GOP/SUPREME COURT/VOTING: “Breaking ranks with many of their fellow Republicans, a group of prominent politicians filed briefs on Tuesday [9-5-17] urging the Supreme Court to rule that extreme political gerrymandering — the drawing of voting districts to give lopsided advantages to the party in power — violates the Constitution.
The briefs were signed by Republicans including Senator John McCain of Arizona; Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio; Bob Dole, the former Republican Senate leader from Kansas and the party’s 1996 presidential nominee; the former senators John C. Danforth of Missouri, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming; and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former governor of California.
‘Partisan gerrymandering has become a tool for powerful interests to distort the democratic process,’ reads a brief filed by Mr. McCain and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case, Gill v. Whitford, No. 16-1161, on Oct. 3.
The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican State Leadership Committee all filed briefs on the other side. They urged the Supreme Court to reject a challenge to State Assembly districts in Wisconsin that, by some measures, gave Republicans outsize political power unjustified by the overall vote.”
-Adam Liptak, “Prominent Republicans Urge Supreme Court to End Gerrymandering,” New York Times online, Sept. 6, 2017