Gerrymandering, VRA, Partisanship, and Federalism

You may have heard that we are in a very partisan age. You may have also heard that there's a mid-decade gerrymandering race to the bottom. And you may have heard that the Supreme Court has significantly altered the Voting Rights Act this week. Some notes: This is not a great state of affairs. And all of these things are in some way linked. There's nothing wrong per se with strong partisanship---it's more the norm than the exception in republics, across both time and space. But when you combine it with districting and gerrymandering, you tend to inevitable distort---and largely worsen---the representational math. It's stupid that 40% of the voters in Massachusetts prefer the GOP but get none of the 9 House seats. And it's dumb that the GOP has a 10-4 edge in North Carolina, a state that's more or less 50-50 in partisan preference. Further, when there are racial disparities in party preference, it tends to push a party system toward a lot of race-based thinking, both pro and con, which…