via National Review by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
At issue is the new legislative map of Wisconsin, which, Judge Kenneth Ripple of the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin complains, “was designed to make it more difficult for Democrats, compared to Republicans, to translate their votes into seats.” His Honor has a reasonably strong grasp of the obvious: Yes, partisan legislators consider their partisan interests when drawing up electoral districts. They always have. Partisan interests will always be part of the equation: If you believe that those so-called independent commissions dreamed up by our would-be electoral reformers would in fact prove non-partisan, consider how non-partisan and independent our non-partisan and independent media are — or consider how easy it is to predict which justices will vote which way in any politically charged case before our non-partisan and independent Supreme Court.
Rather than having unaccountable panels of phony nonpartisans acting behind the scenes, we are far better off letting our political processes be exactly what they are: political. If Texans don’t like how Texas legislators draw up the state’s electoral maps, then they can kick Republicans out and put Democrats in charge. It is not like this has not happened before: Democrats had a near-monopoly on state-level power for a century after the Civil War but eventually were displaced by Republicans, whose policies and attitudes are more amenable — for now — to Texas voters
All of the high and mighty love democracy until democracy gets a little too democratic and starts producing results that they do not like, at which point it is time to “rise above politics” and put the like-minded servants of the high and mighty in charge of things.
The complete story here > In Praise of Gerrymandering