FiveThirtyEightSERIESThe Gerrymandering Project PUBLISHED JAN. 24, 2018 AT 4:59 PM The Atlas Of Redistricting By Aaron Bycoffe, Ella Koeze and David Wasserman There’s a lot of complaining about gerrymandering, but what should districts look like? We went back to the drawing board and drew six different congressional maps for the entire country. Each map has […]
In most states, district maps — which define where the constituency of one representative ends and that of another begins — are drawn by the state’s lawmakers. Having politicians define their own districts has not gone entirely smoothly — and two cases involving political gerrymandering, or the drawing of districts (especially oddly shaped districts) to […]
In the divisive issue of voting access, there’s a rare area of consensus on the value of maintaining up-to-date voter rolls. Advocates on every side agree that it’s important to strike ineligible voters, both because it speeds up the process of voting and it reduces the possibility for voter fraud. But how to keep the […]
The next broadside in the culture wars arrives on the Supreme Court’s doorstep Tuesday in the unlikely form of a Colorado bakery owner named Jack Phillips. Phillips is a devout Christian who closes his shop on Sundays and refuses to take business that he says violates his religious beliefs — including making cakes celebrating Halloween, […]
In 2009, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin wrote that Chief Justice John Roberts, more than any of his colleagues, had “served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.” My, how things change. More than a decade after he was first appointed, Roberts does not appear to be the justice he was […]