The Guardian: The right to a free and fair vote in America might rest on this landmark court case

In all the history of American gerrymandering, it must rate as one of the purest expressions of unapologetic partisanship: “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country,” said the North Carolina representative David Lewis, then chairman of a committee carrying out a court-ordered revision of the state’s election maps.

Lewis was only saying what his colleagues were thinking. But the quote, from 2016, caught the attention of the supreme court justice Elena Kagan, who featured it prominently in her scathing dissent last month when the high court ruled that partisan gerrymandering – the practice of manipulating the contours of voting districts to rig them for one party – “present[s] political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts”.

“The majority goes tragically wrong,” Kagan wrote. Quoting Lewis about what was “better for the country”, she quipped: “You might think that judgment best left to the American people.”

A ruling against the Republicans in North Carolina, analysts say, could be galvanizing, setting off a wave of gerrymandering challenges in other states. But the stakes in North Carolina are special. …

“I think the eyes of the nation are watching to see what happens here,” said Bob Phillips, the state director of the advocacy group Common Cause, a plaintiff in the case. “For other states, it might be, ‘Hey, if it can be done in North Carolina, it might be done in your state’. That’s what we tell advocates around the country.” …

Some democracy advocates see a once-in-a-generation opportunity in North Carolina to push redistricting reform through. If Democrats can summon another anti-Trump “blue wave” in 2020, they might succeed, in spite of the maps, at winning control of the legislature and, with it, control of the redistricting process. That could spur Republicans to pursue reform.

“Unfortunately, the Democrats, some of them will say, ‘We can’t wait to win in 2020, take it back and gerrymander the hell out of them’,” said Phillips. “Now, that’s not what I want, but it’s out there, and it’s playing in the minds of the majority party. If you are the majority party and you don’t do reform, one day you might be on the other side of the stick.”