Let me challenge some assumptions about gerrymandering. The most common misconception of gerrymandering is the assumption that close races are required for the voters to have a choice. While in current practice this may be true, the reason is due to other factors in our voting habits and electoral structure, not inherent in gerrymandering. The solution is not to get rid of gerrymandering, but to make other more fruitful changes to our electoral habits and systems. Gerrymandering is neither good nor bad.

Gerrymandering works by making certain districts overwhelming in a single party's favor, leaving few competitive districts. While this may sound like it undermines voter choice, that is not the case.

A district dominated by one party does in fact have a choice in their primaries. In fact voters there have a better choice than in competitive districts. Voters in a single party district get to focus on whether their representative precisely reflects their views rather than whether their party can win in the general election. Take for example a 90% Republican district. We know that this district will be representative of a swath of Republican voters - that's a good thing. Those voters can now focus on the more subtle leanings of their candidates during the primaries. Voters and primary candidates can openly debate about social conservatism and gun control, rather than what the small percentage of "swing" voters care about. Essentially, party factions become the choice, exactly what this country needs to evolve two parties that do not do a good job of representing the country. This is how I foresee democracy emerging in China, and is common from time to time, though not necessarily implemented to the voters advantage, in frequently defacto single party states, such as Mexico, Japan, and Canada.

Pushing the impact of our representative system into more subtle debates in a primary election is only a bad thing because our primary system has some fixable issues. Fewer voters participate in primary elections, and there are not enough primary challengers. Making primaries more competitive and getting voters more involved in the primaries of the gerrymandered districts would help, and this leverages the positive aspects of gerrymandering rather than wasting effort trying to ban the practice.

In some ways the issue should be self-correcting. The more guaranteed a district is for a given party, the more candidates should emerge in the primary, the more competitive the primary should be, and the more voters should care. This is because winning the primary is nearly as good as winning the general election.

Perhaps a better solution to competitive primaries is something similar to what is being tried in California - non-partisan primaries. These shift the more subtle intraparty distinctions in single party districts to the more widely attended general election where they should be. In the above-mentioned Republican district, the district would likely have two Republican candidates in the general election. Such a system does both a good job of representing the constituents and of providing voter choice. The impact is similar to what one gets in a proportional representation or many-party system.

The reverse of gerrymandering - engineering all highly competitive districts - also has major disadvantages, the largest being that every district has a choice between two distinct parties who could have radically different views. The winner of the election represents a slim majority, is chosen by a very small percentage of "swing voters," and small changes in "swing voter" sentiment can lead to major changes in representation. While that may have the advantage of throwing the bums out quickly, it can also lead candidates to appeal to their bases and push for voter turnout rather than having substantive distinctions. Sounds familiar.

Conclusion? Stop being outraged about gerrymandering and practice some political Aikido. Push for active primaries and support legislation for non-partisan primaries. These actions don't require Supreme Court intervention or Constitutional amendments, are practical, and may have a better result than banning gerrymandering.