The Supreme Court does not like gerrymandering

AN INVISIBLE LINE in Greensboro divides the campus of North Carolina A&T State, America’s largest historically black university. On one side of Laurel Street lies the state’s sixth congressional district; on the other is the 13th. For Love Caesar, who is studying political science and history, the school’s 12,000 mostly “liberal thinking” students are “cracked” in two, diluting their votes into a sea of Republicans on either side. Republican legislators in North Carolina are happy to admit that Ms Caesar is quite right. In 2016 David Lewis, an architect of the plan, said the electoral map was designed “to gain partisan advantage”. The statewide vote has been nearly tied in recent elections, but the Republican Party’s cartographic acumen—splitting some Democratic constituencies and stuffing others into as few districts as possible—helped to win the party ten of the state’s 13 congressional seats (see map). Mr Lewis lamented only that it wasn’t “possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats”.