. COMMON CAUSE 

Opinion of the Court 

number  of  seats  for  each  party  and  determine  at  what 
point  deviation  from  that  balance  went  too  far.    If  a  5–3 
allocation  corresponds  most  closely  to  statewide  vote
totals,  is  a  6–2  allocation  permissible,  given  that  legisla-
tures  have  the  authority  to  engage  in  a  certain  degree  of 
partisan  gerrymandering?    Which  seats  should  be  packed 
and which cracked?  Or if the goal is as many competitive
districts as possible, how close does the split need to be for 
the district to be considered competitive?  Presumably not
all districts could qualify, so how to choose?  Even assum-
ing the court knew which version of fairness to be looking
for, there are no discernible and manageable standards for 
deciding  whether  there  has  been  a  violation.    The  ques-
tions  are  “unguided  and  ill  suited  to  the  development  of
judicial  standards,”  Vieth,  541  U. S.,  at  296  (plurality 
opinion), and “results from one gerrymandering case to the 
next  would  likely  be  disparate  and  inconsistent,”  id.,  at 
308 (opinion of Kennedy, J.).

Appellees contend that if we can adjudicate one-person, 
one-vote claims, we can also assess partisan gerrymander-
ing claims.  But the one-person, one-vote rule is relatively
easy to administer as a matter of math.  The same cannot 
be  said  of  partisan  gerrymandering  claims,  because  the 
Constitution  supplies  no  objective  measure  for  assessing 
whether a districting map treats a political party fairly.  It 
hardly  follows  from  the  principle  that  each  person  must
have an equal say in the election of representatives that a 
person is entitled to have his political party achieve repre-
sentation  in  some  way  commensurate  to  its  share  of 
statewide support.

More  fundamentally,  “vote  dilution”  in  the  one-person,
one-vote cases refers to the idea that each vote must carry
equal weight.  In other words, each representative must be 
accountable  to  (approximately)  the  same  number  of  con-
stituents.  That  requirement  does  not  extend  to  political 
parties.  It does not mean that each party must be influen-