Politics
Supreme Court Protects Gerrymandered Map To Protect Democracy
By Sean Vanity, . BSN Network. Satire.
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled this week that Missouri must keep using its current congressional map, which Republicans drew in 2021 specifically to produce four safe Republican seats out of eight total districts, because switching to the newer map Republicans drew to produce even more safe Republican seats would, per the Court's unsigned opinion, "usher in electoral chaos."
The chaos, presumably, would be the part where voters were briefly uncertain which map had been engineered to ignore them.
Missouri Republicans spent the better part of two legislative sessions redrawing district lines, a process described by state party officials as "reflecting the will of Missouri communities" and by anyone with a ruler as moving Black voters in St. Louis into a district already containing a population center the size of Kansas City. The new map was blocked by a lower court. The Supreme Court agreed to keep it blocked, citing the proximity to the election and the operational difficulty of printing new materials, which is now apparently a constitutional standard.
Senator Josh Hawley, who has described Missouri as "a free state" in approximately forty press releases this calendar year, did not comment on whether freedom includes the freedom to vote in a district that was not assembled the way you build an IKEA shelf to make one specific drawer impossible to open.
The Court's unsigned opinion did not address whether the 2021 map was itself a problem. It did not address the 2025 map's specific geometry. It addressed the calendar. Oral arguments, it noted, were already scheduled. Changing maps this close to an election would be disruptive. The Court has discovered that the least painful time to fix a gerrymandered map is always slightly after the next election, a finding it has now replicated for the fourteenth consecutive cycle.
A spokesperson for the Missouri Republican Party said the decision "affirms the integrity of our democratic process," which is the sentence a person says when they have won something they cannot describe out loud.
Legal scholars noted that the ruling sets no precedent, resolves no underlying question, and will require the whole argument to be re-litigated after the election it was ostensibly too late to affect. One redistricting attorney, reached by phone, said the process was "ongoing," then paused for a long time.
The 2021 map remains in effect. The 2025 map remains in court. Missouri voters remain in whichever district keeps them the least inconvenient.
Electoral chaos, averted.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-missouri-map/